PEACE is the business of the Church.
My wife has recently been immersing herself in the writings of Matthew Fox (please see link in sidebar). In thinking about the above aphorism given by Lorax, I found myself reviewing Mathew's '95 Theses' - his own "
95 faith observations drawn from [his] 64 years of living and practicing religion and spirituality."I was struck by how simple statements of faith served to focus my thoughts on the topic of peace. It is as if each faith observation was a new lens through which to contemplate the world in relation to peace and our business with it.
So, for your own contemplation, I offer here all 95 of Matthew's Theses. Please forgive the lengthiness of this post. I offer these as tools. Do with them as you will.
1 God is both Mother and Father.
2 At this time in history, God is more Mother than Father because the feminine is most missing and it is important to bring gender balance back.
3 God is always new, always young and always “in the beginning.”
4 God the Punitive Father is not a God worth honoring but a false god and an idol that serves empire-builders. The notion of a punitive, all-male God, is contrary to the full nature of the Godhead who is as much female and motherly as it is masculine and fatherly.
5 “All the names we give to God come from an understanding of ourselves.” (Eckhart) Thus people who worship a punitive father are themselves punitive.
6 Theism (the idea that God is ‘out there’ or above and beyond the universe) is false. All things are in God and God is in all things (panentheism).
7 Everyone is born a mystic and a lover who experiences the unity of things and all are called to keep this mystic or lover of life alive.
8 All are called to be prophets which is to interfere with injustice.
9 Wisdom is Love of Life (See the Book of Wisdom: “This is wisdom: to love life” and Christ in John’s Gospel: “I have come that you may have life and have it inabundance.”)
10 God loves all of creation and science can help us more deeply penetrate and appreciate the mysteries and wisdom of God in creation. Science is no enemy oftrue religion.
11 Religion is not necessary but spirituality is.
12 “Jesus does not call us to a new religion but to life.” (Bonhoeffer) Spirituality is living life at a depth of newness and gratitude, courage and creativity, trustand letting go, compassion and justice.
13 Spirituality and religion are not the same thing any more than education and learning, law and justice, or commerce and stewardship are the same thing.
14 Christians must distinguish between God (masculine and history, liberation and salvation) and Godhead (feminine and mystery, being and non-action).
15 Christians must distinguish between Jesus (an historical figure) and Christ (the experience of God-in-all-things).
16 Christians must distinguish between Jesus and Paul.
17 Jesus, not unlike many spiritual teachers, taught us that we are sons and daughters of God and are to act accordingly by becoming instruments of divine compassion.
18 Ecojustice is a necessity for planetary survival and human ethics and without it we are crucifying the Christ all over again in the form of destruction of forests, waters, species, air and soil.
19 Sustainability is another word for justice, for what is just is sustainable and what is unjust is not.
20 A preferential option for the poor, as found in the base community movement, is far closer to the teaching and spirit of Jesus than is a preferential option for the rich and powerful as found in, for example, Opus Dei.
21 Economic Justice requires the work of creativity to birth a system of economics that is global, respectful of the health and wealth of the earth systems and that works for all.
22 Celebration and worship are key to human community and survival and such reminders of joy deserve new forms that speak in the language of the twenty-first century.
23 Sexuality is a sacred act and a spiritual experience, a theophany (revelation of the Divine), a mystical experience. It is holy and deserves to be honored as such.
24 Creativity is both humanity’s greatest gift and its most powerful weapon for evil and so it ought to be both encouraged and steered to humanity’s most God-like activity which all religions agree is: Compassion.
25 There is a priesthood of all workers (all who are doing good work are midwives of grace and therefore priests) and this priesthood ought to be honored as sacred and workers should be instructed in spirituality in order to carry on their ministry effectively.
26 Empire-building is incompatible with Jesus’ life and teaching and with Paul’s life and teaching and with the teaching of holy religions.
27 Ideology is not theology and ideology endangers the faith because it replaces thinking with obedience, and distracts from the responsibility of theology to adapt the wisdom of the past to today’s needs. Instead of theology it demands loyalty oaths to the past.
28 Loyalty is not a sufficient criterion for ecclesial office—intelligence and proven conscience is.
29 No matter how much the television media fawn over the pope and papacy because it makes good theater, the pope is not the church but has a ministry withinthe church. Papalolotry is a contemporary form of idolatry and must be resisted by all believers.
