Navigate your spiritual evolution with greater ease, joy, purpose, and fulfillment as you experience yourself as a vibrant, wondrous, and meaningful part of creation and the sacred — and a creative force for good through the awe-inspiring wisdom of the mystics and modern science.
Did you know that, like the cosmos, you are constantly in a state of creation — evolving, transforming, and birthing new aspects of yourself with each passing moment?
The Universe — in all its vast and immense awe-inspiring beauty — is not something outside of you, but a reflection of who you are at your core…
Just as stars are born from chaos and galaxies spiral through cycles of development, the ebb and flow of your life — the challenges, moments of joy, and transitions — mirror the rhythm of the cosmos itself.
And you are an integral part of this grand, ever-evolving process that has been unfolding for 14 billion years!
As visionary spiritual theologian Matthew Fox and renowned cosmologist Brian Thomas Swimme teach, leaning into this greater reality can bring many blessings to your life as it illuminates your deeper potential — and universal calling — for transformation, connection, self-expression, and joy.
During this enlightening course with Matthew and Brian, you’ll embark on a profound journey of deep inner discovery, renewal, and awakening that blends the wisdom of creation spirituality with the revelations of modern science to reveal a higher vantage point of reality that is far less scary, isolating, and heavy than the trials of modern living would suggest.
Matthew and Brian (who will co-teach with Matthew for the first four modules) will share how the Four Paths — Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via Creativa, and Via Transformativa — mirror the cycles of the Universe and can guide you to live more fully and authentically…
These paths provide a profound transformative roadmap for understanding your purpose and meaning in the cosmos — and in our world.
What if the struggles you face — and the breakthroughs that follow — are not random, but part of a greater universal cycle that connects you to the cosmos, life — and the Divine mystery of existence…
What if your personal spiritual evolution is actually a microcosm of the Universe’s own magnificent story of creation…
Matthew and Brian will take you deeper into this realization through the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality to illuminate these greater truths through:
- Via Positiva: The way of awe, wonder, and joy — recognizing the beauty and vitality that flows through all things…
- Via Negativa: The path of letting go, embracing mystery, and learning through life’s challenges…
- Via Creativa: Tapping into your innate creativity, reinventing yourself as an artist of your own life…
- Via Transformativa: Embracing your role in the evolution of consciousness — transforming yourself and the world around you…
These paths are not just abstract ideas — they mirror the very cycles of creation that have shaped the Universe for billions of years!
Together with insights from modern cosmology, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how these principles apply directly to your own life…
… and offer a time-tested path for navigating challenges with greater resilience, creativity, and purpose.
In a world facing immense challenges, understanding how to navigate chaos and to find beauty, meaning, and spiritual connection in your life has never been more vital.
Whether you’re feeling the weight of personal struggles, seeking deeper meaning, or simply wanting to reconnect with the wonder of being alive, this course offers you the tools and insights to realign with the cosmic flow of creation.
One where you are not just a witness to the Universe’s evolution. You are part of it.
During this transformational course, you'll:
- Discover how the 14 billion years of the universe is an expression of supreme joy
- Explore the immensity and the intimacy of the universe — to awaken greater connection and meaning in your spiritual evolution and life
- Cultivate a deeper sense of ease amid silence, stillness, chaos, and destruction — and a newfound capacity to harness the inspiration and creative forces that lie within them
- Discover how “ecstasy,” “breakthrough,” and “oneing” are available to us all — and how they name the mystical experience for great mystics such as Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, and Julian of Norwich
- Experience the 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality through Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Mary Oliver’s poetry, Thomas Merton’s poetry and drawings, and Saint John of the Cross’ “Dark Night of the Soul”
- Discover how a state of “balanced turbulence” is integral to the creativity of the universe
- Learn the important role cosmology can play in awakening awe and wonder — and, therefore, a spiritual life
- Discover the basis of spirituality at work — and how work can be prayer
- Explore the “moments of grace” of the universe’s unfolding — and the Earth's unfolding
- Learn how the Holy Spirit brings about creativity in us — and how creativity is at the heart of understanding what it is to be human
- Delve into what the mystics say about “nothingness” experiences — and consider your nothingness experiences and what they have taught you
A professor of cosmology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, Brian is known for his Cosmogenesis book and Northern California Emmy® Award-winning PBS documentary, Journey of the Universe. His perspective on the nature of the Universe supports the emergence of a flourishing Earth community.
