Matthew Fox

or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. They feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Matthew Fox, an American priest

and theologian. Formerly a member of the Dominican Order within the Roman Catholic Church. He became a member of the Episcopal Church following his expulsion from the Order. In Fox was an early and influential exponent of the movement that came to be known as Creation Spirituality. The movement draws inspiration from Christian mystics as well as the wisdom traditions

of Christian scriptures. Creation Spirituality is also strongly aligned with ecological and environmental movements of the late twentieth century and embraces numerous spiritual traditions around the world. Fox has written thirty books that have sold millions of copies. His latest book is called A Way to God, Thomas Burton's Creation Spirituality Journey. Here's the interview. Hi, Matthew, welcome to the show. Thank you, very good to be with you. I'm happy

to have you on. Your latest book is called A Way to God, and it is a book about the spirituality of Thomas Murton and how that ties with your various thoughts on spirituality over the years. I'm a long time Thomas Murton fan. Uh I was lucky that I had a high school teacher who introduced me to Thomas Murton. And uh, I've just always I was lucky, indeed, and it was a great man. Unfortunately he's not with us anymore. Both Thomas Murton and the gentleman who introduced me to him.

So we'll get into all that in a minute. And I'm really I'm really excited to explore your views on spirituality through the lens of Thomas Murton. But let's start, like we always do, with the parable. And in the parable, there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kind, this and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like

greed and hatred and fear and the grants. That stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, it's it's certainly a like many parables. It's uh, it's useful and rich and

has many, I think many angles to it. But to me, it's about as Eric from says, we that necrophilia grows when biophilia is stunted, so we have to feed biophilia on a daily basis, the love of life, it needs nurturing, it needs feeding, and otherwise necrophia, the other love of death will will creep in and take over. And you can apply this to to so many possibilities in our life. For example, fear. If you're going to feed fear, then a fear is going to be more important to us

than compassion. Thomas Akrins in thirteenth century said that fear is such a powerful emotion and humans that when it takes over, it drives compassion out. So I think you could actually go through all the chakras, and my my book on evil that just came out in a new new edition with the new preface and with a forward

by Depark Chapra. I take the seven chakras of the East and compared to the seven capital sins of the West, because if we feed our chakras well, if you will, then we have a balanced and a healthy and energetic life, one where where love is at the heart of each of the chakras. You might say, but if if we're off center, then we fall into wealth a year with

the fourth the chakra, the heart chakra, or envy. With the seventh chakra or um gluttony, that is to say, gagging ourselves by taking in all the time instead of a birthing with our our fifth chakra and so forth. So you know, I see this story this parable as

um as being powerful and and with multiple interpretations. Yeah, it really That's one of the things I love about it and why we've been able to, uh, you know, have a show that we keep talking about it because I think it opens it up itself up to a lot of different interpretations. One of the things that uh

is a theme that goes through the book. And then I know that you have a lot of views on I though it's something that Thomas Merton wrestled with and I think about it a lot, and and so I want to I want to dig a little bit deeper into it. But it's really balancing um contemplation, So the going off by ourselves in silence and focus on what's happening internally with us and and you know, from a spiritual perspective, and then action outwards um action into the

world good works various different things. And so like I said in the book, you know, Thomas Merton is kind of wrestling with it, you know, throughout his life, and I know you certainly have a have a perspective on it. So let's talk a little bit about that. How do

we balance those two things? Well, it's it's a great question, and I think a lot of people are wrestling with this today, especially a lot of young people I meet, because they're interested in activism on the one hand, but they know that to do it well, you have to do that inner work too. You have to find a space where you can be emptied as well. Otherwise there's a great danger of simply through action projecting or I was seeing us onto others, so that emptying is is

always necessary. Now. Thomas Merton, of course, was being a Trappist monk, which is a very strict order where for example, they get up to the night in the middle of the night to sing the psalms and pray, and where in fact they don't talk a whole lot. They they take vows of silence. The whole structure of the lifestyle is to develop contemplation. But Merton felt this need to to speak out, especially the last ten years of his life. Uh, and it became much more of a profit. It was

speaking to issues like the Vietnam War. He was the first just figure to come out against Vietnam War, and he spoke to issues like technology and how it was a double edged sword, and ecology. He responded to Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring almost immediately, praising her and telling her that because of her book, they were not going to use DDT any longer on the monastery farm and

