Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox: Inviting Men to Their Deeper Selves

Our times are dire, even apocalyptic.  Millions in America today actually are committed to destroying democracy which, though flawed, seems to offer the best hope for survival as a community.  The earth is warming up to the point of no return and many corporations we have spawned run essentially on unbridled greed which means all other species are paying a severe price.

(Witness the latest oil spill in the news, this one in southern California.  Or the news that mighty AT&T has sunk millions into a radical right station whose goal is to destroy democracy.)

Women and men alike need to wake up and grow up fast as time is running out for homo sapiens, just as it did for all our previous hominid cousins, nine of which we have now named.  We are the last ones standing.  Will we be standing 100 years from now?

Growing up means, among other things, tapping into our deepest resources such as love and forgiveness, justice and compassion on the one hand; and putting our considerable intelligence and creativity into responding to the moment with useful science and technology.

It also means we learn to balance anew the healthy masculine and divine feminine in our souls and institutions including education, law, economics, business, religion, politics.

How can men in particular grow up and touch what is hidden even from ourselves? 

As a species, we can no longer be stuck in our adolescence.  Growing up spiritually means we can no longer afford to be stuck in puerile religion or puerile anti-religion.

We need to explore ancient wisdom and deep teachings about the Sacred Masculine and how we touch it and how it touches us and brings us in line with the Sacred Feminine.

Adapted from Matthew Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. xiii, xv.

To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.

Queries for Contemplation

Do you sense that men are eager to awaken their sacred masculine, their deeper selves, in response to the challenges of our times?  How best to do this?

Recommended Reading

The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine

To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature,  to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.”
— Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God

Source: Inviting Men to Their Deeper Selves – Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox

Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox: Men in Search of the Divine Feminine

Recently, while lecturing (on Zoom) about the need to balance the sacred feminine with the sacred masculine, a man asked me: “How do you recommend men entertain more the divine feminine?”
It is a good question.

photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

I offered one answer yesterday in my sharing on Francis of Assisi because he truly stands out as a man who had an amazing balance of the feminine and the masculine.  It is so much in evidence in his poem on Brother Sun as I indicated in the video where I read much of the poem.  He found the divine feminine (but also the masculine) in nature.

So that is one answer: Check nature out.  And look for its feminine aspects—which are everywhere.

It is important to put our hunting-gathering instincts into answering that question, for a patriarchal culture has so flooded us with the uber masculine that we can find, in such a fog, neither the healthy masculine nor the feminine.

This is where praying the feminine names for divinity such as we have been meditating on for weeks becomes a meaningful—and important—exercise.

Such a practice brings the feminine back to one’s own consciousness.

So too is realizing our own mysticism.  Mysticism itself is feminine, as Dorothee Soelle described it.  Mysticism “comes closest to overcoming the hierarchical masculine concept of God….The mystical certainty that nothing can separate us from the love of God grows when we ourselves become one with love by placing ourselves, freely and without guarantee of success, on the side of love.”

The male mystics are very good at this (as are women mystics)

Continue reading “Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox: Men in Search of the Divine Feminine” →

Comme une Française: French Pronunciation Fundamentals

In French movies, Netflix shows you love, in French songs… The nasal vowels are everywhere! So many French sentences use “on”, “an” sounds and the rest. Perhaps you’ve noticed? By the end of this 15-min lesson, you’ll be more confident with pronouncing these strange French sounds! Learn French pronunciation fundamentals – Real, modern French pronunciation to practice saying “an,” “en,” “in,” “on” and “un.” Practice online with this video lesson! It’s an easy French pronunciation lesson with Géraldine.

Cécile de France: “We like to dress up and have fun like children”

The actress Cécile de France was recently at the Zurich Film Festival to defend ‘”Lost Illusions”, a film adapted from Balzac’s river story. This historical drama unfolds the disillusioned fate of Lucien de Rubempré, a provincial who moved to Paris to become a writer.

Lucien de Rubempré (formidable Benjamin Voisin) is a young poet unknown in 19th century France. He has high hopes and wants to forge a destiny. He left the family printing press in his native province to try his luck in Paris on the arm of his protectress, Louise de Bargeton (Cécile de France). Soon delivered to himself in the fabulous city, the young man will discover the backstage of a world doomed to the law of profit and pretense.

“Lost Illusions”, a tale in the form of a triptych, was considered by Balzac as a major element of his great work, “The Human Comedy”. Inspired to the writer by his own experience in the field of printing, the book recounts the greatness and glory of his hero before his downfall.

Capitalism, unscrupulous journalists, traitors and mercantilism are strong ingredients of the story that has nothing to envy of the contemporary era. “Balzac was a visionary,” Cécile de France told RTS at the Zurich Film Festival. In fact, social networks are just missing to embody 2021. “But even at the time, we listened to the one who spoke the loudest,” adds Benjamin Voisin, who plays a very convincing Lucien de Rubempré.

The director of the film, Xavier Giannoli (“When I was a singer”, “Marguerite”), shot as close as possible to the places where the story took place as Balzac wrote it. And it feels. The meticulous and personalized costumes down to the smallest detail, the redeveloped streets of Paris in the 1920s, the theaters recreated from scratch, everything contributes to making the film a success in terms of aesthetics and restoring the atmosphere of the time. “We, the actors, are like children. We like to dress up and have fun. During the filming, everything was very probable and it was magical, we were amazed and that obviously helped us to play our characters”, explains Cecile from France.

An initiatory journey

The film was shot in 2019, long before the coronavirus pandemic. “I was lucky to be able to be present on the set every day. It was an extraordinary pleasure to see all these people around me passionate about this project,” says Benjamin Voisin. An initiatory journey from purity to degradation, Xavier Giannoli’s film magnifies its actors, whom he loves passionately. “He seeks beauty in each of us, despite the darkness of the film,” continues Cécile de France.

“Lost Illusions” is served by a five-star cast: Gérard Depardieu, Xavier Dolan, Jeanne Balibar, Vincent Lacoste, the late Jean-François Stévenin and Louis-Do de Lencquesaing appear on the film poster. “Being surrounded by such a band is a great gift for life”, concludes Benjamin Voisin.

Interview by Pierre Philippe Cadert

Web adaptation: Melissa Härtel

“Lost Illusions”, by Xavier Giannoli, to be discovered from October 20 on French-speaking screens.