Humor and paradox are often the only ways to respond to life's sorrow with grace. Matthew Fox More Quotes by Matthew Fox More Quotes From Matthew Fox If you look closely at a tree you'll notice it's knots and dead branches, just like our bodies. What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully. Matthew Fox imperfection tree beauty The universe is in the habit of making beauty. There are flowers and songs, snowflakes and smiles, acts of great courage, laughter between friends, a job well done, the smell of fresh baked bread. Beauty is everywhere. Matthew Fox laughter song jobs Beauty saves. Beauty heals. Beauty motivates. Beauty unites. Beauty returns us to our origins, and here lies the ultimate act of saving, of healing, of overcoming dualism. Matthew Fox healing beauty lying Facing the darkness, admitting the pain, allowing the pain to be pain, is never easy. This is why courage - big-heartedness - is the most essential virtue on the spiritual journey. But if we fail to let pain be pain - and our entire patriarchal culture refuses to let this happen - then pain will haunt us in nightmarish ways. We will become pain's victims instead of the healers we might become. Matthew Fox pain journey spiritual Sustainability is another word for justice, for what is just is sustainable and what is unjust is not. Matthew Fox social-justice unjust justice We must work on our souls, enlarging and expanding them. We do so by experiencing all of life-the beauty and the joy as well as the grief and pain. Soul work requires paying attention to life, to the laughter and the sorrow, the enlightening and the frightening, the inspiring and the silly. Matthew Fox laughter pain silly When our inner self connects to our work and our work to our inner self, the work knows no limit, for the inner self knows no limit. Matthew Fox limits self work Creation is all space, all time - all things past, present, and future. Matthew Fox creation space past The system is not working. That is how a paradigm shift begins: the established way of seeing the world no longer functions. Matthew Fox function way world We honor life when we work. The type of work is not important: the fact of work is. All work feeds the soul if it is honest and done to the best of our abilities and if it brings joy to others. Matthew Fox soul honor joy The whole purpose of letting pain be pain is this: to let go of pain. By entering into it, we see that we are strong enough and capable enough to move through it. We find out that it ultimately has a gift for us. Matthew Fox pain strong letting-go To recover a spiritual tradition in which creation, and the study of creation, matters would be to inaugurate new possibilities between spirituality and science that would shape the paradigms for culture, its institution, and its people. Matthew Fox spiritual would-be people A global awakening can only happen from a spiritual awakening that is of global dimensions. Matthew Fox awakening spiritual inspirational Evil is the shadow of angel. Just as there are angels of light, support, guidance, healing and defense, so we have experiences of shadow angels. And we have names for them: racism, sexism, homophobia are all demons - but they're not out there. Matthew Fox women angel healing Today's Catholic church seems to reward authoritarian personalities who are clearly ill, violent, sexually obsessed and unable to remember the past. Matthew Fox catholic personality past I played football for a huge portion of my life, all the way through college actually. Matthew Fox college football way A job is something we do to get a paycheck and pay our bills. Jobs are legitimate, at times, but work is why we are here in the universe. Work and calling often go together. Matthew Fox calling together jobs I didn't learn to swim until I was 21 or something because I grew up in the mountains in Wyoming and all the water is glacier runoff and cold. Matthew Fox wyoming swim water When it comes to wilderness animals we have to make an effort to preserve what areas we can that they can be themselves in. Its come to a point though, clearly, where some species have to be cared for by humans if they are not going to disappear altogether. Matthew Fox wilderness effort animal Filmmaking is always sort of building a mosaic of this arc of what the character is going through. Matthew Fox mosaics movie character