so forth. So, as you say, he was wrestling with it continuously, and sometimes you felt a little guilty because again most of the monks were kind of staying closer to the monastery routine. He went out and became a hermit on the property of the monastery, but still lived in his own hut as a hermit, and that a lot of him, I think, to go deeper into the solitude and the silence that he required. But at the same time, um, he also wrote a lot, so his

voice became that much louder, you might say. I think that that it really comes to realizing that our giving birth are using our voice, our fifth shock, or our throat, are speaking out being prophetic. After all, the word profit means comes from the Greek prophetos. To speak out being

prophetic is everybody's business. Uh, No one can just uh turn in and try to find that ultimate peace and sit there forever, especially today when ecosystem is collapsing and when there's so many issues in the world that need attention, were firmly lodged. You know the show I would say in you know a little bit in it, it's certainly categorized as self help or or personal development. And I have that, you know, similar to what you're saying that wrestling with At what point is you know, am I

staring at myself too intently? Right? At what point is what I'm doing just so that I feel better? Um? And at what point is it serving a greater good? Well? Those are really important questions to ask. And uh we are attempted, especially in our culture, uh to be antipocentric, human centered, and as pro Francis names are narcissistic as a species. Uh, So we do have to ask not only how are we feeling, but how are other beings

feeling about our presence on the planet. And I think this helps to wake us up, to to get us into modes that are activists in the in the best sense of the word, because if we work out of love, then we're okay. Like my stracker the great fourteenth century mystic who, by the way, it was a big influence

on Murton. He already converted. Merton in nineteen fifty eight says, if you've learned to let go and let be, you're always in the right place at the right time, whether you're in a monastic cell alone, or whether you're in a marketplace or in the streets. So I think we have to think in terms, especially today, kind of a portable solitude that we carry with us so that we can find space even in the midst of of busy work.

And I think that's it's such challenge, but we're capable of it because over the centuries people like maister Eckhart and Thomas Murton have shown this is truly possible. Another thing that will runs through the book and honestly runs through all of your work. You've defined sort of four paths to God or four ways towards God, and maybe we can get into some of those, maybe we can cover them all in detail, but one of them is

is related to creativity. Creativity is a real path towards God or towards enlightenment, or call it what you want. And that's certainly for me been one of the big ways for me that a spiritual life has moved from a thought something that I think about and I intellectually understand. I feel it more when I'm being creative, and it's something that really runs through all of your work and and certainly through this book as well. Can you talk

a little bit about that path. I wrote a book on creativity called Creativity where the divine and the human meat and so creativity definitely is is a mystical experience for people. Um. Often when you're in a creative state, you're not looking at your watch, you're not counting the time, You're lost your your inter an alternative place, in an

alternative consciousness. Um. The image I have of being in a creative state is being on a raft going down a rushing river without an oar uh, you're going along for the ride. Again. My Strack had had a great sermon on that. He took a line from the Psalms that talks about the Holy Spirit as a rushing river. So this is the Holy Spirit at work. And Thomas Marton is explicit about that. He says that theology of

the Holy Spirit is about our creativity. A great thirteenth century genius and Mr Thomas Aquinas says, the same spirit that hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation hovers over the mind of the artist at work. And I love that because it connects our creativity to the creativity of the universe. And of course, now with postmodern physics, we know that the whole universe has been created from the get go, from the very uh millisecond when the

fireball began thirteen point eight billion years ago. Now this is news. Under Newton's universe, uh universe has finished and and done essentially and we have to kind of fit in. But not so. Under Einsteinian and post Einsteinian physics, we're part of this ongoing birthing process. For example, a star has been born every fifteen seconds. So the sky is

full of creativity. And so we have not only permission, but the responsibility to participate in the in the vast powers of creativity that the universe and that spirit that invite us to And when you look at our problems today, especially around climate change and the destruction of so many species and so forth, clearly the only thing we have going for us as a species is our creativity. How can we reinvent our way of living on the Earth so that we can pass on a healthy planet to

future generations. I think, for example, in India now they've invented a car that runs down air. But that seems like a pretty creative thing to do, you know, and we we just begun, I think, to to unleash our creativity visa v the the peril uh that we face regarding ecological challenges of our time. I agree, And I think that your point about the universe sort of being in an ever present state of creation is something that

