One interesting night for me, I was invited to speak at the Art Institute of Chicago years ago and the place was packed and they said I was the first theologian ever invited there. But things were so bad [laughs] they had invited a theologian. But afterwards, several prominent artists came up to me and each one said the same thing: "It is time, we have to bring in this other dimension."
Einstein says that we've been given two gifts: rationality and intuition. He said “The first should serve the second, because only in intuition, do we get our values. You don't get values from rationality. You get method, but not values.” He also said we live in a culture where we honor the first gift, rationality, and we ignore the second. Now to me, that nails it. When I designed the program for spirituality, I embedded in it the Art as Meditation. We do the seminar work, intellectual work, the reading and the writing, but we also do Art as Meditation in the afternoon, whether it's dance, chant, painting or sculpture. It's that balance, that dialectic between the two, that makes for alive people. We've had some wonderful successes over the years in my programs because people have really come alive in that dialectic. I really criticize our educational system because it's not about values. And this explains a lot that's going on in American culture and politics today. If you're not teaching values and getting people to think in terms of values, then what you're doing is you're accepting the status quo, whatever that is. And that's not the way to grow up, spiritually or intellectually. I've been fighting the educational system at least as hard as I've been fighting religion in my time.
Rahul: With the rise of computing and being in the era of AI, it does seem that this is exacerbated, right? We're in a world where data is crowding out wisdom or insight and this is actually viewed as progress by the dominant paradigm. I'm wondering if you can talk us through a little bit more deeply what we're losing by losing this inner lens, this inner connection?
Matthew: Well, you named it in one word -- wisdom. We're losing wisdom. We have knowledge factories, but very few wisdom schools. And it's showing. When you don't have wisdom, everything's about yourself. Everything's about your salary. Everything's about your small world. Whereas wisdom looks to the future, looks to future generations. What is life going to be like for our children's children's children at the rate we're going, in terms of climate change, destruction of forest and soil and oceans and rivers? And of course species are going extinct at never before levels. Last time it was this bad was 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs went out of business.
And yet we have a whole political party in America that's in official denial about climate change. I mean, and we tolerate it. In fact, they win elections. And it's amazing. What world are these people living in? Well, it's an anthropocentric world. It's a world that says, "I think, therefore I am. And I buy, therefore I am. And I make money, therefore I am. And I am powerful, therefore I am." I mean, the whole system is being laid bare.
Jung said that in the age of Aquarius, which we're now in, evil will no longer be under the table. It will be on top of the table for everyone to see. But will we have the will to act on it? And to me that means, well, politics. Will we have the sense of community and the sense of both our ancestors and of our descendants to care enough to change our ways of living? It includes changing our diets, the way we do agriculture and of course changing our economic system which is absurdly, absurdly crazy. Billionaires pay no taxes and giant corporations make billions paying no taxes because it's a game. They've got their lawyers, and they get the senators in and the judges in to create their own laws. I mean, it's a pitiful game.
So wisdom is different from knowledge. It doesn't exclude knowledge, but wisdom is bigger. First of all, she's feminine. Over here [gestures to a statue behind him] is Kwan Yin, the feminine Buddha. She's about compassion, not about competition. The reptilian brain comes in here. You don't compromise with a crocodile. You win or you lose. That has been running things for centuries. It's patriarchy, too. Patriarchy and the reptilian brain are very aligned, maybe something to do with testosterone.
The divine feminine is so important to balance things, which is one reason I love Julian of Norwich. She was a feminist 700 years ago. Before anyone had the words, she was deconstructing patriarchal religion. She was substituting God as mother, Christ as mother, Spirit as mother for what she was given in terms of patriarchy in her day. At one point she says, "The church teaches me that God is angry, but I see no wrath in God. I see no wrath." [Laughs] Well, that's a typical mystic. They listen to their experience and they want to share it. That's why I love Julian. She's so appropriate for our time, in addition to the fact that she lived through a pandemic herself.
What I tried to do for 45 years in terms of pedagogy was to develop a school that was a wisdom school, not a knowledge factory. That's why I brought in Art as Meditation. Hildegard of Bingen, the great 12th century Renaissance woman, says that there is wisdom in all creative works. So when we get into the right side of our brains -- that hemisphere that is about intuition and creativity -- that balances the rational. Then you get a healthy dynamic going on there.