Matthew, one of the foremost mystical scholars of our time and recipient of the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award, offers us divinely inspired guidance on how we can rise to meet the uncertainties of our time with compassion, conviction, creativity, and grace.
Through this dialogue, you’ll not only gain a deeper intellectual understanding of your place in the Universe, but you’ll also be invited to go inward to embody the miracle of life as it unfolds within and around you.
Together, Matthew and Brian invite you on an awe-filled exploration, to discover how the mysteries of the cosmos can propel your spiritual path and evolution forward within and around you.
What You’ll Discover in These 7 Weeks
In this 7-week transformational course, Matthew and Brian will guide you through the fundamental skills and competencies you’ll need to find yourself in the creational energy of the Universe to inspire deeper meaning, connection, and joy in your life
Join the Livestream — or Stream Later to Watch at Your Convenience
You’ll connect with Matthew and Brian and experience their teachings through livestreaming video via any connected device. This connection is easy to use and will enhance the impact of Matthew’s and Brian’s transmissions. Can’t make it live? After each class, you can stream the video and audio recordings to enjoy anytime and anywhere at your convenience.
Course Sessions Tuesdays at 5:00pm Pacific
This course will feature LIVE teachings, interactive sessions, experiential practices, and Q&A with Matthew and Brian. Each session will build harmoniously upon the previous ones, so you’ll develop a complete holistic understanding of the practices, tools, and principles you’ll need to navigate your spiritual evolution with greater ease, joy, purpose, and fulfillment.
Module 1: Via Positiva — Explore the Universe & Your Own Spiritual Journey as an Expression of Supreme Joy to Inspire Awe & Wonder (December 3)
Many people feel crushed by the immensity of the universe. During the first class, you’ll explore how while the universe may be vast, it’s not meaningless — and it’s also quite intimate.
You’ll discover the 14-billion-year unfurling universe and your own spiritual path as an expression of supreme joy…
… and consider your place in this cosmic story, beginning with our home ecosystem and expanding out to the solar system as one of the 200 billion stars of the Milky Way galaxy — and the place of our galaxy in the Virgo supercluster.
Brian and Matthew will share how you can experience this expansion of the universe as a manifestation of a surplus of beauty that is continuously flowing into an ever young, ever fresh universe.
The spiritual journey most often begins with awe and wonder and joy — what Meister Eckhart calls “breakthrough,” what Aquinas calls “ecstasy,” and what Julian of Norwich calls “oneing.”
Such experiences take us out of ourselves (thus ekstasis or ecstasy) and remind us how big our inner and outer worlds are. You’ll explore both through Via Positiva, Eckhart, and the mystics.
This week, you’ll:
- Learn what an important role cosmology can play in awakening awe and wonder — and, therefore, a spiritual life
- Explore the role that joy and love play in your spiritual life
- Discover how to ground in gratitude and make that integral to your spiritual life
- Learn how the 14 billion years of the universe is an expression of supreme joy
- Discover how “ecstasy,” “breakthrough,” and “oneing” are available to us all — and how they name the mystical experience for great mystics, such as Hildegard, Aquinas, Eckhart, and Julian of Norwich
- Experience the immensity and the intimacy of the universe — to awaken greater connection and meaning in your spiritual evolution and life
Module 2: Uncover the Deeper Meaning of Via Negativa & Harness the Creational Forces That Dwell Within Challenge, Chaos & Uncertainty (December 10)
The Via Negativa can occur as a great emptying, a taste of nothingness… a mind-emptying that precedes a mind-filling.
This week, you’ll explore how silence and stillness are part of that journey — and how Via Negativa names the experience of disorder or chaos that occurs cosmically, socially, and personally.
In its ultimate expression, the mystics call it the “dark night of the soul,” which can also appear as a dark night of society or our species as seems to be occurring today.
You’ll explore how to navigate both the silence and the chaos times, what they have in common, how they feed one another, and how to “sink” into Oneness as in Eckhart’s teaching, “we sink eternally from letting go to letting go into the One.”
You’ll also discover the universality of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and its relentless drive to disorder — and the many ways that has played out through a universe that has sent 99% of all species into extinction.
