Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    <scribbled by ceder Mon 19 May 03 21:19>
  

    
Smith, Huston Why Religion Matter: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an
Age of Disbelief.  New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001.
Spirit in an Age of Disbelief. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001. 

In this book, near the end he writes about "types" (monotheists,
polytheists, mystics, etc.). About mystics he says something like
{paraphrase} It is all God. everything is God, or 

>>>> Clare Eder <the dyslexic> 

'72 having skipped senior year cause I ran out of courses.... 

My ministry began at State University of New York at Stony Brook where
I took a Religious Study degree and specialized in the study of
mysticism. Huston Smith observes that the constitutional separation of
church and state influenced the type of degree that could be offered at
state university results in bifurcation between religious obligation
and scholarly research (93-96). 

When I wrote my undergraduate thesis, under Robert C. Neville, he has
assigned Rudolf Otto, Nicolas Berdyaev and Meister Eckhart. I threw in
Einstein because of the possibilities with certain statements that may
have been paraphrases of Lao Tsu. p.161 of Meister Eckhart trans
Blackney, torchbooks, 1941. 

;-) I just got Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen commentary by
Matthew Fox from Loyola U of N O :: Loyola Institute of Ministry 

I am working on the sixth semester of my masters, which is a focus
course. 

Kind of independent study except for the two sessions you meet with
your learning group... My focus is religion and ecology and the second
week's tape does speak of your Creation Theology. 

I've been researching the first chapter of the Bible since 1978. 

I figured out the 4th day a few years before the scientists found it.
Too bad, I didn't publish yet or by then.

<Curtsey> 
          Please to meet you.
  

    
Please excuse the typos.  I have fingerprints on my glasses. ;-)
  

    
Matthew,

What role does the creator have in spirituality?
  

    
Is Creation Spirituality a Christian movement?  It is that for sure. 
The historical Jesus comes from the wisdom tradition of Israel which is
thoroughly creation-centered AS is the tradition of the Cosmic Christ
(cf. John 1 and indeed most of John plus the Infancy narratives,
Crucifixion and Resurrection narratives, Transfiguration, etc. etc. all
covered in my "Coming of the Cosmic Christ" book).  BUT it is not
exclusively Christian. That is why it's so needed today.  It is COMMON
GROUND for all faiths which share creation and its sacredness in
common.  Cf. my "One River, Many Wells" book.

Does our culture miss the sp. value of creativity?  You bet!  Modern
art turned art into "art for art's sake."  It is not that.  It is Art
for the Community's sake, art for earth's sake.  Artists themselves
have to rediscover the spiritual value of their holy vocation.
Furthermore, education in our culture trivializes creativity as well by
so often ignoring it or cutting it off from spiritual traditions.

I am for a spirituality that includes Heart AND Head.  Also guts
(where we feel moral outrage) AND intuition.  AND the lower chakras. 
In other words, ALL the chakras.  Cf. my book, "Sins of the Spirit,
Blessings of the Flesh" on the role of the chakras in spirituality.

Where is the Creator?  In ALL of creation. "More intimate to creatures
than creatures are to themselves" as Thomas Aquinas puts it.  Also, as
the Wisdom that births and governs creation providentially.  This is
the "first article of faith" (Luther), i.e. "creation."  But we have
secularized creation and left the sacred out BECAUSE we put God above
or behind creation and not within it, i.e. panentheism: All in God and
God in all things. 
  

    
Yes, I like that very much.  We are all God, God is all things.  The
idea of God is deep down in every Man, Woman, and Child.  To look for
God we need look no further than ourselves.
  

    
>>>Furthermore, education in our culture trivializes creativity as
well by so often ignoring it or cutting it off from spiritual
traditions.<<<

Might this not be a natural result, though, of the separation of
church and state? How can we, given our Constitution and our country's
vast number of spiritual and religious traditions, re-connect
spirituality to creativity in the schools without offending one or
another or several of those traditions? 
  

    <scribbled>
  

    
Thomas Aquinas reference to Wisdom is considered by some scholars to be
a reference to the Holy Spirit. The roles of the HS may include creation
and perhaps spirituality on a larger level as a result. However, I'm not
sure the role of the HS within the Historical Jesus movement.

That said, I'm inclined to take Cleaver's view that the Trinity of
theologians is really a 3-in-1 oil. Reconciling the Godhead with a
monotheistic view is often just assumed.

The next step for the Historical Jesus view to pantheism seems to mix
the creator and the creation, an oil and water mixture. However, the
expert eye can see in human creations a signature whereby the correct
metaphor is that there is a specific style visible whether one is
throwing a pot or architecting a building.

