Matthew Fox: A Way to God

An Interview with Matthew Fox: A Way to God

by Victor Fuhrman

In December of 1990, the band Styx released a song written by lead singer and keyboardist Dennis DeYoung. Within the song was the lyric, “And as I slowly drift to sleep, for a moment, dreams are sacred. I close my eyes and know there’s peace in a world so filled with hatred. Then I wake up each morning and turn on the news to find we’ve so far to go, and I keep on hoping for a sign, so afraid I just won’t know.” That song was called “Show Me the Way,” and the lyric is as meaningful and real today and perhaps even more so than it was 25 years ago.

Is there a way that all of us, people from every culture, nationality and faith, can return to understanding, compassion, real stewardship of this world we share and brotherly and sisterly love? Is there a way to God?

 

Matthew Fox, says there is a way through creation spirituality. Matthew is an internationally acclaimed theologian, a spiritual maverick who has spent the last 40 years revolutionizing Christian theology, taking on patriarchal religion and advocating for a creation-centered spirituality of compassion, justice and resacralizing the earth.

Originally a Catholic priest, he was silenced for a year and then expelled from the Dominican Order by then Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI. He was expelled for teaching liberation theology and creation spirituality.

He found what he calls religious asylum within the Episcopal Church. He’s the author of more than 30 books, which have sold more than 1.5 million copies in 60 languages. You can visit him at www.matthewfox.org, and tonight, we’ll be discussing his latest book, A Way to God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey.

 

Victor Fuhrman: Let’s start at the beginning, your beginning. What was youth like for Matthew Fox, and how did it lead to your vocation as a priest?

Matthew Fox: Well, I was one of seven children. I was in the middle; the neurotic middle they tell me. I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. I’m a Midwesterner.

And my family was practicing Catholic, and went to public high school, and my friends were heavily Protestant or Agnostic or Jewish. So, we had a lot of good philosophical debates. And I would go to my parish priest, who was a Dominican, and I’d get books to read to argue back at these philosophical discussions.

So, I enjoyed that intellectual side of life. And when I was a senior, I did a retreat with the Dominicans, and I liked what I saw, so I decided to join them after a couple of years of college. So, I became a Dominican, and I liked that tradition because it had an intellectual side to it. And Madison is a university town, and that was important to me. But, it also had an aesthetic side because it was a community life, and the prayer was chanting quite a lot, the Psalms and so forth.

So, all that appealed to me and the community life, as well.

So, that’s what I did until the year of my ordination. I told my superiors that they should send someone on to get a degree in spirituality. I said my generation would be less interested in religion; more interested in spirituality, spirituality being the experiential side of religion. And they said, well, fine, where should you go?

So, I wrote Thomas Merton, the Catholic monk, and he sent me a letter back a few days later saying go to Paris, the Institut Catholique in Paris. Well, I eventually got there. The Dominicans didn’t want to send me. They said, we never sent anyone to France, who came home again, they said. But, I did come home, and then they regretted that a little bit, too, later down the pike. But–so, I owe Thomas Merton all the trouble I’ve gotten in since you see.

Victor Fuhrman: I understand. When did you first become aware of creation spirituality?

Matthew Fox: Well, growing up in Wisconsin, I think it was the closeness to nature and the seasons, of course. You had four very hefty seasons in Wisconsin back then before climate change really hit. And also, the Native American presence was very strong. I had Native American dreams when I was a child, a lot of them.

And so, I think all that had a lot to do with my appreciation of the experience of God in nature. And we got kind of some mixed messages in my training, and that’s one reason I wanted to study spirituality was to kind of sort this out.

And it was in Paris that I met my mentor, Pierre Chaunu, a wonderful French Dominican theologian who named this creation spirituality tradition for me; and it made all the sense in the world because the other tradition, which is the dominant tradition in Christianity, is the Augustinian tradition, very dualistic, and it separates body from soul and matter from spirit and is also dualistic toward women. That’s what fundamentalism in all of it forms follows that path whereas the creation spiritual path is the oldest path in the Bible. It’s the J-Source of Genesis. It’s the path of a wisdom tradition, which is the tradition that Jesus himself came from, and that’s a nature-based spiritual experience more than book based, really.

Victor Fuhrman: Now, how did the works of Meister Eckhart and Thomas Merton influence your own work?

Matthew Fox: I did read Merton’s autobiography called Seven Story Mountain when I was a 16-year-old or so, and it was a big seller. He wrote it in 1948 after he joined the Trappist Monastery in 1940.

But, it was a real big seller in America. It sold millions of copies. And it was about contemplation and all that, and that was the strong part, although it was quite heavily dualistic and guilt-ridden and Augustinian.

But, in 1958, he started dialoguing with Dr. Suzuki, the Japanese Buddhist, who brought Zen to America, and Suzuki told him to read your one Zenthic of the West, Meister Eckhart. Well, Merton set out and did that, and it changed him. He really changed 180 degrees, but–from being this kind of dualistic and guilt-ridden monk of the ’40s and ’50s to being a much more prophetic figure. And his writings also were much more ecumenical, more interfaith. So, he was writing about Buddhism than in the ’60s and about war and the Vietnam War. He was the first figure in America to come out against the Vietnam War.

And he was a very fine, acute critic of both culture and religion because he also writes about fundamentalism, and he calls this the greatest idolatry of all time, the connection of fundamentalism with right wing politics. And he’s a very fierce and acute critic of culture and of religion, too.

And part of creation spirituality is to put original blessing out front instead of original sin, and that makes all the difference in the world. If you’re gonna run an empire, original sin is a great idea, and that’s precisely when original sin came up. Augustine came up with the idea in the 4th Century when Christianity inherited an empire.

So–but, really, the idea of original blessing that all beings are good, including humans, this is the tradition of creation spirituality. And Meister Eckhart had his interpretation of that, and Hildegard of Bingen and other great mystics did, and Merton, too. I take that subject up in my book here on Merton.

Victor Fuhrman: So, how does the work of Meister Eckhart and Thomas Merton and Hildegard von Bingen and the rest of those folks, the mystics as you call them, how does that manifest in creation spirituality?

Matthew Fox: Well, I name it to what we call “The Four Paths” and so in this book on Merton, I show that each of these paths is very rich in Merton. The first path is Via Positiva. That’s the way of what Rabbi Heschel calls radical amazement, of awe and wonder and gratitude and reverence.

And I think we’re all subject to that, especially in nature where we are moved by the beauty of everyday existence and of our place in the universe.

Then, the Via Negativa is the path of silence and solitude, but it’s also the path of a broken heart, of grieving, of the dark night of the soul that you spoke of. And that too is a breakthrough moment for many people. Meister Eckhart says, “In a breakthrough, I learn that God and I are one.”

And then the third path is the Via Creativa. That’s creativity, because when you’ve fallen in love, which is the Via Positiva, and then you’ve learned to let go, which is the Via Negativa, then you’re ready to give birth to something. You’re ready to bring your being, your wisdom, your vocation into the world, and that’s creativity.

And that’s a mystical experience for many people. When you’re in a highly creative state, you’re not looking at your watch, you’re not daydreaming so much as you’re being taken along for the ride by the power of creativity, the spirit–great spirit. And then the fourth path if the Via Transformativa. That’s the way of justice and compassion, and that becomes really the test of creativity, because obviously, we can use our creativity to create gas ovens, to destroy our made up enemies or to destroy rainforests in a day that has taken God and nature 10,000 years to give birth to. So, justice has to come in here as the real guide and direction for our creativity.

Those four paths, I think, name the deep spiritual journey. Rabbi Heschel says that “In the recesses of every human existence, a prophet” and the fourth path is that prophet. It’s our interfering with injustice. It’s standing up for justice, whether eco-justice, racial justice, economic, social justice. All that is prayer, also.

Victor Fuhrman: Getting back to your own path, you have the blessing of friendship and guidance from Thomas Merton. Please share what that experience was like.

Matthew Fox: Well, I never met him personally, but we did correspond. And so, in my book, I have a whole chapter on the letter he wrote me, and I kind of exegete it. And I–in some ways, I kept my distance a little bit after she died because I felt that the monastery was kind of creating a Merton factory. They were turning out so many of his books it kind of was overwhelming, and I just kept a little distance.

And so, that’s why this book was very fun for me to do, because here I’m now in my mid-’70s, and I realize that Merton and I went parallel paths, very close, that he too found Eckhart as pivotal. He used to write–he used to say Eckhart is my life boat, Eckhart is my life boat.

And I discovered Eckhart on my own, not through Merton, but Eckhart also is extremely important to me because the great spiritual tradition I was trying to unfold and share with others, it was marvelous to see someone like Eckhart who was so deeply immersed in this very same journey.

So, in some ways, it was Merton, Eckhart and myself that I find were traveling together down the same path but obviously with different personalities and backgrounds.

