Speaker 1: Have tried to get humans to purify our presence on
Speaker 1: the planet and to be more grateful, more reverent, and
Speaker 1: therefore more struck by awe, more vulnerable to beauty. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction.
Speaker 1: They feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our
Speaker 1: guest on this episode is Matthew Fox, an American priest
Speaker 1: and theologian. Formerly a member of the Dominican Order within
Speaker 1: the Roman Catholic Church. He became a member of the
Speaker 1: Episcopal Church following his expulsion from the Order. In Fox
Speaker 1: was an early and influential exponent of the movement that
Speaker 1: came to be known as Creation Spirituality. The movement draws
Speaker 1: inspiration from Christian mystics as well as the wisdom traditions
Speaker 1: of Christian scriptures. Creation Spirituality is also strongly aligned with
Speaker 1: ecological and environmental movements of the late twentieth century and
Speaker 1: embraces numerous spiritual traditions around the world. Fox has written
Speaker 1: thirty books that have sold millions of copies. His latest
Speaker 1: book is called A Way to God, Thomas Burton's Creation
Speaker 1: Spirituality Journey. Here's the interview. Hi, Matthew, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you, very good to be with you. I'm happy
Speaker 1: to have you on. Your latest book is called A
Speaker 1: Way to God, and it is a book about the
Speaker 1: spirituality of Thomas Murton and how that ties with your
Speaker 1: various thoughts on spirituality over the years. I'm a long
Speaker 1: time Thomas Murton fan. Uh I was lucky that I
Speaker 1: had a high school teacher who introduced me to Thomas Murton.
Speaker 1: And uh, I've just always I was lucky, indeed, and
Speaker 1: it was a great man. Unfortunately he's not with us anymore.
Speaker 1: Both Thomas Murton and the gentleman who introduced me to him.
Speaker 1: So we'll get into all that in a minute. And
Speaker 1: I'm really I'm really excited to explore your views on
Speaker 1: spirituality through the lens of Thomas Murton. But let's start,
Speaker 1: like we always do, with the parable. And in the parable,
Speaker 1: there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kind, this and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear and the grants. That stops
Speaker 1: and he thinks about it for a second, and he
Speaker 1: looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well, it's it's certainly a
Speaker 1: like many parables. It's uh, it's useful and rich and
Speaker 1: has many, I think many angles to it. But to me,
Speaker 1: it's about as Eric from says, we that necrophilia grows
Speaker 1: when biophilia is stunted, so we have to feed biophilia
Speaker 1: on a daily basis, the love of life, it needs nurturing,
Speaker 1: it needs feeding, and otherwise necrophia, the other love of
Speaker 1: death will will creep in and take over. And you
Speaker 1: can apply this to to so many possibilities in our life.
Speaker 1: For example, fear. If you're going to feed fear, then
Speaker 1: a fear is going to be more important to us
Speaker 1: than compassion. Thomas Akrins in thirteenth century said that fear
Speaker 1: is such a powerful emotion and humans that when it
Speaker 1: takes over, it drives compassion out. So I think you
Speaker 1: could actually go through all the chakras, and my my
Speaker 1: book on evil that just came out in a new
Speaker 1: new edition with the new preface and with a forward
Speaker 1: by Depark Chapra. I take the seven chakras of the
Speaker 1: East and compared to the seven capital sins of the West,
Speaker 1: because if we feed our chakras well, if you will,
Speaker 1: then we have a balanced and a healthy and energetic life,
Speaker 1: one where where love is at the heart of each
Speaker 1: of the chakras. You might say, but if if we're
Speaker 1: off center, then we fall into wealth a year with
Speaker 1: the fourth the chakra, the heart chakra, or envy. With
Speaker 1: the seventh chakra or um gluttony, that is to say,
Speaker 1: gagging ourselves by taking in all the time instead of
Speaker 1: a birthing with our our fifth chakra and so forth.
Speaker 1: So you know, I see this story this parable as
Speaker 1: um as being powerful and and with multiple interpretations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really That's one of the things I love about
Speaker 1: it and why we've been able to, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: have a show that we keep talking about it because
Speaker 1: I think it opens it up itself up to a
Speaker 1: lot of different interpretations. One of the things that uh
Speaker 1: is a theme that goes through the book. And then
Speaker 1: I know that you have a lot of views on
Speaker 1: I though it's something that Thomas Merton wrestled with and
Speaker 1: I think about it a lot, and and so I
Speaker 1: want to I want to dig a little bit deeper
Speaker 1: into it. But it's really balancing um contemplation, So the
Speaker 1: going off by ourselves in silence and focus on what's
Speaker 1: happening internally with us and and you know, from a
Speaker 1: spiritual perspective, and then action outwards um action into the
Speaker 1: world good works various different things. And so like I
Speaker 1: said in the book, you know, Thomas Merton is kind
Speaker 1: of wrestling with it, you know, throughout his life, and
Speaker 1: I know you certainly have a have a perspective on it.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about that. How do
Speaker 1: we balance those two things? Well, it's it's a great question,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of people are wrestling with
Speaker 1: this today, especially a lot of young people I meet,
Speaker 1: because they're interested in activism on the one hand, but
Speaker 1: they know that to do it well, you have to
Speaker 1: do that inner work too. You have to find a
Speaker 1: space where you can be emptied as well. Otherwise there's
Speaker 1: a great danger of simply through action projecting or I
Speaker 1: was seeing us onto others, so that emptying is is
Speaker 1: always necessary. Now. Thomas Merton, of course, was being a
Speaker 1: Trappist monk, which is a very strict order where for example,
Speaker 1: they get up to the night in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night to sing the psalms and pray, and where
Speaker 1: in fact they don't talk a whole lot. They they
Speaker 1: take vows of silence. The whole structure of the lifestyle
Speaker 1: is to develop contemplation. But Merton felt this need to
Speaker 1: to speak out, especially the last ten years of his life. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it became much more of a profit. It was
Speaker 1: speaking to issues like the Vietnam War. He was the
Speaker 1: first just figure to come out against Vietnam War, and
Speaker 1: he spoke to issues like technology and how it was
Speaker 1: a double edged sword, and ecology. He responded to Rachel
Speaker 1: Carson's book Silent Spring almost immediately, praising her and telling
Speaker 1: her that because of her book, they were not going
Speaker 1: to use DDT any longer on the monastery farm and
Speaker 1: so forth. So, as you say, he was wrestling with
Speaker 1: it continuously, and sometimes you felt a little guilty because
Speaker 1: again most of the monks were kind of staying closer
Speaker 1: to the monastery routine. He went out and became a
Speaker 1: hermit on the property of the monastery, but still lived
Speaker 1: in his own hut as a hermit, and that a
Speaker 1: lot of him, I think, to go deeper into the
Speaker 1: solitude and the silence that he required. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, um, he also wrote a lot, so his
Speaker 1: voice became that much louder, you might say. I think
Speaker 1: that that it really comes to realizing that our giving
Speaker 1: birth are using our voice, our fifth shock, or our throat,
Speaker 1: are speaking out being prophetic. After all, the word profit
Speaker 1: means comes from the Greek prophetos. To speak out being
Speaker 1: prophetic is everybody's business. Uh, No one can just uh
Speaker 1: turn in and try to find that ultimate peace and
Speaker 1: sit there forever, especially today when ecosystem is collapsing and
Speaker 1: when there's so many issues in the world that need attention,
Speaker 1: were firmly lodged. You know the show I would say
Speaker 1: in you know a little bit in it, it's certainly
Speaker 1: categorized as self help or or personal development. And I
Speaker 1: have that, you know, similar to what you're saying that
Speaker 1: wrestling with At what point is you know, am I
Speaker 1: staring at myself too intently? Right? At what point is
Speaker 1: what I'm doing just so that I feel better? Um?
Speaker 1: And at what point is it serving a greater good? Well?
Speaker 1: Those are really important questions to ask. And uh we
Speaker 1: are attempted, especially in our culture, uh to be antipocentric,
Speaker 1: human centered, and as pro Francis names are narcissistic as
Speaker 1: a species. Uh, So we do have to ask not
Speaker 1: only how are we feeling, but how are other beings
Speaker 1: feeling about our presence on the planet. And I think
Speaker 1: this helps to wake us up, to to get us
Speaker 1: into modes that are activists in the in the best
Speaker 1: sense of the word, because if we work out of love,
Speaker 1: then we're okay. Like my stracker the great fourteenth century
Speaker 1: mystic who, by the way, it was a big influence
Speaker 1: on Murton. He already converted. Merton in nineteen fifty eight says,
Speaker 1: if you've learned to let go and let be, you're
Speaker 1: always in the right place at the right time, whether
Speaker 1: you're in a monastic cell alone, or whether you're in
Speaker 1: a marketplace or in the streets. So I think we
Speaker 1: have to think in terms, especially today, kind of a
Speaker 1: portable solitude that we carry with us so that we
Speaker 1: can find space even in the midst of of busy work.
Speaker 1: And I think that's it's such challenge, but we're capable
Speaker 1: of it because over the centuries people like maister Eckhart
Speaker 1: and Thomas Murton have shown this is truly possible. Another
Speaker 1: thing that will runs through the book and honestly runs
Speaker 1: through all of your work. You've defined sort of four
Speaker 1: paths to God or four ways towards God, and maybe
Speaker 1: we can get into some of those, maybe we can
Speaker 1: cover them all in detail, but one of them is
Speaker 1: is related to creativity. Creativity is a real path towards
Speaker 1: God or towards enlightenment, or call it what you want.
Speaker 1: And that's certainly for me been one of the big
Speaker 1: ways for me that a spiritual life has moved from
Speaker 1: a thought something that I think about and I intellectually understand.
Speaker 1: I feel it more when I'm being creative, and it's
Speaker 1: something that really runs through all of your work and
Speaker 1: and certainly through this book as well. Can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about that path. I wrote a book
Speaker 1: on creativity called Creativity where the divine and the human
Speaker 1: meat and so creativity definitely is is a mystical experience
Speaker 1: for people. Um. Often when you're in a creative state,
Speaker 1: you're not looking at your watch, you're not counting the time,
Speaker 1: You're lost your your inter an alternative place, in an
Speaker 1: alternative consciousness. Um. The image I have of being in
Speaker 1: a creative state is being on a raft going down
Speaker 1: a rushing river without an oar uh, you're going along
Speaker 1: for the ride. Again. My Strack had had a great
Speaker 1: sermon on that. He took a line from the Psalms
Speaker 1: that talks about the Holy Spirit as a rushing river.