From the God in everything and everything in God view, can there be a
Devil? How does the anti-God use creativity then?
  

    
In re: separation of church-state and creation spirituality; I don't
think it's a political construct limited to the structure of American
government.  It could be a construct that goes back farther to the time
of Inquisition, when making any statements or observations about
nature which deviated from Church teachings was perceived as heresy. 
At that time it became critical for the survival of science to remain
at arm's length from religion.

Science itself, of late, has done much more to further the concept of
creator within all creation.  I think of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen and
Bell in regards to non-locality and entanglement; Bohm's theory of
wholeness and the implicate order has a large impact on our
understanding of the universe (Bohm: "Information contributes
fundamentally to the qualities of substance." What is Creator and
Creation if not information AND substance?).  The challenge now is the
schism which continues to separate the spiritual from science; what
would happen if science found an indication of intention in material? 
Would it ignore it as a false data rather than opening to the
possibility that spirit may exist in matter?  

Further, would we trust science that was that open because of our
culture's difficult with parsing spirituality with religion and with
science?  Is that perhaps the real challenge of creation spirituality,
that it is not able to exist culturally within science and yet because
it may compete with the politics of religion, it may find little room
there as well?
  

    
Faith might not be necessary if science can resolve itself with
religion. Buddhism is probably furthest along this road. Christianity is
a mixed call. And Islam is lagging on such a journey.

The politics of religion changes slowly with time. The people we now
praise and honor like Martin Luther and Galileo were heretics of their
day. Handel's Messiah which we now revere caused a riot when first
played.

Therein may be the opportunity. Creativity undergoes scrutinity in both
science and religious methodology. Both use a rigorous process before
being accepted with certain fundamentals unchanging. However, it's
really clear they aren't on the same page yet. The process of accepted
science (even theories) and the theological dogma view can produce
the same conclusion. Perhaps we are not advanced enough spiritualy or
scientifically to see this convergence.

Time will tell.
  

    
>>>Faith might not be necessary if science can resolve itself with
religion.<<<

Very intriguing suggestion! 
  

    
My understanding of the Eucharist did not fundamentally change with
becoming Episcopalian.  It changed more when I wrote the "Coming of the
Cosmic Christ" and realized the profound cosmological implications of
the Eucharist.  What changed was the FORM of doing the Eucharist.  Our
Techno Cosmic Masses, thanks to the approval of Bishop Swing of San
Francisco, are
deconstructing and reconstructing liturgy using dance and techno music
and d-jaying and video and images, i.e. using post-modern language for
liturgy.
We had a wonderful TCM this Sunday with the theme of Music as Healing.
Check out our web site on the TCM for more.

Regarding education VERSUS mysticism, it's a HUGE issue.  It is why I
started our own university.  Ted Roszak: "The Enlightenment held
mysticism up for ridicule as the worst offense against science and
reason."  It is
time to educate BOTH hemispheres of our brains and that includes our
mystical brain!
  

    
What role does the creator have in spirituality?

The Creator is always creating and spirituality is the unfolding of
that continuous act of giving birth.  Eckhart: "What does God do all
day long?  God lies on a maternity bed giving birth."
  

    
I have to say that on reading _Creativity_, I found myself in an
almost constant state of "Yes!  Of course!  Why didn't I see that
before?"  I'd not previously identified creativity with the Divine. 
I'd never connected the dots.  It's ironic because for a long time,
I've found the primary manifestation of the Divine - to ME at least -
in creative works, such as the music of Albinoni, Vivaldi, Bach,
Telemann, Handel, Mozart, Hayden, Beethoven, and many others.  (And
let's not forget Hildegard von Bingen, about whom I knew nothing other
than that I loved her _Sequentia_ - until I started reading this book).
 I can't help but wonder why I've not heard more talk about creativity
as a spiritual virtue in my lifetime.

What is perhaps even more ironic - for me if for no one else - is that
the fundamental turning point in my life, what started me on my own
mystical journey, was reading Hermann Hesse's _Narcissus and Goldmund_
for the first time in my mid-20s.  It spoke to me like nothing else
ever has, before or since.  Not that it's the greatest book ever
written - far from it.  But it spoke to ME in a profoundly personal way
that I could never explain.  I related to Goldmund.  In fact, it was
the first thing I'd ever encountered in my life that told me directly,
"You're okay."  For those unfamiliar, it's a tale of two medieval monks
with opposite characteristics who were intimate friends.  In the end,
Narcissus becomes the Abbot Father and Goldmund becomes an accomplished
artist, creating great works of art for the Church.  His obsession
with the "Universal Mother" is noteworthy.
  

    
A real shining gem of a book, for me, was "The Silent Cry: Mysticism
and Resistance" by the German theologian and mystic Dorothee Soelle. 
Those who are enjoying Fr Fox's works might find much to enjoy here.  I
was struck by similarities -- the Via Negativa, the emphasis on social
justice as a natural and necessary component of the mystical path,
etc.  So, by way of questions for Fr Fox, is whether or not you've
encountered Ms Soelle's work, and if so, can you second my
recommendation?  Do you find her rejection of organized religious
institutions a bit too strident?  (If you're not familiar with this
book, please hit the Delete Key -- no harm done, no offense taken!)
  

    
>>From the God in everything and everything in God view, can there be
a
>>Devil?

No.  I do not believe there is a devil or a hell.  Permanent
separation from God would mean partitioning an immutable whole.  I
think evil, hell, and the devil are man made constructs to explain a
variety of neuroses that occur when we are consciously separate from
God.  The vehicle for this conscious separation is an exaggerated sense
of self that can be brought on by a number of psychological problems. 
God is always there within and about us but our perception is
distorted to the point that we cannot perceive God.  We perceive only
ourselves.
  

    
> BUT it is not exclusively Christian. That is why it's so needed
> today.  It is COMMON GROUND for all faiths which share creation
> and its sacredness in common.

I am relieved to hear that Creation Spirituality is not "exclusively
Christian."  Unfortunately, "exclusively Christian" is not only an apt
term but a popular consensus as well, if not a governmental bias.  I
always liked Joe Campbell's exchange with Martin Buber where he asked
Buber what he meant by the "face of God" since Campbell had just
returned from India where he believed he had seen the face of God. 
Buber was astonished that Campbell would "seek to compare" between the
Christian and Indian religions.  As a student of Campbell's for many
years, his comparative perspective has proven to be one of the
fundamental tenets of my own faith; but, I have found more often than
not that such a comparative perspective is merely "tolerated" among
Christians professing intellectual rigor (if not downright
disapproved).  Instead of understanding that the parity between
religious icons is one of the great, creative richnesses of the human
mind, Christian criticism too often sees such comparisons as
iconoclastic and the "common ground" you speak of as the stereotypical
smorgasboard.  What do you say to those who insist that the mixing of
traditions is fraught with peril and that adhering to one tradition
(i.e., the Roman Catholic Church) is a more disciplined and appropriate
approach towards Spirit?

Don't misunderstand me, however.  I agree with you 100% regarding the
necessity of inclusivity.  Whether by way of syncretism, or a kind of
mutual indebtedness that these spiritual traditions owe each other for
their various inflections of fundamental, one might say biological,
truths.  In fact, I gained much comfort from _Creativity_ in how you
presented the Resurrection material and your assertion that this
creative response to the horrific crucifixion of Jesus remains one of
humankind's shining examples of overcoming adversity and death by
actively imagining and accessing innate potential.  You were somewhat
sly, however, in how you presented this material.  I couldn't discern
if you believed in the literal, physical resurrection of the crucified
Jesus or if you understood it more as a creative response, speaking to
a psychological and spiritual process?  To be fair, I'm not posing this
as an either/or question but more as wanting to have a sense of where
you are at this particular time in your life with regard to the
continuum between the literal and the symbolic.
  

    
Further, I am most impressed in _Creativity_ how you meditate upon the
demiurgic facility of God, how you link his creativity with the
creativity of humankind, and how you note that they share creativity as
a common practice.

As I study various traditions, especially the cosmogonies, I am struck
by the variance in modes of creativity.  How form is either generated
by being dreamt or envisioned or painted, or given shape by sound, or
fashioned by "hand."  God as ceramicist, in fact, has been one of the
most compelling images for me of the origins of creation.

I agree with Steve that <airman>'s observation about the relationship
between scientific understanding and faith -- that scientific
understanding of the properties of the universe in fact replaces a need
for faith -- is an intriguing possibility.  Swimme's _The Universe Is
A Green Dragon_ and _The Universe Story_ are wonderful additions to
this corpus of thought that adjusts the language by which the Great
Story is told, tweaking it towards the relevant and the contemporary. 
If, as Jungian analyst June Singer has suggested, the archetypes of the
collective unconscious are themselves evolving, then it stands to
follow that the inflections of these archetypal understandings need
also evolve, language must evolve, holiness must evolve, God must
evolve, if humankind is to evolve. 
  

