Matthew Fox > Quotes

“Humor and paradox are often the only ways to respond to life's sorrow with grace.”
― Matthew Fox

“Where the Divine and the Human Meet" shows how important it is to meet the world with the creativity of an artist, particularly in these uncertain times:

"What do we do with chaos?

Creativity has an answer. We are told by those who have studied the processes of nature that creativity happens at the border between chaos and order. Chaos is a prelude to creativity. We need to learn, as every artist needs to learn, to live with chaos and indeed to dance with it as we listen to it and attempt some ordering. Artists wrestle with chaos, take it apart, deconstruct and reconstruct from it. Accept the challenge to convert chaos into some kind of order, respecting the timing of it all, not pushing beyond what is possible—combining holy patience with holy impatience--that is the role of the artist. It is each of our roles as we launch the twenty-first century because we are all called to be artists in our own way. We were all artists as children. We need to study the chaos around us in order to turn it into something beautiful. Something sustainable. Something that remains".”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“We are not consumers. For most of humanity’s existence, we were makers, not consumers: we made our clothes, shelter, and education, we hunted and gathered our food.

We are not addicts. “I propose that most addictions come from our surrendering our real powers, that is, our powers of creativity.” We are not passive couch potatoes either. “It is not the essence of humans to be passive. We are players. We are actors on many stages…. We are curious, we are yearning to wonder, we are longing to be amazed… to be excited, to be enthusiastic, to be expressive. In short to be alive.” We are also not cogs in a machine. To be so would be to give up our personal freedoms so as to not upset The Machine, whatever that machine is. Creativity keeps us creating the life we wish to live and advancing humanity’s purpose as well.”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“The system is not working. That is how a paradigm shift begins: the established way of seeing the world no longer functions.”
― Matthew Fox

“To speak of creativity is to speak of profound intimacy. It is also to speak of our connecting to the Divine in us and of our bringing the Divine back to the community. This is true whether we understand our creativity to be begetting and nourishing our children, making music, doing theater, gardening, writing, teaching, running a business, painting, constructing houses, or sharing the healing arts of medicine and therapy.”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“where does creativity come from?

Creativity comes from the Universe itself.

“There is music and poetry in the Universe itself — surely we hear it on planet earth.” And Creativity comes from our joys and sorrows, our deep-hearted experiences. It also comes “from and in the heart of God. All our spiritual traditions the world over agree that creativity follows through the human heart and that it flows from the Divine Heart.”

Creativity is seen as a spiritual, inwardly-driven activity, directly influenced by a Higher Power, or God. That is the ultimate in inspiration for me: to know I have “permission” to be creative and to be a creator too.”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“If you don't work on yourself, then much of your politics is merely projections. We have to walk our talk and do the inner work that allows the outer work to be authentic and also effective.”
― Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation

“Political movements for justice are part of the fuller development of the cosmos, and nature is the matrix in which humans come to their self-awareness of their power to transform. Liberation movements are a fuller development of the cosmos's sense of harmony, balance, justice, and celebration. This is why true spiritual liberation demands rituals of cosmic celebrating and healing, which will in turn culminate in personal transformation and liberation.”
― Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality Presented in Four Paths, Twenty-Six Themes, and Two Questions

“Creativity as Divine intimacy flows through us and is bigger than we are, urging us to go to the edge and grow larger. And our growth in turn delights God. “God is delighted to watch your soul enlarge,” says Eckhart.”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“Creativity and imagination are not frosting on a cake: They are integral to our sustainability. They are survival mechanisms. They are of the essence of who we are. They constitute our deepest empowerment.”
― Matthew Fox

“From suffering I have learned this: That whoever is sore wounded by love will never be made whole unless she embrace the very same love which wounded her. — Mechtild of Magdeburg”
― Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations

“The doctrine of the Incarnation is itself an invitation to all believers to love the earth, cherish it, find the divine in it.”
― Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality Presented in Four Paths, Twenty-Six Themes, and Two Questions

“What happens to another, whether it be a joy or a sorrow, happens to me. — Meister Eckhart”
― Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations

“Coomaraswamy also talks about Eckhart’s understanding of work and compares it to the teaching of the Upanishads: God “must do, willy-nilly,” according to his nature, without a why. In man this becomes what has been called the gratuitousness of art: “man ought not to work for any why, not for God nor for his glory nor for anything at all that is outside him, but only for that which is his being, his very life within him” (cf. Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, IV, 5, 6); “have no ulterior purpose in thy work,” “work as though no one existed, no one lived, no one had ever come upon the earth”; “all happiness to those who have listened to this sermon. Had there been no one here I must have preached it to the poor-box.” “I should do my works in such a way that they entered not into my will.…I should do them simply as the will of God,” “Above all lay no claim to anything. Let go thyself, and let God act for thee.”
― Matthew Fox, Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior for Our Times

“Who is this woman who preached of the “web of life” that all creation shares, but who warned that “the earth must not be injured, the earth must not be destroyed”—and that if humans misuse creation, “God will permit creation to punish humanity”?”
― Matthew Fox, Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times

“i hope i live to be 150”
― Matthew Fox

“men should not be sexing their women in the missionary position because they are facing away from the sky. Instead of looking down, men are to look up. To the vastness of Father Sky”
― Matthew Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine

“Is any place more intimate than the place where we create? Where we co-create with the Spirit of God and the Spirit of largesse that inspires our souls where we love? Where we make love? Where we love others through serving them with our labor? Where we love our children? Where we paint our truth? Where we dance our dance? Where we speak our words? Where we work? Where we utter our poetry? The”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“Who we thought we were dies when a beloved dies. And it takes a while for a new self to rise, often haltingly, from the ashes of our ravaged hearts.”
― Matthew Fox, Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic—and Beyond

“The letting go of patriarchy which creates one-sided citizens of women and men alike and culminates in violent living and violent relationships.”
― Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality Presented in Four Paths, Twenty-Six Themes, and Two Questions

“Between God and creation there is no between—that is the message of panentheism, as well as the message of the Cosmic Christ, the Buddha Nature, and tselem, the image of God that Judaism preaches. Such an understanding offers a re-affirmation of the sacredness inherent in all beings.”
― Matthew Fox, Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic—and Beyond

“God is voluptuous and delicious. — Meister Eckhart”
― Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations

“Only art as meditation reminds people so that they will never forget that the most beautiful thing a potter produces is...the potter.”
― Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality Presented in Four Paths, Twenty-Six Themes, and Two Questions

“What do we do with chaos? Creativity has an answer. We are told by those who have studied the processes of nature that creativity happens at the border between chaos and order. Chaos is a prelude to creativity. We need to learn, as every artist needs to learn, to”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“Sufis like to say: “This is not a religion; it is religion,” or “Sufism is the essence of all religions,” which provides “a belief in an inner teaching beyond formalized religion.” In other words, Sufism puts spirituality first — getting to the heart of the matter, the lived experience of the Divine. Eckhart does the same; he tried to get deeper than the “formalized” version of Christianity. Sufism explicitly practices what I call Deep Ecumenism, honoring the essence of religious teaching and the lived experience of Divinity, found in all religious traditions.”
― Matthew Fox, Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior for Our Times

“Julian, by calling us to interfere with patriarchy and heal the wounds that it has wracked upon human history and the human soul and the earth, beckons us from folly to wisdom. Are we listening?”
― Matthew Fox, Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic—and Beyond

“Who is this woman who took on the Emporer Barbarosa, comparing him to an infant and a madman, and threatened that God’s sword would smite him? Who is this woman”
― Matthew Fox, Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times

“One way to combat it was to force sailors to stay on ships for forty days after anchoring, only allowing them to come ashore if they were well after forty days—thus the term quarantine (from the word for forty).”
― Matthew Fox, Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic—and Beyond

“Western civilization has preferred love of death to love of life to the very extent that its religious traditions have preferred redemption to creation, sin to ecstasy, and individual introspection to cosmic awareness and appreciation.”
― Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality - Presented in Four Paths, 26 Themes and Two Questions

“Human beings are midway between the size of a living cell and the size of Earth.”
― Matthew Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine