The One You Feed - Matthew Fox

Episode Date: August 10, 2016

This week we talk to Matthew Fox about The Four Paths to God Matthew Fox is an American priest and theologian. Formerly a member of the Dominican Order within the Roman Catholic Church, he became a member of the Episcopal Church following his expulsion from the order in 1993. Fox was an early and influential exponent of a movement that came to be known as Creation Spirituality. The movement draws inspiration from the mystical philosophies of such medieval Catholic visionaries as Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas, Saint Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, and Meister Eckhart as well as the wisdom traditions of Christian scriptures. Creation Spirituality is also strongly aligned with ecological and environmental movements of the late 20th century and embraces numerous spiritual traditions around the world. Fox has written 30 books that have sold millions of copies. His latest book is called A Way to God: Thomas Merton's Creation Spirituality Journey  In This Interview, Matthew Fox and I Discuss... The One You Feed parable Feeding "the love of life" vs the "love of death" How fear can drive compassion out Embracing the difficult Silence and solitude Balancing engaging with the world vs retreating from it Battling our narcissistic tendencies Learning to let go and let be Developing a "portable solitude" that we can take with us His Four Paths to God- Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via Creativa, Via Transformativa Creativity as a path towards God Getting "off the cushion" and into the world Via Positiva Awe and astonishment as a path to deeper spirituality Nature as part of the Via Positiva Via Negativa Facing suffering and grieving as part of the Via Negativa Via Transformativa Keeping our attention on being compassionate The "glittering Niagra of Trivia" that is our culture and media Thomas Merton's transition to mysticism Was Thomas Merton assassinated by our government? Technology as the main problem of our time How technology will not redeem us Being expelled from the Dominican Order Supporting homosexuality     A grandfather is talking with his grandson and he says there are two wolves inside of us which are always at war with each other.  One of them is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery and love. The other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed, hatred and fear. The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?” The grandfather quietly replies, the one you feed The Tale of Two Wolves is often attributed to the Cherokee indians but there seems to be no real proof of this. It has also been attributed to evangelical preacher Billy Graham and Irish Playwright George Bernard Shaw. It appears no one knows for sure but this does not diminish the power of the parable. This parable goes by many names including: The Tale of Two Wolves The Parable of the Two Wolves Two Wolves Which Wolf Do You Feed Which Wolf are You Feeding Which Wolf Will You Feed It also often features different animals, mainly two dogs.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I've tried to get humans to purify our presence on the planet and to be more grateful, more reverent, and therefore more struck by awe, more vulnerable to beauty. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead.

The Really No Really Podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Matthew Fox, an American priest and theologian. Formerly a member of the Dominican Order within the Roman Catholic Church, he became a member of the Episcopal Church following his expulsion from the Order in 1993. Fox was an early and influential exponent of the movement that came to be known as Creation

Spirituality. The movement draws inspiration from Christian mystics as well as the wisdom traditions of Christian scriptures. Creation Spirituality is also strongly aligned with ecological and environmental movements of the late 20th century and embraces numerous spiritual traditions around the world. Fox has written 30 books that have sold millions of copies. His latest book is called A Way to God, Thomas Merton's Creation Spirituality Journey. Here's the interview. Hi, Matthew. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Eric. Good to be with you. I'm happy to have you on. Your latest book is called A Way to God, and it is a book about the spirituality of Thomas Merton and how that ties with your various thoughts on spirituality over the years.

I'm a longtime Thomas Merton fan. I was lucky that I had a high school teacher who introduced me to Thomas Merton. And I've just always— I was lucky, indeed. And he was a great man. Unfortunately, he's not with us anymore, both Thomas Merton and the gentleman who introduced me to him. So we'll get into all that in a minute, and I'm really excited to explore your views on spirituality through the lens of Thomas Merton. But let's start like we always do

with the parable. And in the parable, there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.

So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, it's certainly, like many parables, it's useful and rich and has many, I think, many angles to it. But to me, it's about, as Eric Fromm says, that necrophilia grows when biophilia is stunted. So we have to feed biophilia on a daily basis, the love of life. It needs nurturing. It needs feeding.

