Saintliness and Satire

Week of 2/9-14/2026:

By The Daily Meditations Team

2/15/2026

This is a summary of the previous week’s daily meditations. You can click on any title to view the DM in its entirety.

February 9, 2026: Leonard Cohen on Saintliness, continued

We continue to reflect on what Leonard Cohen says about saintliness in his book Beautiful Losers.* Cohen says that Love is at the center of a saint’s energy. And what love accomplishes, Cohen believes, is balance—“a kind of balance in the chaos of existence.”

Note: Saints do not eliminate the chaos, they teach us how to dance with it, how to make balance happen.

Instead of trying to rid the world of chaos, they learn to ride “the drifts like an escaped ski.” An escaped ski has momentum and energy but nothing to steer it. Therefore, a kind of faith is required, or a surrender to forces larger than ourselves.

February 10, 2026: Leonard Cohen on Saintliness, continued

The saint is not angelic and ethereal, but grounded and earthy. The saint goes deeper than the earth’s crust, to the depths where things can be both solid and bloody.

The key is that he/she is “at home in the world,” no matter what is shaking and being shaken. The house shakes, the world shakes, but one finds a home in the world and does not flee the scene.

Courage and trust reign in the heart of the saints. Says Cohen, “It is good to have among us such men (saints), such balancing monsters of love.” A saint is taken over, monster-like, by the power of love manifest in an immense balancing act.

The earth shakes under ongoing Israeli bombardment, but Chefs For Gaza continue to cook and serve. Photo by World Central Kitchen on Flickr.

February 11, 2026: Ernest Becker Offering More Thoughts on Saintliness

Today we contemplate another wise person’s thoughts on sainthood, namely Ernest Becker, author of Escape from Evil.**

He writes that healthy religion offers the possibility of a new heroism, the heroism of sainthood. This meant living in primary awe at the miracle of the created object…including oneself in one’s own godlikeness.

He adds: If we were not fear-stricken animals who repressed awareness of ourselves and our world, then we would live in peace and unafraid of death, trusting to the Creator God and celebrating His creation.

Monks fulfill mother’s wish and bless nonverbal son on Walk for Peace

“Exactly what the world needs,” says one teary woman about the monks walking for peace. WUSA9

February 12, 2026: Becker on Saintliness, continued

Ernest Becker sees religion today as failing to open up our perception to “celebrating God’s creation.” He praises indigenous religions for doing exactly that.

He said: No longer was man an animal who died and vanished from the earth; he was a creator of life who could also give eternal life to himself by means of communal rituals of cosmic regeneration. The Cosmic Mass is such a ritual.

Aboriginal teacher Eddie Kneebone taught Matthew that his people “teach our children that stars are the campfires of our ancestors.” Becker said: The early promise of Christianity was to bring about…the social justice that the ancient world was crying for.

Christianity never fulfilled this promise and is as far away from it today as ever. No wonder it has trouble being taken seriously as a hero system.

February 13, 2026: Why Meditate on Sainthood in a Time of ICE, Epstein Files, & the Rest?

We are meditating on sainthood because evil is so omnipresent in our news every day that we have to entertain its opposite, that is, news of the holy.

Saints—and this is meant to be all of us—are those who have a conscience and are not afraid to speak up and walk their talk about values that matter. We see such courage and holiness playing out in the streets of Minneapolis these days by ordinary citizens, at least two of whom have been murdered and martyred by ICE.

Matthew is convinced that both mystics and prophets require great courage—or “big heart” in French. Many of our hearts are breaking as we witness so much evil, but Joanna Macy said, “When your heart breaks, the whole universe can pour through.”

February 13, 2026: Confronting Large-Scale Lies Through Satire, Opera & Humor

We have been talking about saintliness, but another way to confront large-scale lies is through satire.

Europe excels at this and recently premiered an opera called Monster’s Paradise, which opened to a very enthusiastic reception.* The plot is described as follows: A President-King so gluttonous, ravenous, and absurdly swollen with ego that he enters a gilded Oval Office with a Coca-Cola fridge, a crown on the desk, and a literal eject button for unwanted visitors.

Trump, rendered as a diapered titan with a golden necktie, grows to monstrous proportions and plants a golf club like a flag on conquered territory.

The director of the opera admitted that Washington is “sprinting toward parody so fast that the production might be outdated in eight hours.”

But laughter can be a tool in one’s anti-fascist toolbox since fascists everywhere notoriously lack a sense of humor—especially when it’s aimed at them and their ever-so-fragile egos.

Please note: Our colleague, Gianluigi Gugliermetto is currently recovering from some health challenges. For the rest of this month, the DMs will be written by Matthew Fox. Please join us in praying for GG’s good health. Thank you.

* Thanks to Maria Popova, “The Balancing Monsters of Love: Leonard Cohen on the Saints Among Us,” The Marginalian, February 23, 2023.

**Ernest Becker, Escape from Evil. Published by Free Press, March 1, 1985

****Mary Geddry, “Opera vs. Policy” on Geddry, February 9, 2026.

Banner image: The gift of flowers and a smile. Photo by Norbu GYACHUNG on Unsplash