This week, you’ll:
- Learn how the universe engages in disorder as well as order
- Explore how spirituality instructs us in how to deal with disorder and chaos in your life
- Discover the powerful role of silence and emptying in your spiritual life
- Delve into what the mystics say about “nothingness” experiences — and consider your nothingness experiences and what they have taught you
- Go deeper into the concept of the dark night of the soul and what the mystics teach about navigating that reality
- Experience a deeper sense of ease amid silence, stillness, chaos, and destruction — and a newfound capacity to harness the inspiration and creative forces that lie within them
Module 3: Via Creativity — Merge Creativity With Spirituality to Experience Balance, Clarity & Peace in Turbulent Times (December 17)
Celebrating the creativity of the universe… that every moment of the universe is a moment of creativity.
Dissipative structures, which include hurricanes, unicellular organisms, animals, cities, stars, and spiral galaxies…
… all depend upon maintaining their existence “far from thermodynamic equilibrium,” where the creativity of the universe resides.
This week, explore the star as an exemplar of inhabiting the zone far from equilibrium — and the spiritual quest as finding the strength to remain in states of “balanced turbulence.”
You’ll also consider: Is creativity the state of remaining in a state of “balanced turbulence?” And discuss how we can do that as individuals and as communities… and how spirit guides us in creating and recreating, birthing, and sharing the powers of creativity we carry within us and the universe carries within it…
… and how central creativity is to our survival as individuals and as a species at this time in history.
Lastly, you’ll explore how to connect spirit and creativity as a spiritual practice.
This week, you’ll:
- Discover how a state of “balanced turbulence” is integral to the creativity of the universe
- Learn how the Holy Spirit brings about creativity in us — and how creativity is at the heart of understanding what it is to be human
- Explore how to practice art as meditation — and why art as meditation is called “the way of the prophets”
- Explore the role of moral imagination and how we transform self and society
- Learn the 3 I’s of the mystical experience
- Discover the joy of creativity and how the Via Positiva and Via Creativa inform one another
Module 4: Via Transformativa — Explore How the Transformation of the Universe Mirrors Your Own for Deeper Grace, Balance & Meaning (January 7)
The universe goes through eras that are never repeated — like the galaxies, which were never created again. It is also in communion with all of its parts as it moves through various stages of transformation.
This week, explore how the major transformations of the universe — from primordial plasma to atoms to stars and galaxies to rocky planets to life to the evolution of human consciousness — are understood as “moments of grace.”
To see each entity, including one’s self, as the culmination of 14 billion years — and to see each entity as searching for the transformation that the sun and moon and stars and rivers and mountains are calling for in this time of crisis.
The call to transform — to bring balance where there is unbalance; joy where there is sorrow; justice where injustice reigns; truth when lies dominate: This is built into all of us.
As Aquinas puts it, “the proper objects of the heart are truth and justice,” and “the vision of God is arrived at through justice.”
You’ll also consider how your work and citizenship are a carrier of the seeds of justice that bring about transformation and constitute what Jesus called a “kingdom of God” here on Earth.
This week, you’ll:
- Explore the “moments of grace” of the universe’s unfolding — and the Earth’s unfolding
- Discover how to bring balance where there is imbalance; justice where there is injustice
- Learn the dynamics of compassion — what it is and what it is not
- Explore how the Via Negativa and Via Transformativa affect one another
- Learn how a quest for the common good lies at the heart of healthy politics — and how truth and justice are both “objects of the heart”
- Discover the basis of spirituality at work — and how work can be prayer
- Experience the deepening of relationship within the universe and in your own life as it makes way for compassion, love, justice, dignity, and balance in all things
Module 5: Discover the 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality Through Thomas Merton's Transformational Journey to Reach the Deeper Depths of Your Humanity (January 14)
Catholic monk and spiritual pioneer Thomas Merton — who became close friends with the Dali Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Martin Luther King Jr., and D.T. Suzuki, who brought Zen to North America — was converted by the latter to study Meister Eckhart.
This week, explore the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality through Thomas’ transformational journey and teachings.
Thomas spent the year 1958 studying Eckhart and Zen poetry, and a pronounced transformation occurred in Merton and his writings as a result.
He moved from being a pious and somewhat dualistic monk to being a prophetic Christian, a contemplative with a prophetic direction.
Matthew will share excerpts from his book on Merton, who advised him as a young Dominican to study in Paris, and who, like Fox, admired Pere Chenu deeply.
This week:
- Explore the 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality through the dynamic teachings of Thomas Merton — Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via Creativa, Via Transformativa — and his methodology for reaching the depths of art and humanity
- Discover how the 4 Paths are applicable to your spiritual journey
- Experience Merton’s poetry and drawings as a path into the depths of your own inner artist and humanity
Module 6: Applying the 4 Paths to Art for Deeper Connection, Inspiration & Appreciation for Life (January 21)
The Four Paths allow us to grasp and draw forth the depths of our great artists and musicians.
One student applied the four paths to understanding Walt Whitman in his doctoral thesis and received a summa cum laude for his efforts.
One musician taught courses for years on such musicians as Gustav Mahler, Mozart, Beethoven, Bruckner, and more applying the Four Paths to their music and thus drawing out the depths of the spiritual teachings.
This week, explore how Mary Oliver’s poetry can be grasped at a deep level when one applies the Four Paths to it.
- Learn how the 4 Paths assist us in deepening our appreciation of art and artists — and how to apply them to art in our lives
- Consider the poetry of Mary Oliver as it relates to the 4 Paths
- Grasp why Otto Rank says the unio mystica is encountered “through love and art”
- Experience the 4 Paths through Beethoven’s 9th Symphony
Module 7: Discover How the Poetry of Saint John of the Cross Aligns With the 4 Paths to Awaken the Spiritual Warrior Within (January 28)
Saint John of the Cross is recognized as a great poet and a great mystic, but he was also a great prophet, for he dared to interfere with the complacency and actual corruption in his Carmelite Order during the 16th century.
Practically every poet who translates his work says that one should leave aside his commentaries on his poetry and just dig into the poetry itself. Why is that?
During the final class, you’ll explore Saint John of the Cross’ poetry to uncover the Four paths of Creation Spirituality that are embedded within it.
Saint John of the Cross’ commentaries have an inadequate hermeneutic, that is to say, a method for interpreting the full mystical/prophetic journey.
In his time only the three paths of purgation, illumination, and union were in vogue, and they fail to do justice to his full spiritual journey. But the Four Paths do.
Explore Saint John of the Cross’ spiritual genius by way of the Four Paths as a model for our journeys of recovering the spiritual warrior within you.
This week:
- Learn through Saint John of the Cross’ poetry, teachings, and life story how the 4 Paths name his spirituality deeper than the 3 paths of purgation, illumination, and union
- Explore what Saint John of the Cross is saying to you and us today
- Learn how his work summarizes our entire class
- Consider his words, “Love: It’s all I do” — and how it relates to your life
- Experience Saint John of the Cross’ “Dark Night of the Soul” to music — and meditate on his and Dali’s paintings
The 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality Bonus Offering
In addition to Matthew’s and Brian’s transformative 7-week online course, you’ll receive this special bonus offering to complement the course and take your understanding and practice to an even deeper level.
The 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality & the 4 Kinds of Love
Video Commentary on Theologian Paul Tillich From Dr. Gianluigi Gugliermetto
In this enlightening 45-minute video, Episcopal priest and theologian Dr. Gianluigi Gugliermetto delves into the connections between the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality and theologian Paul Tillich’s four kinds of love. Through this thought-provoking comparison, Dr. Gugliermetto offers a fresh critique of Christian anthropology, providing a practical framework for understanding the diverse expressions of love in our lives. This inspiring bonus invites viewers to reflect on the transformative power of love and how it shapes both personal and spiritual growth.
Register by to claim this bonus before it expires.
Special Edition of “The New Ecozoic Reader”
PDF Commentary on Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe
In this 141-page publication of The New Ecozoic Reader, 32 artists, writers, theologians, and philosophers evaluate Brian Thomas Swimme’s last book, Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe. In Cosmogenesis, Brian combines two genres — autobiography and cosmology — into one new genre he’s calling “auto-cosmology.” In essence, it’s the narrative of how the universe constructed a storyteller. It was this novel approach that led the editors of an ecological journal to invite articles assessing Brian’s work, drawing from the thinking of 32 artists, writers, theologians, and philosophers.