And otherwise, necrophilia, the love of death, will creep in and take over. And you can apply this to so many possibilities in our life. For example, fear. If you're going to feed fear, then fear is going to be more important to us than compassion. then a fear is going to be more important to us than compassion. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century said that fear is such a powerful emotion in humans that when it takes over, it drives compassion out. So I think you could actually go through all the chakras. My book on evil that just came out in a new edition with a new preface

and with a foreword by Deepak Chopra, I take the seven chakras of the East and compare it to the seven capital sins of the West. Because if we feed our chakras well, if you will, then we have a balanced and a healthy and energetic life, one where love is at the heart of each of the chakras, you might say. But if we're off-center, then we fall into, well, fear with the fourth chakra, the heart chakra, or envy with the seventh chakra, or gluttony, that is to say, gagging ourselves by taking in all the time instead of birthing with our fifth chakra and so forth. So, you know, I see this story, this parable, as being powerful and with multiple interpretations.

Yeah, it really, that's one of the things I love about it and why we've been able to, you know, have a show that we keep talking about it because I think it opens it up itself up to a lot of different interpretations. One of the things that is a theme that that goes through the book, and I know that you have a lot of views on I know it's something that Thomas Merton wrestled with, and I think about it a lot. And so I want to I want to dig a little bit deeper into it. But it's really balancing contemplation. So the going off by ourselves in silence and focus on what's happening internally with us and, you know, from a spiritual perspective, and then action, outwards action into the world, good works, various different things. And so, like I said in the book, you know, Thomas Merton is kind of wrestling with it throughout his life, and I know you certainly have a perspective on it. So let's talk a little bit about that. How do we balance those two things?

interested in activism on the one hand but they know that to do it well you have to do that inner work too you have to find a space where you can be emptied as well otherwise there's a great danger of simply through action projecting what's in us onto others so that emptying is is always necessary now um thomas merton of course was being appist monk, which is a very strict order where, for example, they get up every night in the middle of the night to sing the Psalms and pray. And where, in fact, they don't talk a whole lot. They take vows of silence. The whole structure of the lifestyle is to develop contemplation. the lifestyle is to develop contemplation. But Merton felt this need, too, to speak out, especially the last 10 years of his life.

And he became much more of a prophet and was speaking to issues like the Vietnam War. He was the first religious figure to come out against the Vietnam War. And he spoke to issues like technology and how it was a double-edged sword, and ecology. He responded to Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, almost immediately praising her and telling her that because of her book, they were not going to use DDT any longer on the monastery farm and so forth. So, as you say, he was wrestling with it continuously. As you say, he was wrestling with it continuously. And sometimes he felt a little guilty because, again, most of the monks were kind of staying closer to the monastery routine. He went out and became a hermit on the property of the monastery, but still lived in his own hut as a hermit. And that allowed him, I think, to go deeper into the solitude and the silence that he required. But at the same time,

he also wrote a lot. So his voice became that much louder, you might say. I think that it really comes to realizing that our giving birth, our using our voice, our fifth chakra, our throat, our speaking out, being prophetic, after after all the word prophet comes from the Greek prophetos, to speak out. Being prophetic is everybody's business. No one can just turn in and try to find that ultimate peace and sit there forever, especially today when ecosystem is collapsing and when there are so many issues in the world that need attention. We're firmly lodged, you know, this show, I would say, in, you know, a little bit in, it's certainly categorized as self-help or personal development. And I have that, you know, similar to what you're saying, that wrestling with at what point is, you know,

am I staring at myself too intently, right? At what point is what I'm doing just so that I feel better? And at what point is it serving a greater good? Well, those are real important questions to ask. And we are tempted, especially in our culture, to be anthropocentric, human-centered, and as pope francis names it a narcissistic as a species so we do have to ask not only how are we feeling but how are other beings feeling about our presence on the planet and i think this helps to wake us up to to get us into modes that are activist in the best sense of the word. Because if we work out of love, then we're okay. Like Meister Eckhart, the great 14th century mystic, who, by the way, was a big influence on Merton.

He really converted Merton in 1958. Eckhart says, if you've learned to let go and let be, you're always in the right place at the right time, whether you're in a monastic cell alone, or whether you're in a marketplace or in the streets. So I think we have to think in terms, especially today, of kind of a portable solitude that we carry with us so that we can find space even in the midst of busy work. And I think that's, it's a challenge, but we're capable of it because over the centuries, people like Meister Eckhart and Thomas Merton have shown this is truly possible.

Another thing that, well, runs through the book and honestly runs through all of your work, you've defined sort of four paths to God or four ways towards God. And maybe we can get into some of those. Maybe we can cover them all in detail. But one of them is related to creativity. Creativity is a real path towards God or towards enlightenment or call it what you want. And that's certainly for me been one of the big ways for me that a spiritual life has moved from a thought, something that I think about and I intellectually understand, I feel it more when I'm being creative. And it's something that really runs through all of your work and certainly through this book as well. Can you talk a little

bit about that path? Sure. I wrote a book on creativity called Creativity Where the Divine and the Human Meet. And so creativity definitely is a mystical experience for people. Often when you're in a creative state, you're not looking at your watch. You're not counting the time. You're lost. You're in an alternative place, in an alternative consciousness. an alternative place, in an alternative consciousness. The image I have of being in a creative state is being on a raft going down a rushing river without an oar. You're going along for the ride. Again, Meister Eckhart had a great sermon on that. He took a line from the Psalms that talks about the Holy Spirit as a rushing river. So, this is the Holy Spirit at

work. And Thomas Merton is explicit about that. He says that theology of the Holy Spirit is about our creativity. A great 13th century genius and mystic Thomas Aquinas says, the same spirit that hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation hovers over the mind of the artist at work. And I love that because it connects our creativity to the creativity of the universe. And of course now, with postmodern physics, we know that the whole universe has been created from the get-go, from the very millisecond when the fireball began 13.8 billion years ago. Now this is news.

the fireball began 13.8 billion years ago now this is news under newton's universe uh universe was finished and and done essentially and we had to kind of fit in but not so under einsteinian and post-einsteinian physics we're part of this ongoing birthing process for example a star is being born every 15 seconds so the sky is full of creativity and so we have not only permission but the responsibility to participate in the in the vast powers of creativity that the universe and that spirit they invite us to and when you look at our problems today, especially around climate change and the destruction of so many species and so forth, clearly the only thing we have going for us as a species is our creativity.

How can we reinvent our way of living on the earth so that we can pass on a healthy planet to future generations? I think, for example, in India now, they've invented a car that runs on air. Well, that seems like a pretty creative thing to do, you know? And we've just begun, I think, to unleash our creativity vis-a-vis the peril that we face regarding the ecological challenges of our time. I agree. And I think that your point about the universe

sort of being in an ever-present state of creation is something that I've definitely noticed, that that feels right. And a lot of my background has been more Buddhist-focused. And Buddhism read the wrong way is sort of a, you know, be content with the way things are. And that's another of those paradoxes

that I feel like I'm balancing and we balance on the show, which is, you know, it seems that the nature of the universe is to move forward and to create. And how do you balance that desire, that striving for things to be different and wanting to create and move forward as well as being present in the current moment and happy and accepting of the way things are. I find that to be another of those paradoxes or balancing challenges, so to speak. Well, I agree. And again, that's a very important question. And I think it's a both-and thing, you see. So on the one hand, we want to be fully present, and that's certainly a Buddhist notion. It's also Jesusesus notion when he says

the kingdom and queen of god is among you that that's an is thing it's not that it will be or that it has been but it is and so being fully present to the now is is a part of any mystical teaching worthy of the of the name whether it come from the East or the West. But as you say, to be fully present doesn't mean you're fully content with the way things are. After all, suffering and the awareness of suffering is a deep part of the Buddhist teaching as well as it is of the Christ story. Certainly the crucifixion is an archetype of how a suffering comes to all of us, even the innocent and the just. So, there's a call both to be present in the isness of the moment, but also to be sensitive to the suffering of other beings. And this, of course, gets you

off the cushion, if you will. It gets you into the world, and it gets you into your imagination, your moral imagination, as you say, to be creative and to find ways to heal, to be compassionate in our actions, not just in our thoughts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a space? We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist

who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend.

Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win

$500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This might be a good place to go into your work on the four paths. Is it safe to say the paths towards God? Is that how you refer to them? Well, I call it the four paths of creation spirituality. To me, it's a way to name what a spiritual journey is in its deepest sense. And I find these paths very archetypal.

They apply to many, many things, however you want to apply them. But yeah, let's talk about that. So the first path is the via positiva. Now, via is a Latin word for path or way. So via positiva is about the experience of joy and awe and wonder and delight. It's the opening up of our hearts, really, and our souls. The first step, really, of a mystical journey. And it's like Rabbi Heschel says, awe is the beginning of wisdom.

And he talks about radical amazement, that too. Mary Oliver, the North American poet and mystic, she talks about astonishment. She says, and she says, I am willing to be dazzled. So that whole concept that we can be dazzled, we can be astonished, we can be struck by awe, that's really the opening, I think, of our hearts in the mystical journey. What are some ways that people become more open to that? Because we tend to live in a been-there-done-that kind of culture, right? That's a common phrase where people are like, yeah, whatever.

So how do we open ourselves more? How does someone go about opening themselves more to the mystery and the awe and the joy of this world? Well, actually, that's where the next path, the via negativa, comes in because the emptying that happens there and the silence letting go of images and so forth that actually um ups the ante it it purifies the senses so that you can be more present um for example buck ghost horse is a lakota teacher who was uh worked with me a lot and we were good friends, and he used to say, you want to know how sacred water is?

Go without it for three days. There you go. So you go without water for three days, then your first sip of water, you rediscover. You no longer take for granted. And that's important. I think the mystic learns not to take for granted.

The same is true, of course, of meditation and where you focus on the breath. You know, it's easy to take breath for granted, isn't it? Because we're so busy breathing. But as I like to tell people, if you've been present for the first breath of a newborn baby or the last breath of someone leaving, you know how sacred breath is. But why is it that all the breaths in between we can easily take for granted yeah so that is where slowing down and being grateful for breath and gratitude is part of the via positiva you see and so it's reverence too you learn reverence for water if you go with it for three days or here i'm living in california i think uh we're beginning You learn reverence for water if you go with it for three days. Or here, I'm

living in California. I think we're beginning to learn reverence for water because we've been in a drought for years. So, these are some of the tactics that humans from many traditions consider. For example, we're recording this at the time of Ramadan in the Muslim tradition. Well, Ramadan, of course, is about fasting all day than eating in the evening. But that too is a practice to teach us not to take food for granted and not to take the basics of life for granted and to be in a position

where you're able to let go and to let be and not just be addicted to our habits of meals three times a day and so forth. So you might say, really, when you look at it, all the traditions of the world have tried to get humans to purify our presence on the planet and to be more grateful, more reverent, and therefore more struck by awe, more vulnerable to beauty. And I think the other one that Merton writes about and Aquinas writes about and lots of people do is nature. Absolutely.

In fact, there's a passage here in Merton I would love to share under the Via Positiva. He's such a marvelous writer, you see. He's such an artist. And, you know, it's difficult to write about the mystical experiences we have. William James, the psychologist, said ineffability is one of the signs of mysticism, you know. And Meister Eckhart says we stutter and stammer when we talk about God. But here's Martin. I think he plays it so well.