Speaker 1: So this is the Holy Spirit at work. And Thomas
Speaker 1: Marton is explicit about that. He says that theology of
Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit is about our creativity. A great thirteenth
Speaker 1: century genius and Mr Thomas Aquinas says, the same spirit
Speaker 1: that hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation
Speaker 1: hovers over the mind of the artist at work. And
Speaker 1: I love that because it connects our creativity to the
Speaker 1: creativity of the universe. And of course, now with postmodern physics,
Speaker 1: we know that the whole universe has been created from
Speaker 1: the get go, from the very uh millisecond when the
Speaker 1: fireball began thirteen point eight billion years ago. Now this
Speaker 1: is news. Under Newton's universe, uh universe has finished and
Speaker 1: and done essentially and we have to kind of fit in.
Speaker 1: But not so. Under Einsteinian and post Einsteinian physics, we're
Speaker 1: part of this ongoing birthing process. For example, a star
Speaker 1: has been born every fifteen seconds. So the sky is
Speaker 1: full of creativity. And so we have not only permission,
Speaker 1: but the responsibility to participate in the in the vast
Speaker 1: powers of creativity that the universe and that spirit that
Speaker 1: invite us to And when you look at our problems today,
Speaker 1: especially around climate change and the destruction of so many
Speaker 1: species and so forth, clearly the only thing we have
Speaker 1: going for us as a species is our creativity. How
Speaker 1: can we reinvent our way of living on the Earth
Speaker 1: so that we can pass on a healthy planet to
Speaker 1: future generations. I think, for example, in India now they've
Speaker 1: invented a car that runs down air. But that seems
Speaker 1: like a pretty creative thing to do, you know, and
Speaker 1: we we just begun, I think, to to unleash our
Speaker 1: creativity visa v the the peril uh that we face
Speaker 1: regarding ecological challenges of our time. I agree, And I
Speaker 1: think that your point about the universe sort of being
Speaker 1: in an ever present state of creation is something that
Speaker 1: I've definitely noticed that that that feels right. And a
Speaker 1: lot of my background has been more Buddhist focused and
Speaker 1: and Buddhism read the wrong way is sort of a
Speaker 1: you know, be content with the way things are. And
Speaker 1: that's another of those paradoxes that I feel like I'm balancing,
Speaker 1: and we balance on the show, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: it seems that the nature of the universe is to
Speaker 1: move forward and to create, And how do you balance
Speaker 1: that desire that's striving for things to be different and
Speaker 1: wanting to create and move forward, as well as being
Speaker 1: present in the current moment and happy and accepting of
Speaker 1: the way things are. I find that to be another
Speaker 1: of those paradoxes or balancing challenge just so to speak, well,
Speaker 1: I agree, and again that's a very important question, and
Speaker 1: I think it's a both and thing. You see. So,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, we want to be fully present,
Speaker 1: and that's certainly a Buddhist notion. It's also Jesus notion
Speaker 1: when he says the Kingdom and Queen of God is
Speaker 1: among you, that that's an is thing. It's not that
Speaker 1: it will be or that it has been, but it is.
Speaker 1: And so being fully present to the now is is
Speaker 1: a part of any mystical teaching worthy of the of
Speaker 1: the name, whether it comes from the East or the west.
Speaker 1: But as you say, to be fully present doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you're fully content with the way things are. After all,
Speaker 1: suffering and the awareness of suffering is a deep part
Speaker 1: of the Buddhist teaching as well as it is of
Speaker 1: the christ story. Certainly, the crucifixion is an archetype of
Speaker 1: how a suffering comes to all of us, even the
Speaker 1: innocent and the just. So um so there's a call
Speaker 1: both to be present in the business of the moment,
Speaker 1: but also to be a sensitive to the suffering of
Speaker 1: other beings. And this, of course that gets you off
Speaker 1: the cushion, if you will. That gets you into the world,
Speaker 1: and it gets you into your imagination, your moral imagination,
Speaker 1: as you say, to be creative and to find ways
Speaker 1: to heal, to be compassionate in our actions, not just
Speaker 1: in our thoughts. This might be a good place to
Speaker 1: go into your work on the four paths? Is it
Speaker 1: safe to say that the paths towards God? Is that
Speaker 1: how you refer to them? Well, I call it the
Speaker 1: four paths of creation spirituality. To me, it's it's a
Speaker 1: way to name what a spiritual journey is in his
Speaker 1: in his deepest sense. And I find these paths very archetypal.
Speaker 1: They apply to many many things. Well however you want
Speaker 1: to apply them. But yeah, let's talk about that. So
Speaker 1: the first path is the via positive and via is
Speaker 1: a Latin word for path or ways. So um via
Speaker 1: positive is about the experience of joy and awe and
Speaker 1: wonder and delight. It's the opening up of our hearts
Speaker 1: really and our souls. The first steparty of a of
Speaker 1: a mystical journey. And it's like Rabbi Heschel says, oh
Speaker 1: is the beginning of wisdom uh and he talks about
Speaker 1: radical amazement that too. Mary Oliver the North American Poe
Speaker 1: and Mystics, She talks about astonishment, she says, and she says,
Speaker 1: I AM willing to be dazzled, So that whole concept
Speaker 1: that we can be dazzled, we can be astonished, we
Speaker 1: can be struck by awe. Um, that's really the opening. Um,
Speaker 1: I think of our hearts in the mystical journey. What
Speaker 1: are some ways that people become more open to that?
Speaker 1: Because we we tend to live in a you know,
Speaker 1: been there, done that kind of culture, right, you know,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a common phrase where people like whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, So how do how do we open ourselves more?