I've definitely noticed that that that feels right. And a lot of my background has been more Buddhist focused and and Buddhism read the wrong way is sort of a

you know, be content with the way things are. And that's another of those paradoxes that I feel like I'm balancing, and we balance on the show, which is, you know, it seems that the nature of the universe is to move forward and to create, And how do you balance that desire that's striving for things to be different and wanting to create and move forward, as well as being present in the current moment and happy and accepting of

the way things are. I find that to be another of those paradoxes or balancing challenge just so to speak, well, I agree, and again that's a very important question, and I think it's a both and thing. You see. So, on the one hand, we want to be fully present, and that's certainly a Buddhist notion. It's also Jesus notion when he says the Kingdom and Queen of God is among you, that that's an is thing. It's not that it will be or that it has been, but it is.

And so being fully present to the now is is a part of any mystical teaching worthy of the of the name, whether it comes from the East or the west. But as you say, to be fully present doesn't mean you're fully content with the way things are. After all, suffering and the awareness of suffering is a deep part of the Buddhist teaching as well as it is of the christ story. Certainly, the crucifixion is an archetype of how a suffering comes to all of us, even the

innocent and the just. So um so there's a call both to be present in the business of the moment, but also to be a sensitive to the suffering of other beings. And this, of course that gets you off the cushion, if you will. That gets you into the world, and it gets you into your imagination, your moral imagination, as you say, to be creative and to find ways to heal, to be compassionate in our actions, not just in our thoughts. This might be a good place to

go into your work on the four paths? Is it safe to say that the paths towards God? Is that how you refer to them? Well, I call it the four paths of creation spirituality. To me, it's it's a way to name what a spiritual journey is in his in his deepest sense. And I find these paths very archetypal. They apply to many many things. Well however you want to apply them. But yeah, let's talk about that. So the first path is the via positive and via is

a Latin word for path or ways. So um via positive is about the experience of joy and awe and wonder and delight. It's the opening up of our hearts really and our souls. The first steparty of a of a mystical journey. And it's like Rabbi Heschel says, oh is the beginning of wisdom uh and he talks about

radical amazement that too. Mary Oliver the North American Poe and Mystics, She talks about astonishment, she says, and she says, I AM willing to be dazzled, So that whole concept that we can be dazzled, we can be astonished, we can be struck by awe. Um, that's really the opening. Um, I think of our hearts in the mystical journey. What are some ways that people become more open to that?

Because we we tend to live in a you know, been there, done that kind of culture, right, you know, that's a that's a common phrase where people like whatever. You know, So how do how do we open ourselves more? You know, how does someone go about opening themselves more to the mystery and the awe and the joy of

this world? Well, actually, that's where the next path, that via negativa comes in, because the emptying that happens there and the silence, letting go of images and so forth, that actually um ups the anti It purifies the senses so that you can be more present. Um. For example, but ghost to us as a Lakota teacher who was worked with me a lot, and we were good friends, and he used to say, Um, you want to know how sacred water is, go without it for three days.

There you go, you go without water for three days, then your first sip of water, you rediscover you no longer take for granted. And and that's important. I think the mystic learns not to take for granted, the same as true of course of of meditation and where you focus on the breath. You know, it's easy to take breath for granted, isn't it, because we're so busy breathing.

But as I like to tell people, if you've been present for the first breath of a newborn baby or the last breath of someone leaving, uh, you know how sacred breath is. But why is it that all the breasts in between we can easily take for granted. So that is where slowing down and being great for breath

and gratitude is part of the via positiva, you see. Um, And so it's reverence to you learn reverence for water if you go with it for three days or here I'm living in California, I think we're beginning to learn reverence for water because we've been in a drought for years. So um, these are some of the tactics that humans from many traditions. Consider, for example, we're recording this at

the time of Ramadan in the in the Muslim tradition. Well, Ramadan, of course is about fasting all day than than eating in the evening. But that too is a is a practice to teach us not to take food for granted, and not to take the big basics of life for granted, and to be in a in a position where you're able to let go and to let be and not just be addicted to our habits of meals three times

a day and so forth. So you might say, really, when you look at it, all the traditions of the world have tried to get humans to um, to purify our our presence on the planet, and to be more grateful, more reverent, and therefore more more struck by awe, more vulnerable to beauty. And I think the other one that that Merton writes about, and a queenness writes about, and lots of people do his nature absolutely. In fact, there's a passage here and in Merton I would love to

share under the via positive. He's such a marvelous writer, you say, such an artist, and you know it's difficult to write about the mystical experiences we have. William James the psychologists said ineff ability is one of the signs of mysticism. You know so, and and my Strector says, we stutter and stammer when we talk about God. But here's here's Martin. I think he he plays it so well. He says, um, I live in the woods out of necessity.

