Interspirituality; Powerful Women; Elections

Week of 11/3-8/2025: Interspirituality, Powerful Women, Elections

11/09/2025

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

You can click on the title of a DM in order to view the original piece in its entirety. Also, please note, we will continue to offer a video teaching by Matthew each Monday.

November 3, 2025: Does America (and the Earth) Have a Billionaire Problem? (MF)

Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, has written a book called Burned By Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power Are Ruining Our Lives and Planet.

Between 1980 and 2024, the number of billionaires in the United States rose from 15 to more than 800. (A billion dollars is one thousand million dollars, a billionaire is a millionaire 1,000 times over.) Collins says we need “rule changes that rewire capitalism for shared prosperity for all rather than spoils for the few.”

He calls it a “form of modern-day idolatry” to exalt billionaires, and to turn over to them ever more wealth and power and media control and political leverage.

Chuck Collins: Convincing One Percenters to “Come Home”

Chuck Collins makes the case for “Convincing One Percenters to Come Home.” Video by the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

November 4, 2025: Good News: Interspirituality, The Cosmic Mass, Democratizing Mysticism (MF)

A few months before his death, Pope Francis called for a “new form” of Liturgy—forms that replace merely reciting words about our sins, and instead celebrate our shared spiritual experience.

The Cosmic Mass is a beautiful example of this. In last week’s DM, we reflected on a new book on Deep Ecumenism entitled Interspirituality (with a foreword by Matthew.)

The fact that this book is appearing at this time, with over 120 contributors from various world religious traditions, is good news. It is a healthy sign of our times that people everywhere are waking up and eager to move from religious confrontation to spiritual intercommunion.

Also there is a democratization of mysticism. We are all called to become our deepest selves in love with the world.

November 5, 2025: Witchcraft (GG)

In response to the latest report on Palestinian occupied territories, the Israeli ambassador to the UN publicly and vehemently accused special UN envoy Francesca Albanese of witchcraft.

She replied calmly that if she could make spells, she would stop the killings “from the river to the sea.” Albanese, just like Greta Thunberg, has become a political and public icon who is simultaneously fiery and compassionate. This scares those who have sold their souls to the devil.

Those who accuse Albanese now would likely have been among those burning and hanging the wise women of the past.

Those who burned Joan of Arc, at 19 years old on May 30, 1431,

accusing her of witchcraft and heresy, are thankfully on the

wrong side of history. Painting by Hermann Stilke. Wikipedia.

November 6, 2025: Marguerite and Love (GG)

Although most witch hunts and persecutions happened more than a hundred or more years later, in 1310, Marguerite Porete was branded a heretic and burned at the stake. She was a leader in the Beguine movement.

The word “beguines” was applied to women who chose not to marry nor enter a nunnery, but to live a life consecrated to Love. As you can imagine, they were never liked very much by most of the male clergy.

Marguerite taught that the soul can become nothing and lose itself into the nothingness that God is. In Marguerite’s experience, from the annihilation of one’s will, bold and practical Love beyond reason emerges, which is also God.

That was too much for her accusers, who first burned her book in front of her, and then her living body for refusing to stop her teaching and recant her views.

November 7, 2025: Hadewijch and Love (GG)

Like Marguerite Porete, Hadewijch of Brabant was a Beguine, a learned woman, and wrote in the language of the people—in her case, Middle Dutch.

Like Marguerite, the center of her writings is Love, or rather fiery Love, which burns one in ecstasy when reached. With the current resurgence of acts of cruelty, it might benefit us to look at medieval women mystics who talk about God as love and love as God. We need Love in this world, and we need fiery women like Albanese, Thunberg, and the Beguines.

Sculpture in the courtyard of the Begijnhof, Amsterdam

commemorating the Beguines, by Margaretha de

Goede-Taal, placed in 1984, three years after the death at the age of 84 of Sister Antonia, who was the last Beguine of the Begijnhof. Wikimedia Commons

November 8, 2025: America’s Tuesday Election: Hope on the Horizon for Democracy? (MF)

The results this past election day gave us reason for hope, as nary a Republican won throughout the country. As Matthew said, “Democracy happened.” Halleluia!

One man, identifying himself as a “lifelong Republican,” feels that the Republican party has “lost the Republicans who are centrists…. There is nothing in MAGA for us so we are voting for candidates who better reflect our values.”

Matthew wonders what the billionaires and corporations who donated to Trump and the Republic campaigns are thinking now. Collectively, these companies doled out a shocking $960 million to lobbying and political contributions during the 2024 elections alone. Maybe their investment in the most corrupt administration in history may not have been so smart after all?

Chuck Collins, Burned By Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power Are Ruining Our Lives and Planet.

Light On Light Press, editor. Wayne Teasdale and Thomas Keating, contributors, Interspirituality: The Heritage

Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society

Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century

Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic–and Beyond

Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice

Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times

Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation