From Religiosity to Spirituality

Matthew Fox’s spiritual enthusiasm has taken him beyond the dogma of the Catholic Church and for this he’s been censored by the Vatican and ultimately expelled from the order of the Dominicans. However, this has not stilled his voice for a theology that both harkens back to such religious philosophers as Thomas Aquinas, Hildegard of Bingen, and Meister Eckhart, and includes the more recent voices of Suzuki Roshi and Thomas Merton. For example, Fox is tapping into a mystical cosmology when he talks about prayer. “I knew that in native languages there’s no word for art, there’s no word for religion but [a Lakota teacher] said there was no word for prayer until the missionaries came from Europe. They demanded that they make up a word for prayer. So they said we just sat around and made up a word which really means to shout out, but he said there’s no word for prayer. And that’s exactly what I meant by swimming in a matrix. Prayer is not something you do aside from the breathing you do every day, and the decisions you make every day, and the choices you make. That’s prayer. It’s utterly non-dualistic in the native tradition, that’s why they don’t have a word for it. It’s like breathing. This fits very much with my idea that prayer is swimming and prayer is a radical response to life.” Fox continues his priesthood as an Episcopal priest and has developed the richly dynamic and numinous, Cosmic Mass. (hosted by Justine Willis Toms)