Daily Meditation 10/26/1961 Origin of Deep Ecumenism in My Writings
Good morning. In today's meditation I'm telling a story about how I was approached recently to talk more about my understanding of deep ecumenism. And I first began by telling the story that the word itself came to me in conversations with Joanna Macy and Buddhist eco-activist for telling me about deep ecology. And I felt, well, that's a wonderful phrase to adapt to ecumenism, because too much ecumenism at that time -- it's about 25 years ago, I guess -- was people meeting and exchanging theological position papers at each other. I was interested in something much deeper than that: the shared experience of spirituality and of action for social justice and so forth. But then, as I reflected further on this question, I realized that in this book, which is a very early book for me, Western Spirituality: Historical Roots, Ecumenical Routes, which I edited, I gathered articles from many authors. This was explicitly dealing with ecumenism, too. So among the ecumenical articles, one was by Sister Jose Hobday...she called it "Seeking a Moist Heart: Native American Ways for Helping the Spirit." Then Monika Hellwig, another woman theologian, talked about gifts and insights from Hasidism: that she herself was Christian, but she was speaking about the Hasidic tradition. James Kenney, who was very active in the World Parliament (of Religions) for many years, offered a wonderful article on the development of a Russian spiritual vision, "Fullness in Emptiness." And I also have in the book a marvelous article by Nicolas Berdayev, of one of my favorite theologians, really, a Russian Orthodox theologian, called "Salvation and Creativity: Two Understandings of Christianity"... so his emphasis is very much on creativity; a wonderful thinker! And there's an article here on the finest music in the world: "Exploring Celtic Spiritual Legacies: The Celtic Tradition," by Mary Aileen Schmiel. And there was an article on "Yoga in the Western Consciousness" by Justin O'Brien, a very committed yoga instructor and philosopher. And "The Spiritual Insights of the American Transcendentalist" by a historian and Dominican, John Alexander. And Ronald Miller, a very fine interfaith teacher, wrote a very fine article on "The Spirituality of Franz Rosenzweig." Ronald Miller had been a Jesuit for many years; Franz Rosenzweig was an important Jewish thinker. And Richard Woods, with a very good article on William Ernest Hocking, "Mysticism, Protestantism, and Ecumenism: The Spiritual Theology of William Burns Hocking." And my article in here was on the four-fold path of creation spirituality as taught by Meister Eckhart -- it's the first time I ever wrote about Eckhart or about the four paths of creation spirituality. And my mentor, Pere Chenu, gave me permission to really combine two articles of his and translate them; we called it the "Body and Body Politic in the Creation Spirituality of Thomas Aquinas." Dr. Rosemary Ruether offered a fine article on "Patristic Spirituality and the Experience of Women" in the patristic period of the church. Jon Sobrino, a liberation theologian from South America, wrote about "Christian Prayer and New Testament Theology: A Basis for Social Justice and Spirituality." And Helen Kenik, a biblical theologian, who did her doctorate under Walter Brueggemann, did a very fine article,
© Matthew Fox, 2021-