I get out of bed in the middle of the night, because it is imperative that I hear the silence of the night alone, and with my face on the floor say psalms alone in the silence of the night. The silence of the forest is my bride, and the sweet, dark warmth of the whole world is my love. And out of the heart of that dark warmth comes a secret that has heard only in silence. But it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their beds all over the world.

It is beautiful, and of course he's he's talking about his personal experience with nature, getting up in the middle of the night and so worth getting down on the ground, But also how it relates to every every other being's experience of nature and the intimacy of of love. Making and all the rest that he de antipocentualizes love making, so he puts it in the context of the love of the night because the night is his bride. So I just think it's a it's a beautiful naming of

the video positiva. And as you say, nature uh is always blessing us. Uh, It's just that we're not always paying attention and we're not always grateful. So this is why we need practices to make us more aware and more present to what is. So we talked on the via positiva and we started into the via negativo, which is the emptying out. Um, let's talk a little bit more about that and then we'll move on to the next to sure, Yes, the via negativ is about letting

go and letting be. It's about uh, silence, solitude, emptying out, canosis. Though it's also about suffering and grieving and those very separate things, but they both are about tasting the epiphetic divinity, the god of darkness. My stirker says, um got a super essential darkness who has no name and will never be given a name. So this is very Buddhist, very Buddhist path too, because as you know, many Buddhists do not want to go around uh employing the word God.

In fact, Han used to say, my favorite theologian is one who never talks about God. But you know, it's interesting. I heard a story since my book came out just a month ago, this book in Thomas Murton. Um. I heard a story from a very serious Buddhist practitioner. He's been to India and Tibet many times, so he's met the Dalai Lama. He said that not too long ago, the Dalla lam was asked do you believe in God?

And the dollar Lamma said yes, And then the fellow pushed him and said, well, I mean do you really, I mean you're Buddhist and all this and all this, and then the daa Llamma said, I believe in the God of Thomas Murton. I thought that was amazing because you know, Merton and Doggie Lama did meet in that Uh. Merton was the first Christian who the Dollar Lamba ever met, and the Dagga Lama was thirty three at the time.

Merton was making his final journey, as it turned out, going east, going to Asia, and they met in India and they hit it off. So well that both of them canceled their appartments for the next day and spent a second whole day together. So it was important to them both and uh that's part of the story of Merton. But anyway, so the via negativa is both about silence and letting go, but it's also about grieving and uh facing suffering, not running from it. The mystics talk about

the dark knight of the soul. For example, I would say today we are in a dark knight of our species that, uh, the dark knight is an important place to be. You learn things in the dark knight you don't learn elsewhere, but you have to stick around. The temptation is too well. As as Haffis, the thirteenth century Sufi mystic, put it, most people want to pack their bags and high tail at out of town when they find that God is in such a a drunken mood

that everything is side down and nothing's working. But he says, the warrior sticks around, and that's part of being a warrior, to face the dark night and to see what it has to teach us and to learn uh from what it has to teach us. So that's part of the via negativa. Also, okay, let's move on to the third. Yes, well, the third is what we talked about early, the via creative of the creative path. Nice director writes as he says, I once had a dream. Even though I'm a man,