30 Creating a church of Sycophants is not a holy thing. Sycophants (Webster’s dictionary defines them as “servile self-seeking flatterers”) are not spiritual peoplefor their only virtue is obedience. A Society of Sycophants — sycophant clergy, sycophant seminarians, sycophant bishops, sycophant cardinals, sycophant religious orders of Opus Dei, Legioneers of Christ and Communion and Liberation, and the sycophant press--do not represent in any way the teachings or theperson of the historical Jesus who chose to stand up to power rather than amassing it.
31 Vows of pontifical secrecy are a certain way to corruption and cover-up in the church as in any human organization.
32 Original sin is an ultimate expression of a punitive father God and is not a Biblical teaching. But original blessing (goodness and grace) is biblical.
33 The term “original wound” better describes the separation humans experience on leaving the womb and entering the world, a world that is often unjust and unwelcoming than does the term “original sin.”
34 Fascism and the compulsion to control is not the path of peace or compassion and those who practice fascism are not fitting models for sainthood. The seizing ofthe apparatus of canonization to canonize fascists is a stain on the church.
35 The Spirit of Jesus and other prophets calls people to simple life styles in order that “the people may live.”
36 Dancing, whose root meaning in many indigenous cultures is the same as breath or spirit, is a very ancient and appropriate form in which to pray.
37 To honor the ancestors and celebrate the communion of saints does not mean putting heroes on pedestals but rather honoring them by living out lives ofimagination, courage and compassion in our own time, culture and historical moment as they did in theirs.
38 A diversity of interpretation of the Jesus event and the Christ experience is altogether expected and welcomed as it was in the earliest days of the church.
39 Therefore unity of church does not mean conformity. There is unity in diversity. Coerced unity is not unity.
40 The Holy Spirit is perfectly capable of working through participatory democracy in church structures and hierarchical modes of being can indeed interfere withthe work of the Spirit.
41 The body is an awe-filled sacred Temple of God and this does not mean it is untouchable but rather that all its dimensions, well named by the seven charkas, areas holy as the others.
42 Thus our connection with the earth (first chakra) is holy; and our sexuality (second chakra) is holy; and our moral outrage (third chakra) is holy; and our love that stands up to fear (fourth chakra) is holy; and our prophetic voice that speaks out is holy (fifth chakra); and our intuition and intelligence (sixth chakra) are holy; and our gifts we extend to the community of light beings and ancestors (seventh chakra) are holy.
43 The prejudice of rationalism and left-brain located in the head must be balanced by attention to the lower charkas as equal places for wisdom and truth and Spirit to act.
44 The central chakra, compassion, is the test of the health of all the others which are meant to serve it for “by their fruits you will know them” (Jesus).
45 “Joy is the human’s noblest act.” (Aquinas) Is our culture and its professions, education and religion, promoting joy?
46 The human psyche is made for the cosmos and will not be satisfied until the two are re-united and awe, the beginning of wisdom, results from this reunion.
47 The four paths named in the creation spiritual tradition more fully name the mystical/prophetic spiritual journey of Jesus and the Jewish tradition than do the three paths of purgation, illumination and union which do not derive from the Jewish and Biblical tradition.
48 Thus it can be said that God is experienced in experiences of ecstasy, joy, wonder and delight (via positiva).
49 God is experienced in darkness, chaos, nothingness, suffering, silence and in learning to let go and let be (via negativa).
50 God is experienced in acts of creativity and co-creation (via creativa).
51 All people are born creative. It is spirituality’s task to encourage holy imagination for all are born in the “image and likeness” of the Creative One and “the fierce power of imagination is a gift from God.” (Kaballah)
52 If you can talk you can sing; if you can walk you can dance; if you can talk you are an artist. (African proverb and Native American saying)
53 God is experienced in our struggle for justice, healing, compassion and celebration (via transformativa).
54 The Holy Spirit works through all cultures and all spiritual traditions and blows “where it wills” and is not the exclusive domain of any one tradition andnever has been.
55 God speaks today as in the past through all religions and all cultures and all faith traditions none of which is perfect and an exclusive avenue to truth but all of which can learn from each other.
56 Therefore Interfaith or Deep Ecumenism are a necessary part of spiritual praxis and awareness in our time.
57 Since the “number one obstacle to interfaith is a bad relationship with one’s own faith,” (the Dalai Lama) it is important that Christians know their ownmystical and prophetic tradition, one that is larger than a religion of empire and its punitive father images of God.