Speaker 1: You know, how does someone go about opening themselves more
Speaker 1: to the mystery and the awe and the joy of
Speaker 1: this world? Well, actually, that's where the next path, that
Speaker 1: via negativa comes in, because the emptying that happens there
Speaker 1: and the silence, letting go of images and so forth,
Speaker 1: that actually um ups the anti It purifies the senses
Speaker 1: so that you can be more present. Um. For example,
Speaker 1: but ghost to us as a Lakota teacher who was
Speaker 1: worked with me a lot, and we were good friends,
Speaker 1: and he used to say, Um, you want to know
Speaker 1: how sacred water is, go without it for three days.
Speaker 1: There you go, you go without water for three days,
Speaker 1: then your first sip of water, you rediscover you no
Speaker 1: longer take for granted. And and that's important. I think
Speaker 1: the mystic learns not to take for granted, the same
Speaker 1: as true of course of of meditation and where you
Speaker 1: focus on the breath. You know, it's easy to take
Speaker 1: breath for granted, isn't it, because we're so busy breathing.
Speaker 1: But as I like to tell people, if you've been
Speaker 1: present for the first breath of a newborn baby or
Speaker 1: the last breath of someone leaving, uh, you know how
Speaker 1: sacred breath is. But why is it that all the
Speaker 1: breasts in between we can easily take for granted. So
Speaker 1: that is where slowing down and being great for breath
Speaker 1: and gratitude is part of the via positiva, you see. Um,
Speaker 1: And so it's reverence to you learn reverence for water
Speaker 1: if you go with it for three days or here
Speaker 1: I'm living in California, I think we're beginning to learn
Speaker 1: reverence for water because we've been in a drought for years.
Speaker 1: So um, these are some of the tactics that humans
Speaker 1: from many traditions. Consider, for example, we're recording this at
Speaker 1: the time of Ramadan in the in the Muslim tradition. Well, Ramadan,
Speaker 1: of course is about fasting all day than than eating
Speaker 1: in the evening. But that too is a is a
Speaker 1: practice to teach us not to take food for granted,
Speaker 1: and not to take the big basics of life for granted,
Speaker 1: and to be in a in a position where you're
Speaker 1: able to let go and to let be and not
Speaker 1: just be addicted to our habits of meals three times
Speaker 1: a day and so forth. So you might say, really,
Speaker 1: when you look at it, all the traditions of the
Speaker 1: world have tried to get humans to um, to purify
Speaker 1: our our presence on the planet, and to be more grateful,
Speaker 1: more reverent, and therefore more more struck by awe, more
Speaker 1: vulnerable to beauty. And I think the other one that
Speaker 1: that Merton writes about, and a queenness writes about, and
Speaker 1: lots of people do his nature absolutely. In fact, there's
Speaker 1: a passage here and in Merton I would love to
Speaker 1: share under the via positive. He's such a marvelous writer,
Speaker 1: you say, such an artist, and you know it's difficult
Speaker 1: to write about the mystical experiences we have. William James
Speaker 1: the psychologists said ineff ability is one of the signs
Speaker 1: of mysticism. You know so, and and my Strector says,
Speaker 1: we stutter and stammer when we talk about God. But
Speaker 1: here's here's Martin. I think he he plays it so well.
Speaker 1: He says, um, I live in the woods out of necessity.
Speaker 1: I get out of bed in the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: because it is imperative that I hear the silence of
Speaker 1: the night alone, and with my face on the floor
Speaker 1: say psalms alone in the silence of the night. The
Speaker 1: silence of the forest is my bride, and the sweet,
Speaker 1: dark warmth of the whole world is my love. And
Speaker 1: out of the heart of that dark warmth comes a
Speaker 1: secret that has heard only in silence. But it is
Speaker 1: the root of all the secrets that are whispered by
Speaker 1: all the lovers in their beds all over the world.
Speaker 1: It is beautiful, and of course he's he's talking about
Speaker 1: his personal experience with nature, getting up in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night and so worth getting down on the ground,
Speaker 1: But also how it relates to every every other being's
Speaker 1: experience of nature and the intimacy of of love. Making
Speaker 1: and all the rest that he de antipocentualizes love making,
Speaker 1: so he puts it in the context of the love
Speaker 1: of the night because the night is his bride. So
Speaker 1: I just think it's a it's a beautiful naming of
Speaker 1: the video positiva. And as you say, nature uh is
Speaker 1: always blessing us. Uh, It's just that we're not always
Speaker 1: paying attention and we're not always grateful. So this is
Speaker 1: why we need practices to make us more aware and
Speaker 1: more present to what is. So we talked on the
Speaker 1: via positiva and we started into the via negativo, which
Speaker 1: is the emptying out. Um, let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that and then we'll move on to the
Speaker 1: next to sure, Yes, the via negativ is about letting
Speaker 1: go and letting be. It's about uh, silence, solitude, emptying out, canosis.
Speaker 1: Though it's also about suffering and grieving and those very
Speaker 1: separate things, but they both are about tasting the epiphetic divinity,
Speaker 1: the god of darkness. My stirker says, um got a
Speaker 1: super essential darkness who has no name and will never
Speaker 1: be given a name. So this is very Buddhist, very
Speaker 1: Buddhist path too, because as you know, many Buddhists do
Speaker 1: not want to go around uh employing the word God.
