NAVIGATING THE DARK NIGHT OF SOUL, SOCIETY AND OUR SPECIES with the Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox, May 23
Navigating the Dark Night of Soul, Society and Our Species
Lessons & Archetypes from Mystics:
Hildegard of bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hafiz, and John of the Cross
7 p.m., Friday, May 23 on Zoom
To register, please send your name and contact information to:
[email protected] and we will email you a zoom link.
A $10 donation would be gratefully accepted and can be made on our website:
Join us to hear The Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox, renowned spiritual theologian and scholar
of ancient and modern mysticism. Matthew Fox, says the wisdom of ancient and
modern mystics provides us with a template for accessing our deeper humanity in
times of chaos and uncertainty.
"Today, the survival of our species and planet hinges on our ability to bring our
noble, wise, and compassionate selves into our daily lives. While our nation and
world is under assault by tyrannical power-brokers, rather than languish in the
spiritual poverty to which those abuses would reduce us, Dr. Fox looks to the
wisdom of ancient (and modern) mystics for a way to find our true empowerment. "
Through the inner lens of the mystic, we can access the deepest longings of the
human soul to, as Carl Jung would say, reach the source of our greatest strength
to overcome the onslaught of current world events – of war, poverty, political
exploitation of the poor and marginalized – to deaden us. In Dr. Fox’s recent book,
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election,
he “Holds up the archetype of the Anti-Christ to help name the current battle
of democracy vs. theocracy and of lovers of the Earth vs. deniers of climate change
in our time.”
Dr. Fox uses this powerful Anti-Christ archetype, “to name real evil in our midst,
evil that is not stupid or without talent, for evil seldom is. The Antichrist—whether
that of Hildegard, Signorelli, Luther, Calvin, and other reformers—is an archetype
for troubled times because it helps name evil in our midst. And its remedies.”
In this zoom presentation, Dr. Fox likens the current world crisis to a “dark night
of the soul,” a phrase attributed to St. John of the Cross. The question before us
is, “How do we navigate this dark night, how do we find meaning in this challenging
time facing our nation and world, spiritually, psychologically, politically, economically,
and environmentally?” Dr. Fox looks for the source of guidance in the wisdom of
the mystics from the major world faith traditions.
We hope you will join us for this opportunity to hear from one of the world’s
great theologians whose teaching and writing span decades and all faith and
cultural traditions.
“Matthew Fox might well be the most creative, the most comprehensive,
surely the most challenging religious-spiritual teacher in America. He
has the scholarship, the imagination, the courage, the writing skill to fulfill
this role at a time when the more official Christian theological traditions
are having difficulty in establishing any vital contact with either
the spiritual possibilities of the present or with their own most creative
spiritual traditions of the past ….
He has, it seems, created a new mythic context for leading us out of our
contemporary religious and spiritual confusion into a new clarity of mind and
peace of soul, by affirming rather than abandoning any of our traditional beliefs.”
~Thomas Berry,
author of The Great Work,
The Dream of the Earth and The Universe Story
“(Matthew Fox’s) creation spirituality is the spirituality of the future, and his
Theology of the Cosmic Christ is the theology of the future.
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They were artists, musicians, poets, and wise men and women inspired deeply
by a transcendent experience of the Divine.
Who were these incredible people who, rather than curse the darkness found
the light within themselves - not just to cope with their challenges, but to
thrive spiritually and soulfully? Here, we introduce:
Hildegard de Bingen, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Hafiz, and St. John of the Cross:
