This is a summary of the previous week’s daily meditations. Some are written by Matthew Fox (MF) and some are written by his colleague, Gianluigi Gugliermetto. (GG) You can click on any title to view the DM in its entirety. Also, remember that each Monday DM continues to include a video teaching by Matthew Fox. Thank you for your loyal readership.
June 29, 2026: On the Passing of Robert Thurman, Gift-Giver of Buddhism to the West (MF)
Recently, the great Buddhist scholar and teacher, Robert Thurman, died. The Dalai Lama ordained him over 65 years ago in India and was his mentor.* Matthew and he engaged in a dialogue in Berkeley in 2022 and have been friends ever since. (Find the talk on YouTube HERE.) Robert was, says Matthew: a great soul, a great man, a great student and teacher of Buddhism and gifter of the same to the West. Robert was very taken with Matthew’s book on the Cosmic Christ and said how that mirrored the tradition of the Buddha Nature. He also said about Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality, curated by Charles Burack: Wow! …a loving quintessence of Matthew’s lifetime of revolutionary blessings and transformative teachings!”
June 30, 2026: Brendan Doyle, An Early Leader in the Creation Spirituality Movement (MF)
Another person who passed recently was Brendan Doyle. Matthew and he met in the Dominican Order. They worked closely together for 17 years, and the Creation Spirituality movement owes a lot to him. Brendan taught courses in Art as Meditation, one being, “Singing Hildegard of Bingen’s Music” and also a very inspired course on “Artist as Spiritual Voyager.” He would walk students through their music using the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality to draw out the deep spirituality inherent in each musician’s music. Matthew says it was “truly brilliant” and regrets that he never got around to writing a book about it. Brendan also translated Julian of Norwich from medieval English in his excellent book, Mediations with Julian of Norwich, published in 1983.
July 1, 2026: Brendan Doyle on Wagner & Mahler as Mystics and Prophets (MF)
Here are excerpts of an interview Matthew did with him in 1983.** Fox: You have done a lot of relating of medieval mystics to musicians of western culture. example, you have taken Eckhart’s four paths and said you found it very useful in understanding Wagner’s Ring. Doyle: Well, the four paths are there. The Ring Cycle itself is four music dramas. I see Das Rheingold as the via positiva. Fox: Briefly now the other three. Doyle: In Die Walküre, the via negativa culminates with Wotan’s letting go of Brünhilde. It’s about pain.… Siegfried is the via creativa, and has all these creative images…. Götterdämmerung represents the via transformative. Brünhilde puts an end to the greed and gives the ring back to the Rhine maidens out of compassion. So there we have that theme of the eternal feminine. Redeeming the world through compassion….
July 2, 2026: God as a Woman (GG)
In the year 1300, a Catholic nun by the name of Maifreda was burned at the stake in the public square in the city of Milan. Her crime? She preached that another woman, Guglielma, a saintly woman recently dead and buried in a chapel of the Cistercian Abbey on the outskirts of Milan had been the incarnation of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity. Maifreda believed that Guglielma would soon resurrect in Jesus-like fashion and inaugurate the kingdom of God on Earth. Members of her inner circle speculated that Maifreda would go to Rome to be recognized as the popess, and from there she would have asked the most learned scholars to rewrite the Gospels. There is a reference in the trial records, that Maifreda would have been able to baptize Jews and Muslims, or to include them in some fashion. Interestingly, Guglielma denied sharply that she was anything but a human being, according to testimonies.
July 3, 2026: “America” – part 1 (GG)
Gianluigi’s says that his relationship with the culture and the people of the United States is complicated. “One could say that we are in a perennial state of courtship but never engaged to be married.” He spent 15 years in Southern California. He reports: After my first contact, I have never been the same: American ways of thinking and behaving have deeply influenced me, both in my intellectual and my personal life. Yet I never considered becoming a citizen, buying property, or ending my days in the United States. He says that the sight of the American flag frightens him. It bespeaks oppression and bureaucratic coldness rather than freedom and equality and justice which it supposedly represents. Three books that impress him greatly are: America, Amerikka (2007), The Christian Gospels for Americans (2019), and Myths America Lives By: White Supremacy and the Stories that Give Us Meaning (2nd ed. 2018). These books must be seen as the best of the spirit of the Enlightenment. If such a freedom of critique is lost, the best of America is also lost.
July 4, 2026: “America” – part 2 (GG)
One aspect of the Enlightenment that is extremely valuable in the American experiment is the ability to be self-reflective . But there is also a huge shadow side: the repression of feeling and intuition. GG believes America must learn how to keep free critical thinking while getting rid of “the terrible one-sidedness of Enlightenment anthropology.” Religion and spirituality are inherently political, meaning that they tend to get involved with transforming society. The right wing tries to do so by imposition and is in denial about the self-destructiveness of such an attitude. But the left wing is also in denial if they keep believing that the utter separation between spirituality and politics—which worked so well for quite a long time—is still valid forever. America must learn how to keep personal freedoms while reintroducing values within its social life and its educational system.
* Steve Stein, “Remembering Robert Thurman,” Try This At Home! on Substack, June 25, 2026.
**Bear & Company: The Little Magazine, pp. 1-4, 21.
Banner image: “A protestor carries a US flag upside down, a sign of distress, next to a burning building, Friday 29 May 2020.” Photo by B on Flickr.
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths
Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet
Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works: With Letters & Songs
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
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