Everyday Saints; Clouds; Ecocide

Week of 8/4-9/2025:

Everyday Saints, Clouds, Ecocide

8/10/2025

August 4, 2025: More Saints I Have Known and Worked With (MF)

Continuing to inspire us with exceptionally good people, Matthew has known, he adds to his list: Rabbi Michael Lerner, Anita Roddick,, Father Bede Griffiths, Fred Shuttlesworth, Father Thomas Berry, and Sue Bailey Thurman.

Rabbi Lerner was co-founder of the progressive magazine TIKKUN; Anita Roddick was founder of the Body Shop, an early proponent of fair trade and sustainability;

Father Griffiths lived for 40 years in India and oversaw an ashram which offered the best of the Christian monastic tradition along with a deep appreciation of Hindu wisdom. Fred Shuttlesworth showed unwavering faith in the midst of intense hatred and violence during the Civil Rights movement.

Thomas Berry was a geologian and co-author with Brian Swimme of The Universe Story. Sue Bailey Thurman was the wife of the great saint Howard Thurman. She herself was a powerful force within the African American community. Among other things, she founded a magazine called The Aframerican Women’s Journal and wrote books and articles about Black history and experience in the 1930’s and 40’s.

Rabbi Michael Lerner in the Interfaith Coalition tent at Occupy Oakland, 2011. Photo by B. Harford J. Strong. Wikimedia Commons.

August 5, 2025: More Saints I Have Known, Part III (MF)

Matthew adds to his list of saintly people he has known. Among them are: Cecil Williams, prophetic pastor at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district; Satish Kumar, founder of Schumacher College and Resurgence Magazine, who walked many thousands of miles to protest nuclear weapons; Rev. Donald Reeves, prophetic pastor at St James Piccadilly in London; Father Louis Vitale, Franciscan provincial in California who went to prison numerous times to protest injustice in many forms;

Cesar Chavez, labor leader and activist, who visited Mundelein College when Matthew was teaching in our ICCS program there; Bishop Pedro Casigalida, whose diocese was in the Amazon (many of his clergy and lay people were tortured to death by the military dictatorship); Cardinal Arns of Brazil, a leader in the liberation theology movement; and Michael, a former student at ICCS, who died of AIDS. (Nurses told Matthew that the ICU filled with light for 24 hours after his passing.)

August 6, 2025: Clouds, Part 1 (GG)

On this day, two very powerful and vastly different events are remembered: 1) The transfiguration of Christ, and 2) The atomic bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima. GG refers to the transfiguration as a powerful collective mystical experience.

The bombing of Hiroshima is, of course, one of the scariest and most dangerous events in human history. In the transfiguration experience, a mystical cloud envelopes Jesus and three of his disciples. From within the cloud, they heard the voice of the Divine. Meanwhile, a very different kind of cloud formed over Japan on that fateful day in 1945. Gianluigi imagines God cried, “No! Stop!” And then He wept. GG considers both of these events to be via negativa experiences.

“The Transfiguration of Christ.” Drawing by Jacques Callot. Wikimedia Commons.

August 7, 2025: Clouds, Part 2 (GG)

For those of us who care deeply about all the pain we are currently seeing in the world, Nigerian musician Seun Kuti recently offered a powerful performance in France. He said: I know you want to free Palestine, …Congo, …Sudan, …Iran… Free Europe!

Free Europe from right-wing extremism, …from fascism, …from racism, …from imperialism! As soon as you do this job, Gaza will be free, Congo will be free, Sudan will be free, Iran will be free….

Meanwhile, it has been said that Netanyahu could not do any of what he does in Gaza if he were not backed by the U.S. government. The problem is the West, which has become willfully blind in order to protect its interests.

The ICE raids in the USA are an expression of the same Western violence as the Israeli occupation in the West Bank. Meanwhile, GG says he might drive up into the Alps, just to lie on the grass and watch the clouds. The reason? To gain a higher perspective. And to be better able to assist people to get in touch with their mystical selves.

August 8, 2025: Clouds, Part 3 (GG)

A treatise of the 1st century C.E. presents a list of ancestors who trusted in God since the origins of the world. All together they are called a νέφος μαρτύρων ὄγκον, that is, a great cloud of witnesses/martyrs (Hebrews 12:1), who are surrounding and supporting present believers.

This theme is foundational for the doctrine of the communion of saints. Among the saints that GG wishes to acknowledge, though he does not know them personally, are: 1) Sam Stein, a young New York Jew who grew up as a Zionist. He eventually became an anti-occupation activist living in Palestine as the only Jewish resident. 2) Grace Lolim is a Kenyan woman who witnessed the hostility between the Borana people and Somali people. She began to act as a peace mediator, employing teachings from both the Bible and the Quran. 3) Mairead Corrigan Maguire is an elder who was awarded the Nobel Peace Price in 1967 for her effective peace work in Ireland, which began after three of her sister’s children were killed.

These three are regular people who started to act when something happened close to home. We are surrounded by ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And we can be one of them!

Laureate Wisdom – Mairead Maguire

Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire shares wisdom with the 1 Billion Acts of Peace. Peace Jam Community, 2022.

August 9, 2025: EPA: Environmental Protection Agency or Ecocidal Promotion Agency? (MF)

The Environmental Protection Agency was born in December of 1970, at a time when rivers were catching on fire. The EPA was essentially murdered on July 29, 2025 by our current Republican President. The EPA is no longer an agency to protect the environment, but an agency for promoting ecocide.

This is the epitome of what Pope Francis called “savage capitalism.” St. Hildegard of Bingen had this to say about protecting Mother Earth: The Earth should not be injured! The Earth should not be destroyed!

The Earth is at the same time Mother. As Matthew wrote in his book on the Cosmic Christ 27 years ago, Gaia is being crucified. It is we who must speak for the Earth.

Banner image: “The Heavenly Jerusalem.” Photo is of the interior of the dome of the Duomo in Florence, by Fr Lawrence Lew, OP on Flickr. From Hebrews 12: “You have come to God himself, the supreme Judge, and been placed with spirits of the saints who have been made perfect…”

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).

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