    
And finally (I seem to find a need to post in sets of three; some
Catholic trinitarian taint no doubt), I am interested in the notion of
evolution as understood through the stories of successive creations. 
Most of the major religions speak to this in some capacity.  The Flood
is perhaps the most notable example in the Christian tradition, albeit
borrowed from its Assyrian-Babylonian predecessors.  The Maya and the
Nahuat traditions of Amerindia certainly address it.  The Hindus and
Celts also.  This notion of failed creativity being the matrix of a
revisioned creativity has long fascinated me.

Recently I heard filmmaker Robert Altman speak here in San Francisco
and, when asked about the key to his success, he stated simply,
"Failure."  And in our current pop culture the storyline of the
"Matrix" trilogy is predicated largely upon the notion of rebooting
manifestations of the Matrix, much like certain gods (I won't name
names) who destroy one world in order to create another more to their
liking.

It seems clear to me that the "failure" of the Catholic Church, its
adherence to tradition over innovation, its shaming of the Magdalen,
its misguided stewardship of the planet, its politics of exclusivity,
its sexual scandals, can be perceived as the advance of chaos (a
perspective not altogether inaccurate), but, moreso as a harbinger of
good changes to come.  Despite the stories we have been taught about
the necessity of destroying worlds in order to create better more
responsive ones, despite movies like the recently-released "Matrix"
sequel which teaches that Zion, or the world of humankind, must be
destroyed as we understand it by our choice for love, I find that most
people are afraid of destroying worlds in order to create new ones. 
Can you speak some about the necessity of destruction to the creative
process? 
  

    
a question for Matthew Fox: Why the Episcopal Church? Was it "more
comfortable" for you after having been a RC Priest? Why not the
Unitarian Universalists, for example, as your new "home"? What
attracted you to the Episcopalians?
  

    
I'm late coming into the discussion.  I'm an ornithologist, and it's
spring migration, so I'm not as far into reading the book as I'd like. 
I'm also being poky because this is a book to savor.

When I was in Catholic elementary school, I believe in third grade, I
remember one of our teachers telling us that human beings were
incapable of genuine creativity--that the only Creator was God, and
that mere humans could never devise anything genuinely new.  That
troubled me, and I couldn't reconcile it with the teaching that we were
made "in the image and likeness of God."  I liked thinking that it was
possible to come up with new thoughts and ideas and tangible
creations, and so I find this book a lovely affirmation of an old,
treasured belief of mine.

I've been stopped with joyful "Wows" at several points while reading
it so far.  I think my favorite passage, due to my personal
preoccupation, is in the part, "Creativity Takes Trust and Courage," in
which Matthew Fox quotes Gaston Bachelard.  Matthew Fox writes, "Trust
can begin with the simple act of examining a bird's nest, for 'when we
examine a nest, we place ourselves at the origin of confidence in the
world, we receive a beginning of confidence, an urge toward cosmic
confidence.  Would a bird build its nest if it did not have its
instinct for confidence in the world?' A nest is a sign of optimism. 
It 'knows nothing of the hostility of the world.... The experience of
the hostility of the world--and consequently, our dreams of defense and
aggressiveness--come much later.'"  

Considering the many awful things that can happen to a nest and to
eggs or nestlings, the act of building a nest and creating new life
within it is indeed an act of faith and trust in the benevolence of the
universe.  I also think of other acts of cosmic trust: a baby Wood
Duck leaping out of a nest hole that can be 200 feet off the ground,
unable to fly but filled with the optimism that comes from
unquestioning faith and trust.  And I think of Ruby-throated
Hummingbirds lighting out in fall over the Gulf of Mexico, no
destination in sight, but that faith and trust embedded in instinct
somehow assuring it that in the invisible distance is the Yucatan
Peninsula.  Birds are creators, and tenderly nurture their creations
and then let them take wing and fly out into the world, giving back as
they received, in unselfconscious song and beauty.  

This kind of pure creativity sometimes depends on destroying something
that exists for something that might be.  Teasing apart the fibers of
a milkweed flower gone to seed to create a new nest, snapping up lovely
insects to nourish hungry babies--destruction is tied to creation in
the natural world, too, perhaps most poignantly in the truth that all
animal life receives its energy and structural molecules from the
bodies of other living things.

Anyway, I'm thoroughly enjoying this book, and thank you for writing
it.
  

    

Sorry for my late arrival - I didn't know this conversation was taking
place until <maya> dropped by the Well's Arts conference to let us
know. What a wonderful opportunity! (Thanks Maya!)

in post #30 Matthew Fox writes:
<It is Art for the Community's sake, art for earth's sake.  Artists
themselves have to rediscover the spiritual value of their holy
vocation.> 

I would really appreciate going more deeply into this.  What
community?  So many seem badly ravaged.  Artists seem to have been
forced (pushed? pulled? retreated?) to the fringes. How to reintegrate
as artists within the community? Is the vocation of 'artist' even a
viable one anymore?

In _Art & Fear_, I think the authors touch on the same gap: 'In our
time, the cultural niche for art remains unfilled, while
self-expression has become an end in itself." 
  

    
Regarding science and religion, much of my writings and the
educational programs I have established over the last 25 years have
been to forge this union.  Einstein, David Bohm and many others have
praised mysticism and awe as being at the center of their work and
life.  Great scientists have great souls.  When Aquinas says "a mistake
about creation results in a mistake about God" he is holding up the
nobility of science.  We non-scientists depend on science to help us in
the revelation that nature offers us.

British scientist Rupert Sheldrake and I have written two books
together--check them out.  "Natural Grace" is one and "The Physics of
Angels" is the other.  (Both by Harpersanfrancisco.)  They are based on
numerous dialogs we have had publicly and privately over the years.
Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, physicist and geologian respectively,
have teamed up in "The Universe Story" to present the new creation
story from science that we all need to hear today.  It is bigger than
any one culture or religion and concerns us all.  It awakens awe and a
sense of the sacredness of our existence to get into that story.

Regarding education, I think I got into that in "Creativity" but we
have to get smart about this so-called separation of church and state. 
This does NOT mean students should be ignorant of the history of
religions or of spiritual traditions either.  Just that public school
is no place for proselytizing.  Montessori talks about "making silence"
and others talk about "mental gym" as synonyms for meditation. 
Meditation is an exercise in how the mind can transcend itself and
truly ought to be available to all ages in school--its an exploration
of the mind after all! (And beyond mind to mindlessness that gives
birth in turn to mindfulness.)  It is about calming the reptilian
brain, after all, and what is more needed in our species than that
today?  Call these teachings: "Exploring the reptilian brain."  You
can't get expelled for that!

In our University we do a lot of "Art as Meditation" and that is very
effective.  The language can work elsewhere as well.  Creativity is
itself meditative and is process oriented rather than product oriented
and no one should get expelled for teaching THAT!  If you do, kudos to
you!

Don't confuse pantheism and panentheism.  The former says: "All is
God." The latter, "All is in God and God is in all."  I opt for the
latter.  For more on God in creation see the Via Positiva sections of
my books on Aquinas and on Eckhart, namely: "Sheer Joy: Conversations
with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality" (new version coming out
this month from Tarcher). And either "Meditations with Meister Eckhart"
(short quotes from him) or "Passion for Creation: Meister Eckhart's
Earth-based Spirituality" (with 36 of his sermons and treatises) from
Inner Traditions Publishing House. Consider Eckhart: "Every creature is
a word of God and a book about God." This pre-modern way of seeing God
in all things and revelation in all things is authentic wisdom
theology and also is Cosmic Christ theology (the image of God in all
things).  Words are not just human words or words in books! The
invention of the printing press that launched the modern era distorted
the rich meaning of 'word' and totally anthropocentrized it.
Matthew
www.matthewfox.org
www.creationspirituality.org
www.technocosmicmass.org
  

    
Are we overwhelming you with questions coming from all directions,
Matthew?  <g>  I guess everyone is hungry for an answer of one sort or
another and perhaps forget only our own questions will nourish us.

<chrys>, thanks for responding my call.  Matthew has written such a
lovely, enthusiastic book on creativity and in praise of the artist
that I feared no artists were going to show up!!

And <laurabird>, what an elegant post, redolent with the revelations
of nature, just as Matthew is attesting.  That particular passage was
also one I meant to single out as it likewise struck me.  In my youth,
late teens to early 20s, when I lived in rural Idaho and rural Kansas,
I used to take winter hikes and collect abandoned birds nests.  I
didn't know why they meant so much to me or why I found them so
beautiful.  I just got such a feeling of peacefulness from them.  And
they made great conversation pieces.  Years later one of my favorite
musicians, Laura Nyro, wrote a song called "Nested" that seemed to
capture the feelings that nests gave me.  Even more years later Andy
Goldsworthy nature sculptures often replicated the embracing swirl of
the nest.  And now Matthew draws it into clear meaning with his own
words, and yours appended to his.  Thank you.