Body and Spirit; Scotus

Week of 4/27-5/2/2026:
Body & Spirit; Work; SCOTUS as Antichrist
By the Daily Meditation Team

5/3/2026

This is a summary of the previous week’s daily meditations. Some are written by Matthew Fox (MF) and some are written by his colleague, Gianluigi Gugliermetto.

April 27, 2026: More Experiences of the Spiritual & Sensual Found in Indigenous Prayer (MF)

In Saturday’s DM, we learned of the Flower Pelting Ceremony. Artist MC Richards wrote a poem about that ceremony. Here are some excerpts: The power of love received in the body…how we stood and faced one another and we took hands and the love came.…

In my flesh I feel it still,the surprise and awe, the joy….Pelted by beauty and peace, a cellular recording, each tiny vessel lovecrazed, opening.…Now truly are we god’s fools, lilies of the field, no thought for the morrow…carrying blossoms to beat beauty and peace into our bones.*

Matthew says that he is deeply moved by the poem. It brings back the magnificent wisdom and joy of the pedagogy at the University of Creation Spirituality which drew so many souls of diverse religious traditions as faculty and students.

M.C. Richards wreathed in flowers for a greeting card.
From Matthew Fox’s personal collection.

April 28, 2026: The Sensual, the Spiritual & the Prophetic: Heschel & Julian of Norwich (MF)

As we continue to reflect on the sensual and the spiritual, Matthew invokes Rabbi Heschel, who took part in the march at Selma. He answered his ten-year-old daughter’s question of what it was like, saying, “I felt my feet were praying.”

The prophet Isaiah exclaims: How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings…. (Isaiah 52:7) Those who march in Minneapolis against ICE day after day, month after month, to stand up for their neighbors are also praying with their feet.

The mystic Julian of Norwich wrote: God is in our sensuality.
A beautiful oneing was made by God between the body and the soul.…God has forged a glorious union between the soul and the body.

April 29, 2026: Breathing – part 1 (GG)

Gianluigi reflects on how challenging it is to live in this world today, with all its chaos and horror. One tool that helps him is to remember the breath.

Most religions consider the breath to be sacred. Christianity associates the breath with the Holy Spirit. The Buddha taught conscious breathing as an essential spiritual tool. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote: In our daily lives, it is important that we learn to create harmony and ease in our body, and to reunite body and mind. For GG, his own living, breathing body is the place…to go and “take refuge” when the world seems to bring only bad news.

“Buddhist monk in sitting meditation.” Photo by TONG KBP on Unsplash

April 30, 2026: Breathing – part 2 (GG)

Regarding the practice of breathing within the Christian faith, it is only from the 13th century onward that written instructions about breathing are found within Christian monasticism.

The monk Nicephorus became an Eastern Orthodox monk in the second half of the 13th century. He taught the practice of sitting meditation with a special focus on breathing. He explains that the lungs are a wonderful gift from God. The central point of Nicephorus’ instruction is this: Compel the intellect to descend with your inhaled breath into your heart.

A 14th-century Orthodox monk, Gregory of Sinai, wrote: the energy of grace is the power of spiritual fire that fills the heart with joy and gladness, stabilizes, warms, and purifies the soul. Then Gregory repeats Nicephorus’s words: Compel your intellect to descend from your head into your heart. These and other Christian monks connected their breathing techniques to the “Jesus prayer.”

The Jesus prayer – Orthodox Hesychasm – Eastern Orthodox Chant English The Jesus Prayer, an Eastern Orthodox chant. Michael

May 1, 2026: “Jim Crow 2.0”: SCOTUS as Antichrist (MF)
Wednesday was a dark, dark day in American history. As Senator Raphael Warnock put it, it was “Jim Crow 2.0.” The Jim Crow era (1877-1964) included threats, lynchings, and crazy registration laws that effectively ended black participation in elections in the South. SCOTUS gutted the hard-won achievements of the Civil Rights Movement. Black Americans, along with white allies, marched, endured firehoses and police dogs, filled jails, sat at segregated lunch counters–all in non-violent protest.

Wednesday’s decision was written by the same MAGA judge who wrote the decision to kill Roe v. Wade and who cited not one, but two judges famous for burning witches in 17th-century England. The remedy to this madness is a big election victory in 2026 which results in passing the John Lewis Voting Act, which would kill gerrymandering nationwide.

May 2, 2026: Reflections on International Workers Day (GG)

There is a huge crisis today for most workers. Many work three jobs to feed their families, often getting sick or exhausted and not having time to spend with their families.

People are getting scared that AI will soon replace them. The money that workers make through their labor is still siphoned upwards toward the 1%. Thirty years ago, when the situation seemed critical, and yet not as desperate as it is now,

Matthew Fox issued a clarion call with his book The Reinvention of Work. In it, Matthew asked readers to reconsider the whole meaning of work. One excerpt: We have a right to and a need for joy in our work… The grounding of our work in the via positiva, in the joy of living, in the joy of being… is an essential part of revisioning work. (p.95, 111)

* The poem can be found in M. C. Richards, Imagine Inventing Yellow: New and Selected Poems of M.C. Richards (Station Hill). Matthew shares it from the personal copy she shared with him before it was published.