He says, I live in the woods out of necessity. I get out of bed in the middle of the night because it is imperative that I hear the silence of the night alone and with my face on the floor, say psalms alone in the silence of the night. The silence of the forest is my bride, and the sweet dark warmth of the whole world is my love. And out of the heart of that dark warmth comes a secret that is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their beds all over the world. That's beautiful. It is beautiful. And of course, he's talking about his personal experience with nature, getting up in the middle of the night and so forth,

getting down on the ground, but also how it relates to every other being's experience of nature and the intimacy of lovemaking and all the rest. He de-anthropocentrizes lovemaking. He puts it in the context of the love of the night because the night is his bride so i just think it's a it's a beautiful naming of the via positiva and as you say nature uh is always blessing us uh it's just that we're not always paying attention and we're not always grateful so this is why why we need practices to make us more aware and

more present to what is. So we talked on the via positiva, and we started into the via negativa, which is the emptying out. Let's talk a little bit more about that, and then we'll move on to the next two. Sure. Yes, the via negativa is about letting go and letting be. It's about silence, solitude, emptying out, kenosis. Though it's also about suffering and grieving, and those are really separate things. But they both are about tasting the apophatic divinity, the god of darkness. The Meisteriker says, God is super essential darkness who has no name and will never be given a name. So this is very Buddhist. It's very Buddhist path, too, because, as you know, many Buddhists do not want to go around employing the word God.

In fact, Thich Nhat Hanh used to say, my favorite theologian is one who never talks about God. But, you know, it's interesting. I heard a story since my book came out just a month ago, this book on Thomas Merton. I heard a story from a very serious Buddhist practitioner. He's been to India and Tibet many times and so forth. He's met the Dalai Lama. He said that not too long ago, the Dalai Lama was asked, do you believe in God? And the Dalai Lama said, yes. And then the fellow pushed him and said, well, I mean, do you really? I mean, you're Buddhist and all this and all this. And then the Dalai Lama said, I believe in the God of Thomas Merton. I thought that was amazing. Because, you know, Merton and Dalai Lama did meet. In fact,

Merton was the first Christian who the Dalai Lama ever met. And the Dalai Lama was 33 at the time. Merton was making his final journey, as it turned out, going east, going to Asia. And they met in India. And they hit it off so well that both of them canceled their appointments for the next day and spent a second whole day together. So it was important to them both. And that's part of the story of Merton. But anyway, so the Via Negativa is both about silence and letting go, but it's also about grieving and facing suffering, not running from it. The mystics talk about the dark night of the soul, for example. I would say today we are in a dark night of our species,

that this dark night is an important place to be. You learn things in the dark night you don't learn elsewhere, but you have to stick around. The temptation is to, well, as Hafiz, the 13th century Sufi mystic put it, most people want to pack their bags and hightail it out of town when they find that God is in such a drunken mood that everything is upside down and nothing's working.

But he says the warrior sticks around, and that's part of being a warrior, to face the dark night and to see what it has to teach us and to learn uh from what it has to teach us so that's part of the via negativa also okay let's move on to the third yes well the third is what we talked about earlier the via creativa the creative path maestro eckhart writes this he says i once had a dream. Even though I'm a man, I dreamt I was pregnant, pregnant with nothingness. And out of this nothingness, God was born. So the whole idea that the tasting of the dark and of the ashes and of grief that can happen in the via negativa,

and even the experience of nothingness, is in fact an occasion for gestation, for the birth of something new. That creativity, in its deepest sense, comes out of nothing. If it's really new, it's not just reshuffling what is, but it's really bringing something new into the world. So creativity, as we said earlier, this too is a path. It is part of the journey of the mystical life. And it's the bridge, really, between contemplation and action. It's the bridge, the via creativa. Because here is now where we begin to make choices in the via creativa.

Every artist has to make choices. A painter has to decide what kind kind of paints are going to use is going to be acrylic or oil what size the the painting will be and of course what colors to bring forward and so forth so the via creativa is really the beginning of our choice making the via positiva and via negativa are more about undergoing the creativa is about beginning to choose, beginning to give birth in certain ways. And then we come to the via transformativa, the transformative way.

And that is the way of compassion and justice, that all creativity is not positive. After all, inventing gas ovens, as was done in the Second world war in the holocaust was an efficient way to kill one's enemies or scapegoats but and it was creative but it certainly wasn't a holy or even a moral path right so the same is nuclear weapons the same is true of we can tear down a rainforest in a day today that has taken nature and god 10 000 years to give birth to so clearly our creativity is a powerful thing and it can be used for evil for destruction or or or necrophilia or it can be used for

biophilia and love of life and we and we have to be aware of that. So the via transformativa, justice and compassion, they become the test, if you will, or the parameters for our creativity. And, you know, the Dalai Lama says, we can do away with all religion, but we can't do away with compassion. Compassion is my religion. Well, that's true, and it's true not just the Dalai Lama,

but Jesus, Luke 6 says, Be you compassionate as you're created in heaven as compassionate. And in the Jewish tradition from which he derives, of course, compassion is a secret name for God. And in Islam, Allah, the compassionate one, is by far the most common phrase for, for divinity in the Quran. So, um, we're all capable of compassion, but we have to give it our attention. And the other three paths, the positive or the negative or the creative, these feed compassion. We have to be in love. That's the via positive. We have to know something about letting go. That's the via negativa. And we have to put our creativity to work if compassion and justice making are going to bear fruit and be effective. I'm looking forward to exploring a lot more of it. We talked about Merton being such a great writer. And there's a phrase that he used that you quote in the book.

And it just, it sums up so much of how I feel about a lot of things today. But he discussed the glittering Niagara of trivia that our culture is. Yes. That the media is. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And, you know, of course, he died in 1968. Right.

That's amazing. So he wrote that in the 60s, you know, 50, 60 years ago. And it's gotten worse, hasn't it? Yeah, he had no idea what was coming. Exactly. And yet he is prophetic, really. He named it the glittering Niagara of trivia. Yeah. Isn't that what most of the news is about?

Isn't that what a lot of the media are feeding on? What can I say? He was so awake. He was so alert. And I think part of it is that he underwent a very strict, for many years, for 18 years in his monastery, he underwent a very strict practice of emptying and kenosis, letting go. And it made him very keen in his intellect and in his awareness. But then he had this shift in 1958, where it's actually Dr. Suzuki, the man who brought Zen Buddhism to America, to North America from Japan. He's the one who really urged Merton to start reading Maestro Eckhart, as he said, the one Zen thinker

of the West. And when Merton started doing that beginning in 1958, he entirely shifted from being a dualistic and a guilt-ridden, overly introspective monk, an Augustinian monk of the 40s and most of the 50s. He shifted to being this prophetic mystic in the last 10 years of his life, from 1958 to 1968. And in fact, I believe that he was murdered by our government. I think the evidence is really

out there now because he stood up against the Vietnam War, among other things. We know his phone was tapped, just like King's was, and his mail was intercepted. It was against the law, but it was done. And I've now spoken to three CIA agents who were in Southeast Asia at the time and asked them if they killed Merton. And the first one said, I will neither affirm it nor deny it. The second one said, we were wallowing in money at that time. There was no accountability whatsoever. He said, if just any CIA agent felt Merton was a threat to the country,

they could easily have done him in with no questions asked. And the third one I met after this book came out a few weeks ago and he said to me simply, yes, we did. Wow. That's tragic and stunning. It is. And it means, you knowen. And together on the Really No Really podcast, I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer.

And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us tonight. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. Bless you all.

Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Talking about him being so forward-thinking, you know, seeing so clearly, he, in that day, named technology as the great problem of the day. And that's only accelerated, and I want to read a little of what he said there, because it's so spot on. He says, and a contempt for value and for principle. The questions asked are not, is this right or is this good, but will this work and will it pay off? Will it increase our profits? And, you know, there's so much of the Internet, you know, you hear all these about, you know, all these hacks. You know, you'd hack your life, hack this, hack that,