I jumped. I was pregnant, pregnant with nothingness, and out of this nothingness God was born. So the whole idea that the tasting of the dark and of the ashes and of grief that can happen in the via negativa, and even the experience of nothingness is in fact a a an occasion for gestation, for the birth of something new. That creativity, in his deepest sense, comes out of nothing. It's if it's really new, not just reshuffling what is,

but it's really bringing something new into the world. So creativity, as we said earlier, this too is a path, is part of the journey of of the mystical life. And it's the bridge really between contemplation and action. It's the bridge the via creativa, because here is now where we we begin to make choices. In the via creativa. Every artist has to make choices. A painter has to decide um what kind of paints are gonna Use's gonna be acrylic or oil, what size the painting will be, of course,

what colors to bring forward, and so forth. So the via creativa is really the beginning of our choice making. Via positive and via negative are more about undergoing. The creativa is about beginning to choose, beginning to give birth in certain ways. And then we come to the via transformativa, the transformative way, and um, that is the way of

compassion and justice. That all creativity is not um, it's not positive after all, Uh, inventing gas ovens as was done in the Secondary War and the Holocaust, was an efficient way to kill one's enemies or scapegoats. But and it was creative, but it certainly wasn't a holy or even a moral path. So the same as nuclear weapons. The same is true of that we can tear down a rainforest in a day today that has taken nature

and God ten thousand years to give birth to. So clearly our creativity is a powerful thing, and it can be used for evil, for destruction or or or necrophilia, or can be used for biophilia and love of life, and we have to be aware of that. So the via transformativa, justice and compassion, they become the test if you will, or the parameters Uh for our our creativity, um and uh. You know, the Dalai Lama says we can do it with all religion, but we can't do

away with compassion. Compassion is my religion. Well, that's true, and it's true not just the Dalai Lama, but Jesus Luke six says, be you compassionate, as you're creating in heaven is compassionate. And in the Jewish tradition from which he derives, of course, um, compassion is a secret name for God. And in Islam, um allow, the compassionate one is by far the most common phrase for for divinity in the Kuran. So Um, we're all capable of compassion,

but we have to give it our attention. And the other three paths, the positive of the negative of the creative. These feed compassion. We have to be in love, that's to via positiva. We have to know something about letting go, that's a via negativa. And we have to put our creativity to work if compassion and justice making are going to bear fruit and be effective. That was really struck by those four and and I just think there's so much there in that in that path. I'm looking forward

to exploring a lot more of it. We talked about Merton being such a great writer, and there's a phrase that he used that you you quote in the book, and it just it sums up so much of how I feel about a lot of things today. But he discussed the glittering niagara of trivia, that our culture is, yes, that the media is Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And and you know, of course he wrote he died in ninety eight, so he wrote that in the sixties, you know,

fifty fifty sixty years ago, and it's gotten worse. Hasn't had no idea what was coming exactly, And yet he was prophetic. Really he named it the glittering niagara of trivia. Isn't that? But most of the news is about, Isn't that? With a lot of the media are are feeding on um?

What can I say? He was so awake, he was so alert, And I think part of it is that he underwent a very strict for many years, for eighteen years in his monastery, he went a very strict practice of empty and kenosis, letting go, and and it made him very keen in his intellect and in his awareness, but then he had the shift in ninety there was actually doctor Suzuki, the man who brought Zen Buddhism to America,

to North America from Japan. He's the one who really urged Martin to start reading my strack cards, as he said, the one Zen thinker of the West. And when Merton started doing that beginning of he he entirely shifted from being a dualistic and a guilt ridden, overly introspective monk on Augustinian monk of the forties and most of his of the fifties, he shifted to being this prophetic mystic in the well the last ten years his life, from ninety nineteen sixty. And in fact, I believe that he

was murdered by our government. Um. I think the evidence is really out there now because he stood up against the Vietnam War, among other things. We know his phone was tapped, just like Kings was, and as Mayor was intercepted. It was against the law, but it was done. And I've now spoken to three CIA agents who were in South An East Asia at the time and asked them if they killed Merton, and the first one said, I will neither affirm it nor deny it. The second one said,

we were wallowing in money at that time. There was no accountability whatsoever. He said, if just any CIA agent felt Merton was a threat to the country, they could easily have done a man with no questions asked. And the third one I met after this book came out a few weeks ago, and he said to me simply, yes we did. Wow. That's tragic and um stunning it is, and it means, you know, Merton died a martyr for peace.