Speaker 1: In fact, Han used to say, my favorite theologian is
Speaker 1: one who never talks about God. But you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I heard a story since my book came out just
Speaker 1: a month ago, this book in Thomas Murton. Um. I
Speaker 1: heard a story from a very serious Buddhist practitioner. He's
Speaker 1: been to India and Tibet many times, so he's met
Speaker 1: the Dalai Lama. He said that not too long ago,
Speaker 1: the Dalla lam was asked do you believe in God?
Speaker 1: And the dollar Lamma said yes, And then the fellow
Speaker 1: pushed him and said, well, I mean do you really,
Speaker 1: I mean you're Buddhist and all this and all this,
Speaker 1: and then the daa Llamma said, I believe in the
Speaker 1: God of Thomas Murton. I thought that was amazing because
Speaker 1: you know, Merton and Doggie Lama did meet in that Uh.
Speaker 1: Merton was the first Christian who the Dollar Lamba ever met,
Speaker 1: and the Dagga Lama was thirty three at the time.
Speaker 1: Merton was making his final journey, as it turned out,
Speaker 1: going east, going to Asia, and they met in India
Speaker 1: and they hit it off. So well that both of
Speaker 1: them canceled their appartments for the next day and spent
Speaker 1: a second whole day together. So it was important to
Speaker 1: them both and uh that's part of the story of Merton.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so the via negativa is both about silence
Speaker 1: and letting go, but it's also about grieving and uh
Speaker 1: facing suffering, not running from it. The mystics talk about
Speaker 1: the dark knight of the soul. For example, I would
Speaker 1: say today we are in a dark knight of our
Speaker 1: species that, uh, the dark knight is an important place
Speaker 1: to be. You learn things in the dark knight you
Speaker 1: don't learn elsewhere, but you have to stick around. The
Speaker 1: temptation is too well. As as Haffis, the thirteenth century
Speaker 1: Sufi mystic, put it, most people want to pack their
Speaker 1: bags and high tail at out of town when they
Speaker 1: find that God is in such a a drunken mood
Speaker 1: that everything is side down and nothing's working. But he says,
Speaker 1: the warrior sticks around, and that's part of being a warrior,
Speaker 1: to face the dark night and to see what it
Speaker 1: has to teach us and to learn uh from what
Speaker 1: it has to teach us. So that's part of the
Speaker 1: via negativa. Also, okay, let's move on to the third. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: the third is what we talked about early, the via
Speaker 1: creative of the creative path. Nice director writes as he says,
Speaker 1: I once had a dream. Even though I'm a man,
Speaker 1: I jumped. I was pregnant, pregnant with nothingness, and out
Speaker 1: of this nothingness God was born. So the whole idea
Speaker 1: that the tasting of the dark and of the ashes
Speaker 1: and of grief that can happen in the via negativa,
Speaker 1: and even the experience of nothingness is in fact a
Speaker 1: a an occasion for gestation, for the birth of something new.
Speaker 1: That creativity, in his deepest sense, comes out of nothing.
Speaker 1: It's if it's really new, not just reshuffling what is,
Speaker 1: but it's really bringing something new into the world. So creativity,
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, this too is a path, is
Speaker 1: part of the journey of of the mystical life. And
Speaker 1: it's the bridge really between contemplation and action. It's the
Speaker 1: bridge the via creativa, because here is now where we
Speaker 1: we begin to make choices. In the via creativa. Every
Speaker 1: artist has to make choices. A painter has to decide
Speaker 1: um what kind of paints are gonna Use's gonna be
Speaker 1: acrylic or oil, what size the painting will be, of course,
Speaker 1: what colors to bring forward, and so forth. So the
Speaker 1: via creativa is really the beginning of our choice making.
Speaker 1: Via positive and via negative are more about undergoing. The
Speaker 1: creativa is about beginning to choose, beginning to give birth
Speaker 1: in certain ways. And then we come to the via transformativa,
Speaker 1: the transformative way, and um, that is the way of
Speaker 1: compassion and justice. That all creativity is not um, it's
Speaker 1: not positive after all, Uh, inventing gas ovens as was
Speaker 1: done in the Secondary War and the Holocaust, was an
Speaker 1: efficient way to kill one's enemies or scapegoats. But and
Speaker 1: it was creative, but it certainly wasn't a holy or
Speaker 1: even a moral path. So the same as nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: The same is true of that we can tear down
Speaker 1: a rainforest in a day today that has taken nature
Speaker 1: and God ten thousand years to give birth to. So
Speaker 1: clearly our creativity is a powerful thing, and it can
Speaker 1: be used for evil, for destruction or or or necrophilia,
Speaker 1: or can be used for biophilia and love of life,
Speaker 1: and we have to be aware of that. So the
Speaker 1: via transformativa, justice and compassion, they become the test if
Speaker 1: you will, or the parameters Uh for our our creativity,
Speaker 1: um and uh. You know, the Dalai Lama says we
Speaker 1: can do it with all religion, but we can't do
Speaker 1: away with compassion. Compassion is my religion. Well, that's true,
Speaker 1: and it's true not just the Dalai Lama, but Jesus
Speaker 1: Luke six says, be you compassionate, as you're creating in
Speaker 1: heaven is compassionate. And in the Jewish tradition from which
Speaker 1: he derives, of course, um, compassion is a secret name
Speaker 1: for God. And in Islam, um allow, the compassionate one
Speaker 1: is by far the most common phrase for for divinity
Speaker 1: in the Kuran. So Um, we're all capable of compassion,
Speaker 1: but we have to give it our attention. And the
Speaker 1: other three paths, the positive of the negative of the creative.
Speaker 1: These feed compassion. We have to be in love, that's
Speaker 1: to via positiva. We have to know something about letting go,
Speaker 1: that's a via negativa. And we have to put our
Speaker 1: creativity to work if compassion and justice making are going
Speaker 1: to bear fruit and be effective. That was really struck
Speaker 1: by those four and and I just think there's so
Speaker 1: much there in that in that path. I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to exploring a lot more of it. We talked about
Speaker 1: Merton being such a great writer, and there's a phrase
Speaker 1: that he used that you you quote in the book,
Speaker 1: and it just it sums up so much of how
Speaker 1: I feel about a lot of things today. But he
Speaker 1: discussed the glittering niagara of trivia, that our culture is, yes,
Speaker 1: that the media is Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And
Speaker 1: and you know, of course he wrote he died in
Speaker 1: ninety eight, so he wrote that in the sixties, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty fifty sixty years ago, and it's gotten worse. Hasn't
Speaker 1: had no idea what was coming exactly, And yet he
Speaker 1: was prophetic. Really he named it the glittering niagara of trivia.
Speaker 1: Isn't that? But most of the news is about, Isn't that?
Speaker 1: With a lot of the media are are feeding on um?
Speaker 1: What can I say? He was so awake, he was
Speaker 1: so alert, And I think part of it is that
Speaker 1: he underwent a very strict for many years, for eighteen
Speaker 1: years in his monastery, he went a very strict practice
Speaker 1: of empty and kenosis, letting go, and and it made
Speaker 1: him very keen in his intellect and in his awareness,
Speaker 1: but then he had the shift in ninety there was
Speaker 1: actually doctor Suzuki, the man who brought Zen Buddhism to America,
Speaker 1: to North America from Japan. He's the one who really
Speaker 1: urged Martin to start reading my strack cards, as he said,
Speaker 1: the one Zen thinker of the West. And when Merton
Speaker 1: started doing that beginning of he he entirely shifted from
Speaker 1: being a dualistic and a guilt ridden, overly introspective monk
Speaker 1: on Augustinian monk of the forties and most of his
Speaker 1: of the fifties, he shifted to being this prophetic mystic
Speaker 1: in the well the last ten years his life, from
Speaker 1: ninety nineteen sixty. And in fact, I believe that he
Speaker 1: was murdered by our government. Um. I think the evidence
Speaker 1: is really out there now because he stood up against
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War, among other things. We know his phone
Speaker 1: was tapped, just like Kings was, and as Mayor was intercepted.
Speaker 1: It was against the law, but it was done. And
Speaker 1: I've now spoken to three CIA agents who were in
Speaker 1: South An East Asia at the time and asked them
Speaker 1: if they killed Merton, and the first one said, I
Speaker 1: will neither affirm it nor deny it. The second one said,
Speaker 1: we were wallowing in money at that time. There was
Speaker 1: no accountability whatsoever. He said, if just any CIA agent
Speaker 1: felt Merton was a threat to the country, they could
Speaker 1: easily have done a man with no questions asked. And
Speaker 1: the third one I met after this book came out
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, and he said to me simply,
Speaker 1: yes we did. Wow. That's tragic and um stunning it is,
Speaker 1: and it means, you know, Merton died a martyr for peace.
Speaker 1: Talking about him being so forward thinking, um, you know,
Speaker 1: seeing so clearly he in that day named technology as
Speaker 1: the great problem of the day. And that's only accelerated.
Speaker 1: And I want to read a little of what he
Speaker 1: said there because it's just it's it's so spot on.
Speaker 1: He says, when the acceleration becomes such that efficiency and
Speaker 1: progress become ends rather than means, then you have the
Speaker 1: technological revolution. This results in a climate of practicality for
Speaker 1: its own sake and a contempt for value and for principle.
Speaker 1: The questions asked or not is this right? Or is
Speaker 1: this good? But will this work? And will it pay off?
Speaker 1: Will it increase our profits? And you know, there's so
Speaker 1: much of the internet. You know, you hear all these
Speaker 1: about you know, all these hacks. You know, you hack
Speaker 1: your life, hack this hack that, which is all about
Speaker 1: finding a shortcut. And the question that I'm often asked
Speaker 1: is like to what and why exactly? And Um, as
Speaker 1: you say that that issue of technology again has has
Speaker 1: blown up, you might say, since the nineteen sixties has
Speaker 1: become a bigger issue than ever before. Um, remember too
Speaker 1: that in Merten's day, the big technological uh dream was
Speaker 1: about getting to the moon, and uh everyone was talking
Speaker 1: about it. This is where so much money was going
Speaker 1: and all the rest. But Merton, Um, he raised questions
Speaker 1: about it. He said, Um, what is what is wrong?
Speaker 1: He said, Well, even ants can fly, Even if man
Speaker 1: flies all over the universe, he's still nothing but a
Speaker 1: flying ant until he covers a human center and a
Speaker 1: human spirit in the depth of his own being. That
Speaker 1: is so important against so prophetic that you know, we
Speaker 1: can take our stuff to Mars, to the moon around Venus,
Speaker 1: but if and if we don't deal with our stuff, um,
Speaker 1: we're we're just spreading our troubles elsewhere. And um, notice,
Speaker 1: for example, how these ge whiz gadgets that come out
Speaker 1: of silicon Valley every year. These are being used by Isis. Uh.