Victor Fuhrman: You talk about being mystic or the mystical path. What is a mystic?

Matthew Fox: A mystic is a lover. It’s the lover in all of us. We’re all mystics – at least we were when we were born. Sometimes, it gets beaten out of us by education and religion and a few other trippy things.

But, the truth is the mystic is one who’s vulnerable to being struck by awe. The mystic is the child in us, the poor, the puella who is still young enough and vulnerable enough to get excited about life and to be curious about life and to seek out what’s beauty and not to be–not to allow one’s self to be overwhelmed by the burdens of life and the failures and the struggles and the losses.

But, again, as I mentioned earlier, that’s the dark night of the soul, isn’t it? So, the mystics go to the edge, the edge of joy but also the edge of darkness and suffering, and they invite us to go to the edge, too.

There’s a great line from John of the Cross, a 16th Century Spanish mystic. He says, “Launch out into the deep.” And I think that’s real powerful archetypal language – again, the deep.

We all have depths inside of us, but I think, most of us are taught to stay on the shore. We don’t want to launch out. And I think religion in general, the churches in general at this time in history are very tepid.

You know, we talk about Wall Street being too big to fail and the “banksters” being too rich to jail. Well, I think a lot of religion is too tepid to sail. We’re not being invited to sail out into the deep, to explore the depths of our consciousness and of our possibilities.

But, the mystics are out there saying, come on in, the water’s fine, and this is what life is about. It’s about experiencing things in depth, not just staying on shore or staying with the superficial.

Victor Fuhrman: We mentioned in your biography at the beginning of the program that Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI, expelled you from the Dominican order. Why did he do that?

Matthew Fox: Well, he accused me of seven heresies, I guess he thought they were, and I take them up in this book on Merton, and I invite Merton into the docket with me, because frankly, I think he was teaching the same thing I was teaching.

So, the first is that he said I was a feminist theologian, and I didn’t know that was a heresy. I still don’t think it is. In fact, Jesus was a feminist. That’s one of the outstanding dimensions to his life and his teaching was how he elevated the role of women.

The second objection was that I called God “Mother.” Well, goodness, I mean, Isaiah 42 calls God “Mother,” but also all the great mystics of the Middle Ages call God mother. Hildegard did, and Eckhart and others.

And the third objection was that I prefer original blessing to original sin. We’ve already touched on that, and I certainly do. I think original sin is bad psychology, bad sociology and is bad theology. Jesus never heard of original sin. No Jew has ever heard of original sin. What are we doing chasing after original sin and saying that Jesus is inspiring our chase? Makes no sense at all.

Fourthly, I don’t condemn homosexuals, and of course not. Science has spoken. This is the Galileo case of our time. Are we gonna wait 400 years this time too for religion to come around to what science has made clear that there’s gonna be about an 8 percent population of gay and lesbians anywhere in the world, and this is how it is? So, we should recognize the diversity of people and of sexuality and get on with it.

Then another objection was that I worked too closely with Native Americans. Now, I have no idea what that really means except that I did have a Native American on my faculty – a couple of them, in fact. I think it’s very important to learn from the most ancient traditions of the planet and especially because their spirituality is so built around of course the respect for Mother Earth.

And so, I had a faculty member, a Lakota man, who had sweat lodges on our campus. And at the time, it was a Catholic liberal arts college, Holy Names College in Oakland. So, I guess that upset the Vatican. So, those are the objections, and I don’t think any of them hold water. And as I say, Thomas Merton really is on my side in all those situations.

Victor Fuhrman: And your dismissal, your expulsion from the Dominican order and the church, in retrospect, was this a blessing in disguise?

Matthew Fox: It was a bit like throwing me in that their briar patch, I guess, yeah.

Victor Fuhrman: Absolutely, because, quite frankly, your pursuit of what you did and the path that’s led you to where you are today may have been inhibited by remaining within the church.

Matthew Fox: Well, that’s true, because at that time especially under the two Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the church took giant steps backward. They brought the Inquisition back. And I wrote a book about this called The Pope’s Roar in which I really lay out the facts of what went on in that 34-year duo papacy, and the facts are not at all pretty.

Victor Fuhrman: Do you find that Pope Francis is turning some of this around?

Matthew Fox: Well, he’s trying to. I don’t think, frankly, that they can reform the organization itself. I think it’s just too far gone. And they’ve appointed–you see, 34 years is a long time. Think of it regarding the Supreme Court. If you pack it with right wing people with very little intellectual or acumen or conscience, this will go on for decades because that’s how long people are in places of power.