Talking about him being so forward thinking, um, you know, seeing so clearly he in that day named technology as the great problem of the day. And that's only accelerated. And I want to read a little of what he said there because it's just it's it's so spot on. He says, when the acceleration becomes such that efficiency and progress become ends rather than means, then you have the

technological revolution. This results in a climate of practicality for its own sake and a contempt for value and for principle. The questions asked or not is this right? Or is this good? But will this work? And will it pay off? Will it increase our profits? And you know, there's so much of the internet. You know, you hear all these about you know, all these hacks. You know, you hack your life, hack this hack that, which is all about finding a shortcut. And the question that I'm often asked

is like to what and why exactly? And Um, as you say that that issue of technology again has has blown up, you might say, since the nineteen sixties has become a bigger issue than ever before. Um, remember too that in Merten's day, the big technological uh dream was about getting to the moon, and uh everyone was talking about it. This is where so much money was going and all the rest. But Merton, Um, he raised questions about it. He said, Um, what is what is wrong?

He said, Well, even ants can fly, Even if man flies all over the universe, he's still nothing but a flying ant until he covers a human center and a human spirit in the depth of his own being. That is so important against so prophetic that you know, we can take our stuff to Mars, to the moon around Venus, but if and if we don't deal with our stuff, um, we're we're just spreading our troubles elsewhere. And um, notice, for example, how these ge whiz gadgets that come out

of silicon Valley every year. These are being used by Isis. Uh. This fellow who did this horrible murder uh last weekend at the gay club in Orlando. He uh in the middle of it, as we all know, got on his iPhone and called the police to break about. He was doing it in the name of Isis. But notice he had an iPhone, So evil does not care. In fact, evil leaps on to get more efficient technology. Uh and and to and Isis has all the latest gadgets from

Silicon Valley and they always will have it. So what this shows is that Silicon Valley cannot redeem us. Silicon Valley is what they give birth to. These are are useful items, but they can be used for evil and to make evil more efficient, and not just for good. And so we have to go deeper into the human consciousness, the human psyche and personhood to clean up the evil, just as um as Merton was talking about back then. Uh. There's a wonderful poem where he talks about this. He

calls it first lesson about Man. He says, man begins in zoology. I'm sure by that he means our evolutionary um background. He is the saddest animal. He drives a big red car called Anxiety. Whenever he goes to the phone to call Joy, he gets the wrong number. Therefore, therefore he likes weapons. He knows all guns were their right names. He drives a big black catillect called Death. Now he's putting Anxiety into space. He flies his worries all around Venus. You see, that's just what he was

saying about the ants that can fly. Man is a saddist animal. He begins in zoology and gets lost in his own bad news. Yeah, I love that poem. You had it in the book. It's so it's so good. It is, and it it you know, it rattles a cage. We have to go think deeper than technology, deeper than the ge whiz gadgets that we keep coming up with.

In fact, I will say this, I think the Silicon Valley, with all of his success and all of his contribution, I think they should tax themselves put some money in a pot to explore more deeply the human psyche, this whole issue of where evil comes from and so forth. Uh, Because um, it's not enough to just keep putting out more gadgets. We've got to examine and and Martins says this this. He says, there's a harder discovery, the deeper

journey than just getting to the moon and back. This journey of what separates us from ourselves, this journey of learning who we really are a deep inside and I think that Silicon Valley should be helping us with this, besides providing iPhones for the likes of this manner just

kill fifty people, I think, and isis itself. I think Silicon Valley should be asking itself, how can we take some of our earnings and Heaven knows they have enough and put it into a deeper exploration of the role of evil uh in in the human psyche and of our pretend and so forth, and for reencountering the sacred. Indeed, you brought up the tragedy in Orlando over the weekend, and Um, I had this Mark is something to talk

with you about. And then the fact that there was a tragedy and a gay club you know, just you know, days ago, that's kind of in the front of everybody's mind. I thought this was it would be an interesting question to bring up. You were, um, where you kicked out of the Catholic Church. Is that the right word for it? I was expelled from the Dominican Order, which I had been a member for thirty or four years. So that's

that's the technical for it. You were accused of a number of heresies, and you you walk through them in the book, and you sort of give both your response as well as how Merton might have defended you. And uh, but in it you say, you know, one of the heresies against you was that you do not condemn homosexuals. And I'm gonna quote you now and then you can

elaborate on it. After that, you say, how can we condemn something that science is proven is found and at least four hundred and sixty four other species, and is found in every human community. About eight percent of the human population is gay or lesbian. That is just the way it is. If we apply St. Thomas's principle that a mistake about creation results in a mistake about God, then the persistence of homophobia in the name of religion is worship of a false God. Talk a little bit