58 The cosmos is God’s holy Temple and our holy home.
59 Fourteen billion years of evolution and unfolding of the universe bespeak the intimate sacredness of all that is.
60 All that is is holy and all that is is related for all being in our universe began as one being just before the fireball erupted.
61 Interconnectivity is not only a law of physics and of nature but also forms the basis of community and of compassion. Compassion is the working out of ourshared interconnectivity both as to our shared joy and our shared suffering and struggle for justice.
62 The universe does not suffer from a shortage of grace and no religious institution is to see its task as rationing grace. Grace is abundant in God’s universe.
63 Creation, Incarnation and Resurrection are continuously happening on a cosmic as well as a personal scale. So too are Life, Death and Resurrection(regeneration and reincarnation) happening on a cosmic scale as well as a personal one.
64 Biophilia or Love of Life is everyone’s daily task.
65 Necrophilia or love of death is to be opposed in self and society in all its forms.
66 Evil can happen through every people, every nation, every tribe, and every individual human and so vigilance and self-criticism and institutional criticism are always called for.
67 Not all who call themselves “Christian” deserve that name just as “not all who say ‘Lord, Lord’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven” (Jesus).
68 Pedophilia is a terrible wrong but its cover-up by hierarchy is even more despicable.
69 Loyalty and obedience are never a greater virtue than conscience and justice.
70 Jesus said nothing about condoms, birth control or homosexuality.
71 A church that is more preoccupied with sexual wrongs than with wrongs of injustice is itself sick.
72 Since homosexuality is found among 464 species and in 8 percent of any given human population, it is altogether natural for those who are born that way and isa gift from God and nature to the greater community.
73 Homophobia in any form is a serious sin against love of neighbor, a sin of ignorance of the richness and diversity of God’s creation as well as a sin of exclusion.
74 Racism, Sexism and militarism are also serious sins.
75 Poverty for the many and luxury for the few is not right or sustainable.
76 Consumerism is today’s version of gluttony and needs to be confronted by creating an economic system that works for all peoples and all earth’s creatures.
77 Seminaries as we know them, with their excessive emphasis on left-brain work, often kill and corrupt the mystical soul of the young instead of encouraging themysticism and prophetic consciousness that is there. They should be replaced by wisdom schools.
78 Inner work is required of us all. Therefore spiritual practices of meditation should be available to all and this helps in calming the reptilian brain. Silence orcontemplation and learning to be still can and ought to be taught to all children and adults.
79 Outer work needs to flow from our inner work just as action flows from non-action and true action from being.
80 A wise test of right action is this: What is the effect of this action on people seven generations from today?
81 Another test of right action is this: Is what I am doing, is what we are doing, beautiful or not?
82 Eros, the passion for living, is a virtue that combats acedia or the lack of energy to begin new things and is also expressed as depression, cynicism or sloth (also known as “couchpotatoitis”).
83 The Dark Night of the Soul descends on us all and the proper response is not addiction such as shopping, alcohol, drugs, TV, sex or religion but rather to be with the darkness and learn from it.
84 The Dark Night of the Soul is a learning place of great depth. Stillness is required.
85 Not only is there a Dark Night of the Soul but also a Dark Night of Society and a Dark Night of our Species.
86 Chaos is a friend and a teacher and an integral part or prelude to new birth. Therefore it is not to be feared or compulsively controlled.
87 Authentic science can and must be one of humanity’s sources of wisdom for it is a source of sacred awe, of childlike wonder, and of truth.
88 When science teaches that matter is “frozen light” (physicist David Bohm) it is freeing human thought from scapegoating flesh as something evil and insteadreassuring us that all things are light. This same teaching is found in the Christian Gospels (Christ is the light in all things) and in Buddhist teaching (theBuddha nature is in all things). Therefore, flesh does not sin; it is our choices that are sometimes off center.
89 The proper objects of the human heart are truth and justice (Aquinas) and all people have a right to these through healthy education and healthy government.
90 “God” is only one name for the Divine One and there are an infinite number of names for God and Godhead and still God “has no name and will never be given a name.” (Eckhart)
91 Three highways into the heart are silence and love and grief.
92 The grief in the human heart needs to be attended to by rituals and practices that, when practiced, will lessen anger and allow creativity to flow anew.
93 Two highways out of the heart are creativity and acts of justice and compassion.
94 Since angels learn exclusively by intuition, when we develop our powers of intuition we can expect to meet angels along the way.
95 True intelligence includes feeling, sensitivity, beauty, the gift of nourishment and humor which is a gift of the Spirit, paradox, being its sister.