So, I admire Pope Francis. In fact, I quote him in the back of my book because he invoked Thomas Merton when he was giving the speech to Congress, and I certainly appreciate his Encyclical Laudato Si, which in fact was written by one of my graduates of one of my programs, actually – at least 80 percent of it was.

But, I don’t think he can actually change the church internally that much. So, I wouldn’t bet any money on the church as we know it flourishing. I think, in fact, the Holy Spirit’s behind all this. I think the Holy Spirit gave the world two bad popes in a row in order to end the church as we know it in a structural form so that we can return to a more authentic and simple expression of the teaching of Jesus and the Christ that followed, and I think that that’s really what’s going on.

I think that people are looking for the real thing and not for 2000 years of accretions in the name of institutional churchiness.

Victor Fuhrman: So, why did you name your latest book A Way to God?

Matthew Fox: Well, in his letter to me, Merton used that phrase, and it was a great paragraph. Merton, as you can sense, is a really good writer. He’s a poet, and he’s excellent with language. His parents were both artists. They met, in fact–his mother was from America, father from New Zealand, and they met in Paris at the Art Institute and fell in love, and Merton was born in Southern France.

But, he says, “I’m glad you’re working on spiritual theology. I do think we are lying down on the job when we leave others to investigate mysticism while we concentrate on more practical things. What people want to us, after all, is the way to God.”

So, I took that phrase “the way to God” and just altered it to A Way to God to be a little more humble, and I used that as the title of the book. And I think it speaks both to Merton’s passion because he wrote that to me the year before he died, 1967, and to my own.

Victor Fuhrman: What message would Thomas Merton deliver to our world today?

Matthew Fox: I love one passage where he says–he’s writing to himself in his journal, and he says, “You idiot, start dancing. What are you doing just sitting around? You should be dancing because life is such a banquet, life is so beautiful.”

And I think that’s what he would say. You idiots, quit destroying this banquet and stomping on it. Start dancing and celebrating it and sharing it. And that’s what justice is about. It’s about inviting more people to the celebration.

Victor Fuhrman: And how do we start seeing that Divine in everything in each other?

Matthew Fox: Well, there is an emptying process, of course, and that’s silence. The Scriptures say, be still and learn that I am God.

So, there is this need to still the human heart and what I would call the reptilian brain. I think that science helps us here. If we can calm that reptilian brain, which is 420 million years old in all of us, then the mammal brain, which is half as old, 210 million years, this is a compassionate brain, the brain of kinship and friends and family, then the compassionate brain can assert itself, and then the recent brain, the neo-cortex, which is our brain that makes us so dangerous and also so intelligent, then this could operate more out of compassion and less out of the reptilian brain that we see manifest everywhere, whether it’s in the ISIS and the wars and the militarism that we’re spending our money on or whether it’s in this presidential election that we’re stumbling through.

The reptilian brain is front and center, and it’s really embarrassing. And humanity has to pay more attention to the compassion brain, the mammal brain.

And this is not just a Jewish thing or a Christian thing. The Dali Lama says we can do away with all religion, but we can’t do away with compassion.

And the Quran, too, calls Allah “the compassionate one.” More than any other name for Allah, it is “the compassionate one.”

So, compassion is a universal teaching, and all these teachers are trying to tell us to wake up, shake it out and take care of the reptilian brain so that compassion can finally strut its stuff.

Victor Fuhrman: And Merton’s message to humanity, if he were here today, would get out there and get dancing. What’s Matthew Fox’s personal message to our world today?

Matthew Fox: Well, launch out into the deep. Don’t be afraid to go deep and to live religion at the level of experience, not the level of just dogmas and rote and memorized shibboleth. Live it at the level of experience.

Victor Fuhrman: Feel it within yourself. Know that it’s part of you and you are part of it.

Matthew Fox: Yes. It’s like the Psalmist says – taste and see that God is good. You have to taste it. No one can do it for you.

Victor Fuhrman: The wisdom of our wonderful guest Matthew Fox, author of the new book, A Way to God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey. www.matthewfox.org.

 

About Victor Fuhrman

Rev. Victor Fuhrman, MSC, is a healer, spiritual counselor, and author whose deep, rich, compassionate and articulate sound inspired the radio handle, “Victor the Voice”.  Victor is the host of Destination Unlimited, Wednesday 8 PM on OMTimes Radio.