And I took my pedagogy to an inner city high school in Oakland, because 64% of black boys in America are dropping out of high school. What I learned is they're dropping out because they're bored. They're not dropping out because they're dumb. They're dropping out because school is dumb, because it does not honor the creative and the intuitive brain. So I had this pilot program for two years. We had the kids making movies, but we also developed a value system. In public schools I couldn't talk about religion but I wrote of something called the 10 C's: cosmology, ecology, chaos, creativity, community, critical thinking, and character building, et cetera. We said, "You can make a movie about whatever you want, but it has to include a couple of those C's." That way they're learning something. Well, I tell you, after two years, a hundred percent said they wanted to stay in school. Why? Because they discovered the joy of learning, the joy of learning! You don't get that in most education because it's about knowledge.
Rabbi Heschel puts it in a wonderful way. He says the human race will not be saved by more information, but by more appreciation. This is what we were talking about earlier -- gratitude. Information -- what computers do for us -- is useful. It's facts. Good, but not good enough. To be human, you need appreciation, you need this mystical dimension: appreciation, savoring, loving, gratitude. And we have to make room for that in our schools and in all our training.
I think whether you're in law school... I mean, I'm embarrassed by a lot of lawyers these days. I really am. I'm embarrassed by pedophile priests too, and the bishops who cover it up. But I mean, all of our professions are just, I think, in collapse today. And they're in collapse basically because there's no effort to teach wisdom. Whereas good law, of course, is about wisdom. It's about the common good and about creating a society, a community where people can get along and serve the greater good, not about just seizing your piece of the pie and lying. I mean, there's so much untruth in what we call the justice system and racism, which is part of that, that it's appalling.
Rahul: Sure. You've mentioned Julian several times and of course your book has just come out about Julian of Norwich. There's a chapter in it called, “Why Julian? Why now?” I'm wondering if you could give us the headline of “Why Julian? Why now?”
Matthew: Well, because she did live. She was seven years old when the Bubonic plague hit in England for the first time. Then it kept coming back in waves her entire lifetime. She lived into her eighties. She had to deal with the plague, like the pandemic like we're dealing with. She also became Anchoress after having a great vision at the age of 30. Mirabai Starr, who translated her book in a wonderful way, is teaching the course with me beginning soon on the Shift Network. Mirabai Starr believes that Julian lost her husband and child in the plague.
Julian's treatment of grief is very profound and very real and her visions begin with grief and with the architect of Christ on the cross, but she applies it to all of humanity, to all of us. We undergo these grieving and letting-go experiences that are profound. Yet she comes out of it. Her basic theology is extremely joy-oriented and goodness-oriented. Aquinas talked about original goodness and she comes from that tradition. Julian says, “The first good thing is a goodness of nature. God is the same thing as nature. The goodness in nature is God. God feels great delight to be our mother.”
Her emphasis is on going beyond patriarchy to reinterpret the entire biblical message in terms of the divine feminine. Not that she's throwing out the father, but she wants to bring the balance there. I think we need that desperately today as a species. I don't think we're going to survive without the feminine reasserting itself and the masculine cleaning itself up. I think that we men have been deceived with pseudo versions of masculinity, and we need to get more real. After all, the people we admire -- Gandhi or a Mandela or Martin Luther King -- these people have dealt with their inner selves. They've dealt with fear, disappointment and enemies; not by lashing back like the reptilian brain does, but by processing and trying to turn anger into love.
So, Julian is a champion for bringing alive the divine feminine. She was ignored for 300 years. Her book wasn't published for 300 hundred years, a long time to wait for your first book review. Even then, she was ignored after the book came out. But I think today we're ready for it because we have a strong women’s movement, for one thing. And because when you're talking about the divine mother, you're talking about mother earth. I think one reason we're busy raping mother earth or in denial that we're raping mother earth is because the patriarchal mindset is out of touch with the mother inside all of us. And that's the thing Julian goes into great depth about: what are the qualities of a mother? This is not a Hallmark Mother's Day card. She’s talking about strength and compassion. She's talking about love, she's talking about justice and she's talking about wisdom.
There's this one sentence from the Book of Wisdom that I begin the book with because I think it summarizes everything Julian says. When the Book of Wisdom says, “Wisdom is the mother of all good things,” that's the divine feminine, and that's where I hear emphasis on motherhood and on goodness. She says in a time of pandemic, we have to return to the goodness of nature, not flee from nature, but return to the goodness. She's so timely for this moment in history, I think. We're ready for her.