which is all about finding a shortcut. And the question that I'm often asked is like to to what and why exactly and um as you say that that issue of technology again has has blown up you might say since the 1960s has become a bigger issue than ever before um remember too that in merton's day the big technological uh dream was about getting to the moon and uh everyone was talking about it this was so much money was going and all the rest but merton um he raised questions about it he said um uh what is what is wrong he said well even ants can fly even if man flies all over the universe he's still nothing but a flying ant

until he recovers a human center and a human spirit in the depth of his own being. That is so important, again, so prophetic that, you know, we can take our stuff to Mars, to the moon, around Venus, and if we don't deal with our stuff, we're just spreading our troubles elsewhere. And notice, for example, how these gee whiz gadgets that come out of Silicon Valley every year, these are being used by ISIS. This fellow who did this horrible murder last weekend at the gay club in Orlando. He, in the middle of it, as we all know, got on his iPhone and called the police to brag about he was doing it in the name of ISIS. But notice, he had an iPhone. So evil does not care. In fact, evil leaps on to get more efficient technology. And ISIS has all the latest

gadgets from Silicon Valley, and they always will have it. So what this shows is that Silicon Valley cannot redeem us. Silicon Valley is what they give birth to. These are useful items, but they can be used for evil and to make evil more efficient and not just for good. And so we have to go deeper into the human consciousness, the human psyche and personhood to clean up the evil, just as Merton was talking about back then. There's a wonderful poem where he talks about this. He calls it First Lesson About Man. He says, man begins in zoology. I'm sure by that he means our evolutionary background. He is the saddest animal.

He drives a big red car called Anxiety. Whenever he goes to the phone to call Joy, he gets the wrong number. Therefore, therefore he likes weapons. He knows all guns by their right names. He drives a big black Cadillac called death. Now he is putting anxiety into space. He flies his worries all around Venus. You see, that's just what he was saying about the ants that can fly. Man is a sadist animal. He begins in zoology and gets lost in his own bad news. Yeah, I love that poem.

You had it in the book. It's so good. It is. And it rattles the cage. We have to go think deeper than technology, deeper than the gee whiz gadgets that we keep coming up with. In fact, I will say this. I think the Silicon Valley,

with all of its success and all of its contribution, I think they should tax themselves, put some money in a pot to explore more deeply the human psyche, this whole issue of where evil comes from and so forth uh because um it's not enough to just keep putting out more gadgets we've got to examine and and merton says this this he says is a harder discovery, the deeper journey, than just getting to the moon and back,

this journey of what separates us from ourselves, this journey of learning who we really are deep inside, and I think that Silicon Valley should be helping us with this, besides providing iPhones for the likes of this man who just killed 50 people, I think, and ISIS itself, I think Silicon Valley should be asking itself, how can we take some of our earnings, and heaven knows they have enough, and put it into a deeper exploration of the role of evil in the human psyche and of our potential for good and for re-encountering the sacred. Indeed. You brought up the tragedy in Orlando over the weekend, and I had this marked as something to talk with you about, and then the fact that there was a tragedy in a gay club just days ago that's kind of in the front of everybody's mind.

I thought this would be an interesting question to bring up. Were you kicked out of the Catholic Church? Is that the right word for it? I was expelled from the Dominican Order, which I'd been a member for 34 years. So that's the technical word for it. You were accused of a number of heresies, and you walk through them in the book, and you sort of give both your response as well as how Merton might have defended you. But in it, you say, you know, one of the heresies against you was that you do not condemn homosexuals. And I'm going to quote you now, and then you can elaborate on it after

that. You say, how can we condemn something that science has proven is found in at least 464 other species and is found in every human community. About 8% of the human population is gay or lesbian. That is just the way it is. If we apply St. Thomas's principle that a mistake about creation results in a mistake about God, then the persistence of homophobia in the name of religion is worship of a false god. Talk a little bit more about that. I think that's really profound and beautiful. Well, I think that the issue of homosexuality today is the Galileo case of our time.

Because 400 years ago, religion went a little crazy and locked Galileo up and so forth because science was telling us new things, that the earth isn't flat and that the sun isn't going around the earth, we're going around the sun and so forth. So today, science has spoken, and it's been 50 years or so since homosexuality was removed from the list of disease or sickness by psychology, and it was recognized that this is the way it is.

There is a sexual minority, and in fact, they have a very important role to play. A Native American who really knew her tradition years ago told me that for those who really know the Native American story, before the Europeans came, those who really know the Native American story before the Europeans came, that all the spiritual directors to the great chiefs were gay because gay people have a deeper access to spirituality than straight people do. And she said this is known. And now since then, I've learned this is the case in the Celtic tradition

and in many African tribes as well from the ancient times. You know, I had an amazing experience in South Korea two years ago. I lectured. And it was a large crowd. People were packed in, well over 600 people. The very last question was from a 26-year-old. He stood up and he said, I am gay and I do not feel welcome in the church here in South Korea. And he sat down. And then I just went into this. You know, I mentioned science.

I also pointed out my Bible says God is love. It doesn't say God is heterosexual love exclusively. And I talked about the indigenous people and gay and science and all the rest. And then my last line was something like this. So I said, any society or community that worships a homophobic God is shooting itself in the foot because it's losing spiritual energy. Then I ended. With that, two things happened. One, my translator disappeared. She just left the room. And the person who invited me, the man who invited me came rushing up to the lectern, knocked it over. He was so excited. And he said, you've just

dropped a bomb. You've just dropped a bomb. He said, South Korea is the most homophobic culture in the world, but someone had to drop the bomb. It had to be an outsider. It's good you did it. Well, the next morning, I was on a train with my translator going south for some more gigs. And she said to me, I want to apologize. She said that I left the room, but I am lesbian, she said. And while you were talking there, I could barely translate what you were saying. She said the top of my head was coming off. And the moment you finished, I ran to the bathroom and I cried for an hour. Now, this woman was a very professional, competent woman, about 35 years old, very strong. I liked her a lot. But to hear that story, this competent, professional woman, her top of her head was coming off. She had to cry for an hour.

She said, you're the first theologian and certainly the first priest I've ever heard talk like that. Well, I did hear later that people were saying there were Buddhists there, Buddhist monks, and there were Catholic sisters and all. Someone told me the Catholic sisters were walking around saying, oh, my, my, we have to change our position on homosexuality. So that's good. We dropped some change there. But I just think that story is so sad and so powerful that this grown, strong woman had to go to the bathroom and cry for an hour, and the top of her head came off, because for the first time in her life she was validated as a human being yeah yep i agree it's beautiful and and uh the opposite of that the tragedy that you know so many people have to go through thankfully we seem to be making great

strides uh here in the u.s and and you know we've got a ways to go, but the trend is certainly looking positive as a society right now, which is very heartwarming. But religions tend to be way behind. I mean, obviously there are some who are not, but the Vatican has not moved very much on this subject. This pope is talking about mercy, but what about justice? So the Vatican is just trying to move a little bit. And then, of course, you have a lot of Muslims who, like the man who did the shooting, from all evidence that I've heard now, he himself was gay. He attended gay clubs. He got online to gay vote and all that.

So here's, this is what happens. You know, no one hates homosexuals more than a homosexual who hasn't dealt with it because he's hating himself. And so this could be the cause behind this entire tragedy. So it's no small thing to teach people in the name of God that they are a blotch on humanity. And unfortunately, many religions are still doing this, East and West, not just Islam, but pockets of Christianity, too. And that could lead us into a long, long discussion about, you know, society's move, in certain cases, away from religion, and what we gain and what we lose there. And

so much of your work is focused, I think, on those kind of questions. But we are out of time. So maybe we will have to do a round two of this at some point, because this has been great. But I think that's a great place to end. And Matthew, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. Thank you for the books that you've written that I'm just now starting to explore, and I'm excited to learn a lot more about. Well, thank you, Eric, and thank you for having a program like this, and for your deep questions, which are an important avenue to kind of spread the word. Okay, take care.

Thank you so much. Carry on. Bye. you can learn more about this podcast and matthew fox at one you feed.net slash fox