more about that. I think that's really profound and and beautiful. Well, I think that the issue of homosexuality today is the Galileo case of our time, because four years ago religion and a little crazy and and uh and uh locked Galileo up and so forth, because science was telling us new things that the Earth isn't flat, and that the Sun isn't going around the Earth, We're going around the Sun,

and so forth. So um, so today science has spoken, and you know, it's been fifty years or so since, Uh, homosexuality was removed from the list of disease or sickness by psychology and was recognized that this is where it is. There is a sexual minority, and in fact they have

a very important role to play. Uh. A Native American who really knew her tradition years ago told me that for those who really know that Native American story before the Europeans came, that all the spiritual directors to the great chiefs were gay because gay people have a more a deeper access to spirituality than straight people do. And she said this has known and now since then I've learned this as a case in the Celtic tradition and in many African tribes as well, from the ancient times.

You know, I had a amazing experience in South Korea two years ago. I lectured and it was a large crowd. People were packed in well over six. But the very last question was um from the twenty six year old. He stood up and he said, I am gay, and I do not feel welcome in the church here in South Korea. And he sat down. And then I just went into this. You know, I mentioned science. I also pointed out my Bible says God is love, it doesn't

say God is heterosexual love exclusively, and uh. And I talked about the indigenous people and and and gay and science and all the rest. And then my last line was something like this. So I said, any society or community that that worships a homophobic God is shooting itself in the foot because it's losing spiritual energy. Then I ended with that. Two things happened. One, my translator disappeared.

She just left the room. And the person who invited me, the man of then became rushing up to the luck turn knocked it over. He was so excited, and he said, you've just dropped a bomb. You've just dropped a bomb. He's said South Korea is the most homophobic culture in the world. But someone had to drop the bomb and had to be an outsider. As good. You did it well. The next morning, I was on a train with my translator going south for some more gigs, and she said

to me, I want to apologize. She said that I left the room. But I am lesbian, she said, and uh, while you were talking there, I could barely translate what you were saying. She said, the top of my head was coming off, and the moment you finished, I ran to the bathroom and I cried for an hour. Now, this woman was a very professional, competent woman, about thirty five years old, very strong. I liked her a lot.

But to hear that story, this competent, professional woman, her top of her head was coming off, she had to cry for an hour. She said, you're the first theologian. Uh, and certainly the first priest I've ever heard talk like that. Well. Um, I did hear later that people were saying they were Buddhists there, Buddhist monks, and they were Catholic sisters. And someone told me that Catholic sisters were walking around saying, oh my my, we have to change our position on

Almo sexuality. So that's good. We dropped some change there. But I just think that story is so sad and so powerful that this grown, strong woman had to go to the bath room and cry for an hour and um and the top of her head came off because for the first time in her life she was validated as a human being. Yep, yep, I agree. It's beautiful and the opposite of that the tragedy that you know, so many people have to go through. Thankfully, we seem to be making great strides here in the US and

and you know, we've got a ways to go. But the the the trend is certainly looking positive as a society right now, which is very heartwarming. But religions, you know, tend to be way behind. I mean, obviously there are some who are not, but the Vatican does not moved very much on this subject. This focus trying to think talking about mercy, see but what about justice? Uh So the Vatican is just trying to move a little bit. And then, of course you have a lot of Muslims

who like the man who did the shooting. From all evidence that I've heard now, he himself was gay. He attended gay clubs, he got online to gay uh vote and all that. So here's this is what happens. You know, no one hates homosexuals more than a homosexual who hasn't dealt with it because he's hating himself and so this

could be the cause behind this entire UH tragedy. So it's no small thing, you know, to UH to teach people in the name of God that they are a blotch on a humanity and UH Unfore she many religions are still doing this East and West um um, not just Islam, but pockets of Christianity too, and and that could lead us into a long, long discussion about um, you know, society's move in certain cases away from religion and what we gain and what we lose there, and

so much of your work is focused, I think on those kind of questions. But we are out of time, so maybe we will have to do around two of this at some point, because because this has been great. But I think that's a great place to end. And Matthew, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. Thank you for the books that you've written that I'm just now starting to explore and I'm

excited to learn a lot more about well. Thank you, Eric, and thank you for having a program like this and for your deep questions which are important supportant avenue to kind of spread the word. Okay, take care, Thank you so much. Bite You can learn more about this podcast and Matthew Fox at one you feed dot net, slash fox