Aryae: Wow. So much going on here in this conversation. I'm just coming in to remind all of you who are viewing and listening that you can submit questions to Matthew Fox. Thanks to all of you who've already done so. So if you've got a question or a comment for Matthew Fox, you can just submit it via the live stream page. Let’s go on for a few more minutes and then we'll get to your questions.
Rahul: Thanks, Aryae. So, Matthew, there's a line from the late, great John Lewis in your book where he said, “Study and learn lessons of history, truth does not change.” And yet, we seem to live in a world of constant change. So can you explain the truth that John Lewis was speaking of and that you're referring to and that Julian is speaking to?
Matthew: That's a good question. Yes. I was struck by that in John Lewis' farewell letter written to the young. It made me think, too, just like you're asking. But I think what he means is wisdom. Wisdom doesn't get old, it doesn’t go wrong with age. Maybe it even gets better, like wine or cheese. The facts change, sure. And it’s important to keep up with those changes and those facts. But the deep questions about why we are here, what does it mean to serve, how do we deal with evil, both within and around us? Evil is a reality. How do we develop habits -- Kratos called them virtues -- to deal with evil within ourselves, but also politically, within the community. What is character? How do you become a full human being? Because the headlines are so often about failed human beings that you can get kind of dour hearing the news.
Obviously, it can be quite depressing; the hypocrisy and the lies and so much of that. But this is why I think Julian would count on us also to go deeper. And of course, we meditate not just on the failures or failed people that usually make the headlines, but on the great people we honor. In the Catholic church, they're called saints and often in other cultures, too. As I was alluding to a few minutes ago, we honor King, Gandhi, Mandela and Dorothy Day. There are just so many wonderful people who have lived lives of generosity. And of course, we all fail at times, but that's not the end of the story.
So, I think John Lewis was talking about wisdom. What is really deep wisdom doesn't get old. I think you can see that when you study the teachings of the Buddha or Lao-Tzu or Jesus or Isaiah or Muhammad. The indigenous traditions, I think, are filled with invitations -- certainly their ceremonies are -- invitations to grow and to let go. Even a sweat lodge is a marvelous, marvelous practice to purify one's intentions. I once brought a fellow into a sweat lodge experience and he'd never had anything like that. He's a very professional writer. He's become very famous since, actually. But he almost collapsed and died in the sweat lodge. And he was a person of great achievement even then, but his wife told me years later, I ran into her and she said, “That sweat lodge changed my husband forever. It made him a much better person.”
There are many practices. This is one of the great signs of hope of our time that all our spiritual traditions have marvelous practices for taming the reptilian brain, for cleansing soul and body and starting over, for learning generosity versus hoarding and feeding just the ego. This is what's so wonderful about our time that you don't have to convert one another. We have to just look deeply into all of our traditions, bring them all to the table and say at this critical time, what do you offer as a Buddhist? What do you offer as a Hindu? What do you offer as an atheist? What do you offer as a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim, et cetera? indigenous people: bring it to the table. We're desperate, all hands on deck! I think that's the level that John Lewis was talking, that deep wisdom we have to bring to the table. Quit hiding in the closet as mystics. Quit hiding in the closet if you've experienced angels.
I wrote a book on angels with Rupert Sheldrake, a British scientist, several years ago. And one thing I learned is how many people experienced angels, but don't have anyone to talk to about it. They're afraid they'll be called crazy. I often -- if I'm talking to a large group -- will say “Shut your eyes. How many of you have experienced angels?” Eighty percent of the hands go up. And then I say, “Keep your eyes shut. How many of you have friends who have experienced angels who aren't crazy?” Seventy-five percent of the hands go up. But whoever talks about having help from the Spirit world, help from angels? We're at a place as a species where we need all the help we can get. And if the ancestors and spirits want to show up and give us help, we should be begging for it.
Rahul: I really get the sense from your journey and your body of work that it's this case of going so deep into your own tradition that you found the place where it connects across traditions and that you're calling forth all of these traditions to speak in the same life-giving water that flows beneath all of them. And a big part of that thrust, I feel like, has been your work in reinventing worship with things like Cosmic Mass and raves. And so, in my last question before I turn it over to Aryae to field audience questions, I'm wondering if you can share a little bit more about the reinvention of worship, both through Cosmic Mass and through these new rituals that you're creating that bring us together into our human story.
Matthew: Well, thank you for the question. Yes. In 2018, we did a Cosmic Mass at the Seventh Parliament of World Religions in Toronto, and it was a very powerful experience for people. There were all traditions represented. There were some Buddhist monks in their robes and many other traditions. One woman told me afterwards that it was the most profound religious experience of her life. She was in her mid-forties. But ritual is very important. Malidoma Some, the African teacher, says there is no community without ritual. Yet I feel a lot of our ritual today is boring, it's modern and it's text-oriented. The Modern Age began with the invention of the printing press. The Post-Modern Age, I think, with electronic media and all that. But so many churches are stuck in the Modern Age when we’re now living in a Post-Modern Age. And so bringing in VJ’s and DJ’s and rap and even B-Boys to lead us, is integral to the spiritual experience.
It’s not that different from the 12th-century revolution of stained glass in Europe. The invention of stained glass was absolutely stunning. It was a technology and a craft, but above all it was a reinvention of architecture. The Gothic architecture allowed so much more glass, for so much more sunlight and so much more color. And these geniuses who came up with stained glass at that time were amazing in being able to create such beautiful experiences, because that's what they were, those cathedrals. The sun keeps moving and that means that the colored glass keeps taking different shape and form and so forth.
Today, we have this new language that we call electronic or whatever it is, so why not employ it in worship? So I've been doing this since I left -- since I was booted from -- the Dominican order. I became an Episcopal priest in order to stay in the tradition of Christianity, but also to work with young people to create what we call the Cosmic Mass, which as you say, brings rave into the liturgy and the results have been amazing.
We've done over a hundred of them now, mostly in North America, but I think it's time because ritual or ceremony is the shortcut and we need all the shortcuts we can get as a species -- a shortcut to tell the great wisdom stories, including the new creation story from science. And so we pick a theme. For example, we've had -- I'm looking now at a picture of a tree -- we had once a theme of trees. We built the mass around that and we created a tree from a scaffold. And at that time, Luna [Julian Butterfly Hill] was in her tree in the redwoods, saving the redwood forest up here in northern California. We got her on the phone and piped her into the top of this make-believe tree talking about saving the forest.
And so creativity should be at the heart of all ritual; not a frozen form, but a flexible form. Dance is at the heart of our prayer. We do circle dancing. We dance to DJ music and live music. And we also do spiral dancing. Getting the body involved is so important. You don't have a Hindu body or an atheist body or a Buddhist body. You have a body. We're all human there, so we can all dance together and look each other in the eyes. We use a video jockey (VJ) to tell the theme that we're honoring in images. We've done a Mass of the African diaspora, for example, several times where we tell the story of the African-Americans in America. It began with a ria positiva dance honoring the stories of the great African-American heroes and sheroes that we know about. And then we go into the via negativa, into the grief, into the middle passage, into slavery. And we're led through the blues, if you will, of the black experience.
When I say we, I'm talking white people, black people, indigenous people and Latinos. After we did that Mass the first time, a black leader came up to me in Oakland. He said, “This is the first time in my life that I felt white people were listening, were hearing our story.”
So the power of ritual to heal and to take us to a new place is totally underestimated in our culture, but it's very important. Because there is no community without rituals. So, yeah, that's been a big effort of mine for about 25 years since I became Episcopalian. I told Bishop Swing that I want to become an Episcopalian priest for one reason only: to work with young people to reinvent forms of worship. And he said, “Go for it. We're not doing anything for them.” He was honest. So, yeah, it's been quite an exciting ride.
Rahul: Beautiful. Thank you so much. We've got a lot of questions coming in from the audience, so I'm going to turn it over to Aryae to bring in some of those questions.
Matthew: Well, thank you, Rahul. I appreciated your questions and the discussion.
Aryae: It's been wonderful. I look forward to listening to it more to really hear everything you were saying. And thanks to all of you who did submit questions. We can't get to all of them, but we'll get to some. So Matthew, here's a question from Cynthia. She says, “How do we respond to injustice from a place of wanting? Isn't identifying something as unjust, a judgment that comes from a dualistic mindset?
Matthew: No, all judgment does not come from a dualistic mindset. It can come from a mindset of love and wanting. But I think it's very superficial to throw out our capacity for judgment. In fact, it's not only superficial, it's destructive. Jesus talked a lot about love, but he also took on the powers that be and strongly, calling them vipers and snakes and hypocrites. So, the third chakra -- which is our chakra where we ground ourselves, center ourselves -- also contains the element of moral outrage. There's a fire there and moral outrage should move us to good action, not to destruction. And that's what nonviolence is about; about taking that outrage, but steering it into an effective strategy. And this again is what Gandhi and King and so many other people have done in the last century to show us the way; that there is a difference between right and wrong. Right and wrong is not the whole picture. That's true. I love Rumi’s teaching: “Out beyond right and wrong, there is a field and I will meet you there.” So right and wrong morality is not the whole picture.
Spirituality and wisdom embraces the whole. But in the process of living, in the process of serving, in the process of work and citizenship, we have to make judgments all the time. As long as you don't think your judgments are final or that your judgment is the only judgment. We have to work together. We have to judge together, if you will. We have to debate and all that. So, it's not the same realm. The realm of the sacred and the realm of wisdom is the big realm. And that's where the oneness happens, but it happens in the heart. It's not something out there; it happens in the heart.
The psyche and the cosmos coming together is what ritual should do for us. But, at the same time, you do not throw out your conscience. Conscience is a judgment. Conscience is a decision to stand up with your conscience and you take the flack for that. You don't go around saying, everything's equal in terms of right and wrong, or beauty and ugliness or just and unjust or racism or no racism. These are realities and part of the truth, which is a divine name and all the religions that I know of around the world, in the name of truth, you do have to stand up. But we are not God so our versions of truth may not be right so we always have to be self-critical. We have to judge ourselves. But in the big order of things, well, Julian of Norwich says, “All things will be well. All manner of things will be well.” That might even apply if humans destroy ourselves and we go extinct, which is very possible. We are on that path now. If we destroy ourselves and go extinct, nevertheless, Earth will continue on. So that part will still be well.
Aryae: How does that work if I encounter another person and they are supporting a politician or a viewpoint that I consider wrong and destructive and they consider my viewpoint wrong and destructive, then how do I apply right and wrong and oneness in that situation?
Matthew: Well, the oneness, of course, is to embrace the other as a person and to listen deeply, but also to express your own opinion. Sometimes there is no resolution, but on the other hand, facts need to be honored. For example, I don't think [laughs] we can argue about climate change. I think it's a scientific fact. We are feeling it up here in Northern California with these wild fires, unmatched, and down in the South they have got these hurricanes and floods, unmatched. Effects have causes and time is running out; that is certainly clear.
And greater minds than mine, scientists working with United Nations, say we have nine years left to change our ways as a species. This is what we should be arguing about, how to do it most effectively. For example, one fellow I know from India says, “If all of us would become vegans, we could stop climate change in 10 years and turn it back. If you plant trees on all that land now used for livestock, we could reverse climate change in 10 years.” He has done his homework on this. He is a bright engineer. So that's a very interesting piece of news.
Now, does that mean everyone has to become literally vegan? To me, there's a spectrum. I think some people, especially young people, may well choose that as a lifestyle. But there's also vegetarianism, which is a little different from vegan. Then there's everybody cutting back on meat, people who do eat meat and fish and so forth. There are levels there. And you can make up the difference through other means, like solar energy and wind. We need to get into debates like this, but to debate whether there is climate change, I think is pretty crazy. I don't know anyone who is not experiencing it. We have to admit that there is a thing called denial. Denial is a choice. It's a judgment. I am going to deny it, and I am going to live in a world where there is no climate change. Well, good luck, find that world. Good luck to you, sir.
But my point is, we mouth these words, “We love our children, we love our grandchildren.” No, you don't. If you are not working with climate change, you don't, because your kids, your grandkids, great-grandkids are going to be living in a very despoiled world if we don't change our ways in the next nine years. I think this is a challenge to our species and it should make us grow up and care about others, even those who aren't even here yet. Otherwise, those words I love, I love, I love; they are just words. Jesus was very blunt about that too. Not all say, “Lord, Lord, enter the kingdom.” The kingdom is already here. He is not talking about life after death. He's talking about the Holy creation where we all should be rejoicing and caring for one another.
Aryae: Thank you. Yes, it's about the distinction between loving the other person and being clear about the truth and about what love means on a larger scale.
Matthew: Yeah, it matters. One thing Meister Eckhart says is, “God is the denial of denial.” I just love that teaching. God is a denial of denial. So where there's denial reigning, God is nowhere present because the truth is nowhere present, just like you said.
Aryae: Beautiful. OK, here's a question from Barbara. I had a spiritual awakening many years ago. Unfortunately, it was labeled by a doctor that it was a mental breakdown, so not true. How can I explore this
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