Saturday, I proposed writing vulnerable congress people to resist the BBB bill. Today I urge you to write or contact bishops and archbishops of your diocese and beyond. Are they marching? Are they visiting ICE centers and demanding to get in to examine the conditions? If not, why not?
This is especially important in the diocese of Los Angeles where the national guard and marines have invaded to prop up ICE. Did the archbishop there march with protestors? Has he demanded to get in and examine the ICE concentration camps? If not, why not?
In his position as a visible religious leader of the largest Roman Catholic diocese in North America, shouldn’t he be on the front line? And working with other religious leaders to march together, protest together, demand scrutiny of ICE detention centers together?
You don’t have to be a practicing parishioner to make these demands. Silence is complicity. Is that not the lesson to learn from the holocaust? Isn’t that what Dietrich Bonhoeffer was trying to teach us from his cell before they killed him?
Also contact the media, including your local media. Share your values– tell them what this vote means to you and to your struggling neighbors and relatives. Demand they cover it. Do they subscribe to Project 2025 and government of, by and for the billionaires?
Or to the promise of America? Government of, by, and for the people? Of course, most media in America is owned by billionaires.
Speaking of the media, let us remember a man true to his noble vocation as a journalist. Bill Moyers, who died Thursday, stood for values that matter, and called other journalists to be their best selves and serve the cause of the common good by telling the truth as best one can.
With a background as a Christian minister, Bill brought sound values to his second vocation and stood by them. His dialogues with Joseph Campbell on the Power of Myth put Campbell’s work on the map, and 30 million people took in their dialogues.
I was surely one of them. A friend and myself made a retreat with them as our guide. I remember taking copious notes, and it was ever so rich a retreat. Together, Bill and Joe stretched minds and hearts of millions to recognize the beauty and wisdom in so many world philosophies and cultures. An exercise in deep ecumenism for sure.
I was privileged to meet Bill on two occasions. On one, he told me that while filming the series with Campbell at George Lucas’s ranch, one morning he happened to be reading my book Original Blessing and Joe walked in the room. He said, “Oh, Matthew Fox” and then went on about Hildegard of Bingen, etc.
A few years later, after lecturing at a UCC church in Hawaii, an elegant woman came up to me and identified herself as Joseph Campbell’s widow. She asked if I had ever met her husband and I replied, “No, only in his books.” She said, “you think and talk more like my husband than anyone on the planet.” I was honored of course.
My second meeting with Bill was in a group of about 25 people in a home in New York City and I was looking forward to more conversation with him. But one woman with a very strong agenda to preach dominated the conversation so fully that Bill left before we could interact again. I regretted a missed opportunity.
Let us thank Bill Moyers for the generous gift of his impactful vocation, and may many other journalists follow his integrity.
See Matthew Fox, Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet.
See also Fox, Confessions; The Making of a Post-denominational Priest, pp. 168ff.
And Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.
And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society, pp. 188-236.
And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.
Banner Image: Pastors at a Moral Monday March in Charleston, WV; the Rev. Dr. William Barber is second from right. Photo by Becker1999. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Have you been impacted directly or indirectly by Joe Campbell and Bill Moyers’ Power of Myth series (or book based on the series)? How did that affect your spiritual journey? Or by other of Bill’s work? Or Campbell’s?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet
Because creativity is the key to both our genius and beauty as a species but also to our capacity for evil, we need to teach creativity and to teach ways of steering this God-like power in directions that promote love of life (biophilia) and not love of death (necrophilia). Pushing well beyond the bounds of conventional Christian doctrine, Fox’s focus on creativity attempts nothing less than to shape a new ethic.
“Matt Fox is a pilgrim who seeks a path into the church of tomorrow. Countless numbers will be happy to follow his lead.” –Bishop John Shelby Spong, author, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Living in Sin
Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest (Revised/Updated Edition)
Matthew Fox’s stirring autobiography, Confessions, reveals his personal, intellectual, and spiritual journey from altar boy, to Dominican priest, to his eventual break with the Vatican. Five new chapters in this revised and updated edition bring added perspective in light of the author’s continued journey, and his reflections on the current changes taking place in church, society and the environment.
“The unfolding story of this irrepressible spiritual revolutionary enlivens the mind and emboldens the heart — must reading for anyone interested in courage, creativity, and the future of religion.”
—Joanna Macy, author of World as Lover, World as Self
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
“I am reading Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth by Matt Fox. He is one that fills my heart and mind for new life in spite of so much that is violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story
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8 thoughts on “More Ways to Resist the Billionaire Welfare Bill & Honoring Bill Moyers”
Extract from Today’s DM –
“In his position as a visible religious leader of the largest Roman Catholic diocese in North America, shouldn’t he be on the front line? And working with other religious leaders to march together, protest together, demand scrutiny of ICE detention centers together?”
We are supremo, supremo, the best of the best, when it comes to ‘judging’ the actions and intentions of others. And what does that say about us? — BB.
Spiritual leaders should be on the front lines. That big, ugly bill is literally going to kill people, other species and help speed the destruction of the planet by removing most environmental protections. Innocent people are literally being disappeared by masked gestapo type agents with no warrants or ID. Families ripped apart with children literally sometimes just left on the street. People terrified to leave thrir houses. Many nursing and homes and hospitals will close. Millions will lose their health insurance or the dignity of retirement. The DOJ is literally attacking dissenters. People will die. This is fascism. Period. Full stop. At what point then, Bill is it okay to judge? Stand and speak out? Or is it more spiritual to be non-judgementally silent? If this nightmare ever ends, people will not only remember and reject all the churches and leaders who were gruesomely cheering it all on and partnering with it, they will also remember all the deafening, non-judgemental silence from the rest of the churches and leaders, and they will walk away from organized religion with utter, everlasting disgust.
Yes Dr Fox, I watched Joseph Campbell back in the 90’s with a group of friends and it led to many discussions. Especially I learned what archetypes are,
And have always admired Bill Moyers as an outstanding journalist and human being. They still have much to teach us.
As you do with these wonderful daily meditations. Faith without good works …
Yes!!! Thank you Matthew for today’s deep and relevant “Daily Meditation,” with it’s tying together two contemporary spiritual themes and happenings.
Right on! Archbishop Gomez is the leader of Opus Dei, the architects of project 2025. he lives right next to the federal building where the demonstrations are taking place. He can see them from his windows. Yet refuses to address the illegal arrest of his parishioners right beneath his nose. Opus Dei, rides again!
My spiritual journey and how it relates to Joseph Campbell can be found here for anyone’s who’s remotely interested… https://www.sedimentofmysoul.com/new-page-1
I remember reading Joseph Campbell years ago and being fascinated at how myths were formed, grew, and morphed into larger and larger stories, each resting on the last. However, now I am more interested in a call to service and speaking the truth to power. We must name the evil that is threatening to destroy every good thing that benefits ordinary people. I watched today’s Moral Monday with the Rev. Dr. William Barber and other clerics and lay people. To see this dear man limp forward to speak breaks my heart. Today he arranged a parade of coffins bearing the numbers of people who were losing life giving services and the numbers who would actually die. They prayed in the street as they are not allowed in the Capital Rotunda any more, being such desperate criminals. The most chilling thing to me was that an armband was fastened to each person as he or she was being arrested. Of course, this was the first step in separating out Jews in Hitler’s Germany. The whole thing made me weep and then go to the phone for yet another call to my Congress Rep. How sights like these cannot galvanize other religious leaders, not to mention ordinary people, is shameful.
I have loved Mythology since I was a child. I watched The Power of Myth with great interest, and it opened so much in me. These many years later it was streamed on my local PBS station, and I watched it again. I found even more to mine in its depths. I have grown (I hope) over time, and so it grew in me as well.
After the original series aired, I tried to watch as much as I could of Bill Moyers’ series on PBS. He introduced me to Rumi, interviewed Ursula LeGuin, Margaret Atwood and many others. He did the series on Complimentary Healing, something that interested me hugely, as a nurse doing Therapeutic Touch and introducing some of these modalities at the hospital I worked at. Both these men opened me to new ways of looking at the Universe in all its glory. I am so grateful for the experience.