Matthew Fox - Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations

Copyright 2011 by Matthew Fox

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Permissions acknowledgments on page 403 are an extension of the copyright page.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fox, Matthew, date.
Christian mystics : 365 readings and meditations / Matthew Fox.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-57731-952-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Mysticism. 2. Devotional calendars. I. Title.
BV5082.3.F69 2011
242'.2dc22 2010049466

First printing, February 2011 ISBN 978-1-57731-952-8
Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

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Our world is in crisis, and we need road maps that can ground us in wisdom, inspire us to action, and help us gather our talents in service of compassion and justice. This revolutionary book does just that. Matthew Fox takes some of the most profound spiritual teachings of the West and translates them into practical daily meditations. Study and practice these teachings. Take whats in this book and teach it to the youth because the new generation cannot afford to suffer the spiritual and ethical illiteracy of the past.

Matthew Fox is a rare prophet who grasps not only religion but also science from their essential mystical side and is able to unify them movingly into an open-hearted and open-minded approach to the universe.

I dedicate this book to the young. They deserve and require a healthier version of religion, one that celebrates the depths of mysticism, love of the earth and the body, and a fierce commitment to community, compassion, celebrative rituals, and justice-making. They deserve a religion that is both simpler and more open to wisdom from all the worlds spiritual traditions.

May the mystics and meditations in these pages assist us all in reawakening the depths of our faith traditions, whatever they may be. May we travel lighter but stronger into a future worthy of our nobility as a species and worthy of the beauty of this wounded planet.

lbert Einstein was asked toward the end of his life if he had any regrets.He answered: I wish I had read more of the mystics earlier in my life. This is a significant confession, coming as it does from one of the greatest geniuses of the twentieth century, a man who moved beyond the modern science of Newton and ushered in a postmodern science and consciousness.

In the West the modern age meaning the sixteenth to mid-twentieth century was not only ignorant of but actually hostile to mysticism. As Theodore Roszak has put it, The Enlightenment held mysticism up for ridicule as the worst offense against science and reason. Still today, both education and religion are often hostile to mysticism. Fundamentalism by definition is antimystical or distorts mysticism, and much of liberal theology and religion is so academic and left-brain that it numbs and ignores the right brain, which is our mystical brain. Seminaries teach few practices to access our mysticism. This is why many find religion so boring it lacks the adventure and inner exploration that our souls yearn for. As St. John of the Cross said, Launch out into the deep.