Everyday Saints

Week of 7/28-8/2/2025: Honoring “Everyday Saints” and the Great Work

8/3/2025

July 28, 2025: Fighting Despair with Action: A Fruit Tree Planting Project in Nepal (MF)

Marianne Grosspietsch, who founded an orphanage named Shanti for the poor in Nepal, recently wrote to Matthew. Her email was titled “Let us not give up despite the Anti Christ’s painful activities.” With Trump’s abolition of USAID, thousands of children in Nepal are at risk of hunger and malnutrition.

Marianne organized a project to address both hunger and climate change. Shanti has purchased and distributed 7,600 fruit trees, each a minimum of five feet tall. So far, 90% have survived.

Currently, in spite of Nepal’s favorable climate, almost all fruit is imported from China and India, and it is usually toxic. This project is a win/win for the people and the Earth. One fruit tree costs $10. Donations can be made to this worthy cause HERE (US dollars) or HERE (euro and other currencies).

July 29, 2025: Saints I Have Known and Worked With (MF)

Reflecting on the recent death of Joanna Macy has caused Matthew to reflect on the many saints he has been blessed to know and work with over the years. In order to uplift ourselves during this dark time, let’s acknowledge and celebrate them!

Besides Joanna Macy, others on Matthew’s list include: Matthew’s mentor Père Chenu, Sister Dorothy Stang, Sister Jose Hobday, Buck Ghosthorse, and potter and poet MC Richards. What a blessing these people are to our lives and to the planet.

July 30, 2025: Fighting Despair with Understanding (GG)

Last Sunday night, in Italy, churches all over the country, rang their bells at 10pm to signify solidarity with the Palestinians who are being killed by an engineered famine.

As a friend put it, “At least we feel we are a portion of a hurting whole.” We are beginning to realize that we are interconnected. We are all organically interrelated. As Anglican priest John Donne famously wrote: No man is an island…. Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.

A girl walks in Gaza on her way to get food. Images from the war on Gaza 2023-2025. Photo by Jaber Jehad Badwan. Wikimedia Commons

July 31, 2025: Attuning to the Great Work (GG)

Last year Gianluigi translated into Italian Matthew’s book The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time. In Italian, “work” can be translated as “lavoro” (labor) or as “opera,” as in “l’opera della vita” (the work of life).

Says GG: There is a true metanoia (mind/heart change) that is required to understand the book: leaving behind the equation between work and job that has been hammered into our minds. At this time, when we may feel impotent in our social action, and when there may be less job security, it is especially important that we recognize that our work is not about a job, but about the Great Work.

August 1, 2025: Emptiness and Work (GG)

Recently, GG led a workshop on the themes in Matthew’s book, The Reinvention of Work. Many of the participants were stunned by the poems that Matthew shared in the book. They were especially moved by the following concept from one of Rumi’s poems: “Every craftsman searches for what’s not there to practice his craft.”

The notion that the engine of our activity is found in the lack thereof, or that, as the Tao Te Ching puts it, being originates from non-being, is not only unfamiliar to most of us, but is paradoxical and hard to understand.

Rumi’s poem concludes: Dear soul, if you were not friends with the vast nothing inside, why would you always be casting your net into it, and waiting so patiently? Matthew clarifies: Emptiness and nothingness are part of the Great Work of the universe and, indeed, feed our yearning for work.

August 2, 2025: Saints I Have Known, continued (MF)

Matthew asks, Why is it good spiritual practice to pause and meditate on saintly people we have known and worked with?

Because we must combat the flood of news about the evil deeds of people that is pouring out from the media daily. Some others whom Matthew wants to honor include: Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Daniel Ellsberg, liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, Dominican Father Schillebeeckx of Holland, Father Albert Nolan, a South African Dominican priest active in the anti-apartheid movement, and Thomas Merton.

Also, if Thomas Merton is correct that “every non-two-legged creature is a saint,” then I must also acknowledge Tristan, my dog and spiritual companion of 15 years.

Banner image: “The Blue Cave Temple.” Image by Daniel Arrhakis on Flickr, who writes “The greatest treasure of mankind is the power to share love and to protect life in all its forms..”

Mystic-Warriors at the Roof of the World

In Monday’s DM, we shared the story of Marianne Grosspietsch and the Shanti Leprosy Aid organization of Nepal: faced with the loss of food from USAID, her community is planting thousands of fruit trees to nourish the hungry in the region while mitigating the effects of climate change.

We invite you to consider supporting this work HERE (US$) or HERE (€ and other currencies)