Many / One

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Compiled by JoAnn Kite

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Wrestling with the Prophets, Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life
Matthew Fox

1 "Every time we birth beauty or justice or truth or compassion, we are cocreators with God birthing divinity itself."

2 "The oldest hymns of the Christian liturgy, those found in the epistles to the Ephesians (1:3-2:3), to the Colossians (1:15-20), and to the Philippians (2:6-11), celebrate the Cosmic Christ who 'fills the whole creation' and 'reconciles all thngs in heaven and all things on earth.'"

3 "In the whole of the history of the human race, no two musicians have spontaneously written the same song, no two painters have painted the same painting – an infinite capacity for creativity. If we want to remake our civilization, we must remake it around what is the Spirit in us: mind, heart, and creativity."

4 "We are in divinity and the divinity is in us…- and by 'we' I do not mean merely the two-legged ones but the entire universe: atoms and galaxies, rain and whales, trees and fish, dogs and rabbits, and humans too."

5 "Every single person is a unique expression of the Cosmic Christ. As the mystics say, everyone is a unique mirror of God."

6 "There cannot but be one wisdom….Humans must therefore all agree that there is but one most simple wisdom whose power is infinite." Nicholas of Cusa, 'Opera Omnia'

7 "Jewish Wisdom literature taught that the 'spirit of the Lord fills the whole universe' (Wis. 1:7). Jewish cosmology teaches that the universe is one and that we are part of it and can know our place in it."

8 "Human beings give a home to the divine within them."

9 "Meister Eckhart said, 'Become aware of what is in you, announce it, pronounce it, produce it, and give birth to it.' This passion for 'giving birth' is within each one of us. We all have an artist inside, we all want to give our images back to the community. That is the task in this moment of need for creativity."

10 "Everywhere people ask, 'What can I actually do?' The answer is as simple as it is disconcerting. We can, each of us, work to put our own inner house in order. The guidance we need for this work…can still be found in the traditinal wisdom of humankind." E. F. Schumacher, 'Small is Beautiful'

11 "God hugs you. You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God." Hildegard of Bingen

12 "Faith is said to drive out fear, and so does love. And the Father-Creator of all watches over even the sparrow falling from the nest, so there is no need to fear."

13 "There can be no love without justice. Or as Meister Eckhart puts it, 'love will never be anywhere except where equality and unity are.'"

14 "Justice demands that we seek and find the stranger, the broken, the prisoner and comfort them and offer them our help. Here lies the holy compassion of God." Mechtild of Magdeburg

15 "All energy is interconnected."

16 "Compassion is an awareness of our ontological togetherness, of the kinship of all creation and all being."

17 "God is found not only in the light and glory of creation but also in absolute darkness."

18 "Now consider this: God is in everything, but God is nowhere as much as he is in the soul. There, where time never enters, where no image shines in, in the innermost and deepest aspect of the soul God creates the whole cosmos. Everything which God created millions of years ago and everything which will be created by God after millions of years – God is creating all that in the innermost and deepest realms of the soul." Meister Eckhart

19 "The ultimate vocation is to serve others by responding creatively to the needs of one's times."

20 "Interrelatedness, seeing the oneness of all things and their interconnections, is the essence of compassion."

21 "The truly wise person kneels at the feet of all creatures." Mechtild of Magdeburg

22 "Spirit works to bring persons together today around the Good News of humanity's power and responsibility to heal Mother Earth, to celebrate our shared existence, and to revere creation."

23 "Our thinking about spirituality cannot take place from armchairs or academic towers but must include the dirtying of the hands, the stretching of the heart, the opening of the mystic inside….the encountering of our greatest mystics of the past and present, the struggle for justice on many levels of society and its institutions and of our psyches, and the coming together of mystical traditions of East, West, North, and South."

24 "To manifest the 'sacred' ON the 'cosmos' and to manifest it IN the 'psyche' are the same thing…Cosmos and psyche are the two poles of the same 'expressivity'; I express myself in expressing the world; I explore my own sacrality in deciphering that of the world." Paul Ricoeur, 'The Symbolism of Evil'

25 "'If I spent enough time with a caterpillar', [Meister] Eckhart vows, 'I would never have to prepare a sermon because one caterpillar is so full of God.'"

This body of quotes compiled by JoAnn Kite