Celebrating light

From Matthew Fox, Dec 17, 2019 https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2019/12/

What we call Christmas is meant to be a celebration of the birth of Wisdom.  Might this Christmas be for us a new birth of wisdom?  Chanukah too is a celebration of the coming of light.  Might this season be a remembrance of light amidst all the darkness?

We promised in the last meditation to highlight the lessons from the new cosmology about values.  Something education is very remiss at teaching.

Following are some lessons on values from the new cosmology:

— Extravagance or openhandedness, bigheartedness and large-soulness—magnanimity therefore to match the abundance of the universe. This is clearly the opposite of capitalism’s miserliness and hoarding.

— Interconnectivity.  Interconnectivity is in fact the basis of compassion.  As Meister Eckhart put it: “What happens to another, whether it be a joy or a sorrow, happens to me.”

— Expansion.  Ernesto Cardinal (whom I spent time with in his home where he showed me he was studying the new cosmology) writes that “the greatest discovery of the twentieth century is the expanding universe.”

But while the universe is expanding, are we?  If not, we are contracting.  Love and courage expand; fear contracts.  Of course there is a rhythm of expansion and contraction in our lives, but the rule emerges: “When in doubt, expand.”  Love expands.

— Variety.  The universe celebrates diversity and variety.  When it invented sexuality about 1.2 billion years ago it ushered in an unprecedented celebration of diversity.  As scientist Erich Jantsch put it, “extraordinary genetic variety” resulted and with it a “unique explosion of life forms. ” Novelty expands because of sexual transfer.  Individuation deepens and develops.

— Creativity.  How unlike Newton’s universe is the creative universe we now recognize.  As British biologist Rupert Sheldrake put it, “there was no freedom or spontaneity anywhere in nature.  Everything had already been perfectly designed” in Newton’s view of the universe.  But now we know birthing, begetting, dying and being born occurs with stars, planets, galaxies, microbes, plants, birds, animals and humans.  Of course the divine and the demonic meet in human creativity.

— Emptiness. Emptiness, nothingness, spaciousness are everywhere in the universe: black holes, empty wombs, hollow spaces.  An atom is empty space wherein fields of energy can dance.  Our bodies alone are 99 percent empty space.  All atoms are.  How about our minds even our souls?  Healthy mysticism praises acts of letting go, of being emptied.  Humans need our solitude, our getting in touch with emptiness.

— Justice is the quest for balance and symmetry, for equilibrium and dialectic, for homeostasis.  It is central to the universe.  By justice-making we bring together the broken, neglected, cut-off, impoverished parts of the universe to render them whole again.