Speaker 1: This fellow who did this horrible murder uh last weekend
Speaker 1: at the gay club in Orlando. He uh in the
Speaker 1: middle of it, as we all know, got on his
Speaker 1: iPhone and called the police to break about. He was
Speaker 1: doing it in the name of Isis. But notice he
Speaker 1: had an iPhone, So evil does not care. In fact,
Speaker 1: evil leaps on to get more efficient technology. Uh and
Speaker 1: and to and Isis has all the latest gadgets from
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley and they always will have it. So what
Speaker 1: this shows is that Silicon Valley cannot redeem us. Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley is what they give birth to. These are are
Speaker 1: useful items, but they can be used for evil and
Speaker 1: to make evil more efficient, and not just for good.
Speaker 1: And so we have to go deeper into the human consciousness,
Speaker 1: the human psyche and personhood to clean up the evil,
Speaker 1: just as um as Merton was talking about back then. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a wonderful poem where he talks about this. He
Speaker 1: calls it first lesson about Man. He says, man begins
Speaker 1: in zoology. I'm sure by that he means our evolutionary
Speaker 1: um background. He is the saddest animal. He drives a
Speaker 1: big red car called Anxiety. Whenever he goes to the
Speaker 1: phone to call Joy, he gets the wrong number. Therefore,
Speaker 1: therefore he likes weapons. He knows all guns were their
Speaker 1: right names. He drives a big black catillect called Death.
Speaker 1: Now he's putting Anxiety into space. He flies his worries
Speaker 1: all around Venus. You see, that's just what he was
Speaker 1: saying about the ants that can fly. Man is a
Speaker 1: saddist animal. He begins in zoology and gets lost in
Speaker 1: his own bad news. Yeah, I love that poem. You
Speaker 1: had it in the book. It's so it's so good.
Speaker 1: It is, and it it you know, it rattles a cage.
Speaker 1: We have to go think deeper than technology, deeper than
Speaker 1: the ge whiz gadgets that we keep coming up with.
Speaker 1: In fact, I will say this, I think the Silicon Valley,
Speaker 1: with all of his success and all of his contribution,
Speaker 1: I think they should tax themselves put some money in
Speaker 1: a pot to explore more deeply the human psyche, this
Speaker 1: whole issue of where evil comes from and so forth. Uh,
Speaker 1: Because um, it's not enough to just keep putting out
Speaker 1: more gadgets. We've got to examine and and Martins says
Speaker 1: this this. He says, there's a harder discovery, the deeper
Speaker 1: journey than just getting to the moon and back. This
Speaker 1: journey of what separates us from ourselves, this journey of
Speaker 1: learning who we really are a deep inside and I
Speaker 1: think that Silicon Valley should be helping us with this,
Speaker 1: besides providing iPhones for the likes of this manner just
Speaker 1: kill fifty people, I think, and isis itself. I think
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley should be asking itself, how can we take
Speaker 1: some of our earnings and Heaven knows they have enough
Speaker 1: and put it into a deeper exploration of the role
Speaker 1: of evil uh in in the human psyche and of
Speaker 1: our pretend and so forth, and for reencountering the sacred. Indeed,
Speaker 1: you brought up the tragedy in Orlando over the weekend,
Speaker 1: and Um, I had this Mark is something to talk
Speaker 1: with you about. And then the fact that there was
Speaker 1: a tragedy and a gay club you know, just you know,
Speaker 1: days ago, that's kind of in the front of everybody's mind.
Speaker 1: I thought this was it would be an interesting question
Speaker 1: to bring up. You were, um, where you kicked out
Speaker 1: of the Catholic Church. Is that the right word for it?
Speaker 1: I was expelled from the Dominican Order, which I had
Speaker 1: been a member for thirty or four years. So that's
Speaker 1: that's the technical for it. You were accused of a
Speaker 1: number of heresies, and you you walk through them in
Speaker 1: the book, and you sort of give both your response
Speaker 1: as well as how Merton might have defended you. And uh,
Speaker 1: but in it you say, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: heresies against you was that you do not condemn homosexuals.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote you now and then you can
Speaker 1: elaborate on it. After that, you say, how can we
Speaker 1: condemn something that science is proven is found and at
Speaker 1: least four hundred and sixty four other species, and is
Speaker 1: found in every human community. About eight percent of the
Speaker 1: human population is gay or lesbian. That is just the
Speaker 1: way it is. If we apply St. Thomas's principle that
Speaker 1: a mistake about creation results in a mistake about God,
Speaker 1: then the persistence of homophobia in the name of religion
Speaker 1: is worship of a false God. Talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that. I think that's really profound and and beautiful. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that the issue of homosexuality today is the
Speaker 1: Galileo case of our time, because four years ago religion
Speaker 1: and a little crazy and and uh and uh locked
Speaker 1: Galileo up and so forth, because science was telling us
Speaker 1: new things that the Earth isn't flat, and that the
Speaker 1: Sun isn't going around the Earth, We're going around the Sun,
Speaker 1: and so forth. So um, so today science has spoken,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's been fifty years or so since, Uh,
Speaker 1: homosexuality was removed from the list of disease or sickness
Speaker 1: by psychology and was recognized that this is where it is.
Speaker 1: There is a sexual minority, and in fact they have
Speaker 1: a very important role to play. Uh. A Native American
Speaker 1: who really knew her tradition years ago told me that
Speaker 1: for those who really know that Native American story before
Speaker 1: the Europeans came, that all the spiritual directors to the
Speaker 1: great chiefs were gay because gay people have a more
Speaker 1: a deeper access to spirituality than straight people do. And
Speaker 1: she said this has known and now since then I've
Speaker 1: learned this as a case in the Celtic tradition and
Speaker 1: in many African tribes as well, from the ancient times.
Speaker 1: You know, I had a amazing experience in South Korea
Speaker 1: two years ago. I lectured and it was a large crowd.
Speaker 1: People were packed in well over six. But the very
Speaker 1: last question was um from the twenty six year old.
Speaker 1: He stood up and he said, I am gay, and
Speaker 1: I do not feel welcome in the church here in
Speaker 1: South Korea. And he sat down. And then I just
Speaker 1: went into this. You know, I mentioned science. I also
Speaker 1: pointed out my Bible says God is love, it doesn't
Speaker 1: say God is heterosexual love exclusively, and uh. And I
Speaker 1: talked about the indigenous people and and and gay and
Speaker 1: science and all the rest. And then my last line
Speaker 1: was something like this. So I said, any society or
Speaker 1: community that that worships a homophobic God is shooting itself
Speaker 1: in the foot because it's losing spiritual energy. Then I
Speaker 1: ended with that. Two things happened. One, my translator disappeared.
Speaker 1: She just left the room. And the person who invited me,
Speaker 1: the man of then became rushing up to the luck
Speaker 1: turn knocked it over. He was so excited, and he said,
Speaker 1: you've just dropped a bomb. You've just dropped a bomb.
Speaker 1: He's said South Korea is the most homophobic culture in
Speaker 1: the world. But someone had to drop the bomb and
Speaker 1: had to be an outsider. As good. You did it well.
Speaker 1: The next morning, I was on a train with my
Speaker 1: translator going south for some more gigs, and she said
Speaker 1: to me, I want to apologize. She said that I
Speaker 1: left the room. But I am lesbian, she said, and uh,
Speaker 1: while you were talking there, I could barely translate what
Speaker 1: you were saying. She said, the top of my head
Speaker 1: was coming off, and the moment you finished, I ran
Speaker 1: to the bathroom and I cried for an hour. Now,
Speaker 1: this woman was a very professional, competent woman, about thirty
Speaker 1: five years old, very strong. I liked her a lot.
Speaker 1: But to hear that story, this competent, professional woman, her
Speaker 1: top of her head was coming off, she had to
Speaker 1: cry for an hour. She said, you're the first theologian. Uh,
Speaker 1: and certainly the first priest I've ever heard talk like that. Well. Um,
Speaker 1: I did hear later that people were saying they were
Speaker 1: Buddhists there, Buddhist monks, and they were Catholic sisters. And
Speaker 1: someone told me that Catholic sisters were walking around saying,
Speaker 1: oh my my, we have to change our position on
Speaker 1: Almo sexuality. So that's good. We dropped some change there.
Speaker 1: But I just think that story is so sad and
Speaker 1: so powerful that this grown, strong woman had to go
Speaker 1: to the bath room and cry for an hour and
Speaker 1: um and the top of her head came off because
Speaker 1: for the first time in her life she was validated
Speaker 1: as a human being. Yep, yep, I agree. It's beautiful
Speaker 1: and the opposite of that the tragedy that you know,
Speaker 1: so many people have to go through. Thankfully, we seem
Speaker 1: to be making great strides here in the US and
Speaker 1: and you know, we've got a ways to go. But
Speaker 1: the the the trend is certainly looking positive as a
Speaker 1: society right now, which is very heartwarming. But religions, you know,
Speaker 1: tend to be way behind. I mean, obviously there are
Speaker 1: some who are not, but the Vatican does not moved
Speaker 1: very much on this subject. This focus trying to think
Speaker 1: talking about mercy, see but what about justice? Uh So
Speaker 1: the Vatican is just trying to move a little bit.
Speaker 1: And then, of course you have a lot of Muslims
Speaker 1: who like the man who did the shooting. From all
Speaker 1: evidence that I've heard now, he himself was gay. He
Speaker 1: attended gay clubs, he got online to gay uh vote
Speaker 1: and all that. So here's this is what happens. You know,
Speaker 1: no one hates homosexuals more than a homosexual who hasn't
Speaker 1: dealt with it because he's hating himself and so this
Speaker 1: could be the cause behind this entire UH tragedy. So
Speaker 1: it's no small thing, you know, to UH to teach
Speaker 1: people in the name of God that they are a
Speaker 1: blotch on a humanity and UH Unfore she many religions
Speaker 1: are still doing this East and West um um, not
Speaker 1: just Islam, but pockets of Christianity too, and and that
Speaker 1: could lead us into a long, long discussion about um,
Speaker 1: you know, society's move in certain cases away from religion
Speaker 1: and what we gain and what we lose there, and
Speaker 1: so much of your work is focused, I think on
Speaker 1: those kind of questions. But we are out of time,
Speaker 1: so maybe we will have to do around two of
Speaker 1: this at some point, because because this has been great.
Speaker 1: But I think that's a great place to end. And Matthew,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time to come
Speaker 1: on the show. Thank you for the books that you've
Speaker 1: written that I'm just now starting to explore and I'm
Speaker 1: excited to learn a lot more about well. Thank you, Eric,
Speaker 1: and thank you for having a program like this and
Speaker 1: for your deep questions which are important supportant avenue to
Speaker 1: kind of spread the word. Okay, take care, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Bite You can learn more about this podcast
Speaker 1: and Matthew Fox at one you feed dot net, slash
Speaker 1: fox