Elephants, Macy & Finding Balance

The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers

Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox

Week of October 6-11, 2025: Elephants, Macy & Finding Balance

10/12/2025

This is a weekly summary of the previous week’s Daily Meditations. Some are penned by Matthew Fox (MF), and some by Gianluigi Gugliermetto (GG).

October 6, 2025: Elephants in Danger: African Droughts, A Sign of Our Times (MF)

In addition to the loving spirit of Jane Goodall, we have Kristal Parks, who is a champion for the elephant nation. She is in Botswana this week to join a couple who have made it their passion to assist elephants with watering holes, of which they are in dire need because of global warming.*

The droughts in Africa have created a desperate situation. In the 19th century there were 26 million elephants in Africa. Today, there are 350,000. Kristal is trying to determine the best way to help them. If you want to support African elephants and those who are caring for them as best they can, you are welcome to give a tax-free donation at Matthew Fox Legacy Project, a 5013c. We will see that 100% of the donation goes to the elephants via Kristal. Write “elephants” on your check.

October 7, 2025: Celebrating the Life & Gifting of Joanna Macy at Grace Cathedral (MF)

On Saturday, 1200 enthusiastic people gathered at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco to celebrate the extraordinary life and work of Joanna Macy. The evening followed this format, which parallels perfectly the journey of the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality: Coming From Gratitude; Honoring Our Pain for the World; Seeing with New & Ancient Eyes; and Going Forth.

Included were: poems from Rilke that Joanna had translated from German and a composer friend had put to music; poetry from Drew Dellinger and Thich Nhat Hanh; author Marge Piercy praying the Kaddish; a short eulogy from Anne’s husband on Mary Magdalene encountering the risen Christ (Anne was Joanna’s longtime executive assistant); and the “Five Vows” that Joanna had created. Those of us who care about the world would do well to follow in Joanna’s powerful footsteps.

October 8, 2025: Joanna Macy & Jane Goodall: Great Souls, Great Teachers (MF)

Two great women died this year: Joanna Macy, Buddhist teacher and deep ecologist, and Jane Goodall, researcher and lover of the animal kingdom.

These women were living saints, and now they are our ancestors. In Joanna’s first book, Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age, she dared all to face and wrestle with despair.

She named the Via Negativa starkly when she said, “When your heart breaks, the whole universe can pour through.” She also honors gratitude as a grounding for our lives even in the hardest times. The fierce wisdom of these two women is part of the Divine Feminine calling to us to wake up and change our ways before it is too late. (Next week, Matthew will share more about Jane Goodall.)

Dr. Jane Goodall in a portrait by Katherine Holland. (C) Katherine Holland, October 8, 2024. Used with permission by the Jane Goodall Institute. Joanna Macy, On Being publicity photo by Adam AvRuskin, on Flickr.

October 9, 2025: Understanding and Awareness (GG)

We all need frames of reference. There a number of frames that we use daily but subconsciously. For instance, Freud and Newton have changed our perception of reality much more than we think.

A frame of reference likely used by many readers is the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, as rediscovered by Matthew Fox through his studies of the Western mystics. It is of the utmost importance, of course, to counteract the forces of evil that are maiming children, starving entire populations, encroaching essential habitats, etc., but meaningful action can only proceed from critical understanding, which then begets global awareness.

October 10, 2025: Feeling(s) as Source of Values (GG)

Gianluigi tells us that One of the frames of reference for interpreting reality that I adopt is the Jungian theory of the four psychological functions (sensation, feeling, intuition, and thinking), which I have paired with the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality (via positiva, via negativa, via creativa, and via transformativa).

Jung discovered that a person whose dominant function is thinking finds it hard to deal with feelings, and likewise, a person whose dominant function is feeling may find it hard to think and act clearly. One of the takeaways from this is that values are born not in the head but in the heart.

October 11, 2025: Balancing as a Spiritual Act (GG)

According to Jungian theory, each human being must develop all four psychological functions to become whole. And, according to Creation Spirituality, one must consciously walk the Four Paths to become whole.

Western societies in 2025 seem to suffer not only from weak thinking and weak feeling, but also from the same excess of sensation diagnosed by Jung and the same scant recognition of intuition that Jung lamented. We all have a lot of work to do in order to find more balance in our lives, do we not?

Banner image: A line of elephants walking across the Tarangire National Park, Arusha, Tanzania. Photo by ray rui on Unsplash