“The Story of the Noosphere”
PDF Excerpt From the Book, “The Story of the Noosphere,” by Brian Thomas Swimme
In this exclusive bonus, participants get first access to the first three chapters of cosmologist Brian Thomas Swimme’s new book, The Story of the Noosphere, written with Monica DeRaspe-Bolles. It covers the history of the Noosphere’s emergence, with the word Noosphere referring to collective humanity, including all of its works. This insight into the Noosphere as a superorganism goes back to the work of the French paleontologist and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Even in these first three chapters, you will get a sense of the overall power and promise of the Noosphere as an emerging planetary mind.
What Graduates of Matthew’s and Brian’s Courses Are Saying…
The wisdom and insights of Matthew Fox and Brian Thomas Swimme are thought-provoking, inspiring, and transformative. Together they are powerful co-creators in the noosphere. I find myself watching the presentations (after the live presentation), pausing, and replaying segments that I want to dwell on and integrate at a deeper experiential level. This course has reignited my awe and wonder of the ongoing genesis of our cosmos. Thank you for creating this course!
This is a fabulous course, team-taught by an exceptional theologian and cosmologist! The science-based content — as well as that from great theological/mystical thinkers — was exceptional. And, Matt and Brian taught us to use our imagination for understanding our role in cosmogenesis. It is exciting to think that our personal relationships are a part of something so much bigger and greater for the evolution of the cosmos. Even though people far down the earthly timeline will discover the fruits of our labors and imagination, we have the ability to make a big impact. I learned to have faith and hope in our world and my role in it.
Chetek, Wisconsin
As always with Brian Swimme and Matthew Fox, I was inspired to expand my view and understanding of the cosmos to the cosmogenesis. It is our birthright as humans to be able to break through to continue evolution on a more conscious level.
Los Altos, California
I joked with my husband that when anyone asks me how old I am, I’m going to respond “3.8 billion years.” When they ask, “What do you mean?” I’ll respond, “It’s a long story!” Lol. I think that might peak their interest to want to know more, and I’ll be happy to share what I learned from Matt and Brian. I am so grateful to them for sharing their knowledge — it will live within me for all time. I feel ever more connected to Mother Earth and now also to the cosmos.
Chicago
Join the Global Community
The 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality offers some of the most transformational online teachings available, within a thriving global community of learning and practice. Join fellow students and practitioners to support and inspire each other as you integrate the teachings and practices Matthew Fox and Brian Thomas Swimme will share in this powerful program. You’ll join an international community on the leading edge of manifesting a world grounded in the principles of cooperation, harmony, and reverence for all of life.
Here’s What You’ll Receive
Seven 90-Minute Class Sessions With Matthew Fox and Brian Thomas Swimme
Experience a unique opportunity to be mentored by and learn from renowned spiritual pioneer Matthew Fox and professor of cosmology Brian Thomas Swimme, PhD — from the comfort of your own home. Each class session includes a livestreaming video option and will guide you to experience yourself as a vibrant, wondrous, and meaningful part of creation and the sacred — and a creative force for good. Course sessions are on Tuesdays at 5:00pm Pacific.
Seven Video Recordings of Class Sessions
After each class, the video will be available for you to stream in a high-quality format. You’ll never have to worry about missing a session, and you can watch anytime and anywhere at your convenience.
Seven Audio Recordings of Class Sessions
After each class, the audio will be available for you to stream. You’ll never have to worry about missing a session, and you can listen anytime and anywhere at your convenience.
Seven Transcripts of Class Sessions
You’ll also receive the entire class transcription after each session is completed. You can then review, print, and highlight the most important insights and practices you were given.
Seven 30-Minute Interactive Group Practice Sessions
With live class attendance, there will be a 30-minute optional interactive practice session directly following each class. You’ll be placed in an intimate group with several other participants on the Zoom call to interact, share, and do additional practices to help further integrate the weekly lessons. Practice sessions are available for live attendance only and are not recorded for playback. If you’re unable to attend the calls live, the Facebook online community group allows you to connect with each other and find alternative times to interact.
Interactive Exercises and Questions for Each Lesson
Between class sessions, you’ll have the option of completing related exercises, practicing new tools, and answering questions to accelerate your learning and integrate each week’s lesson.
Online Community
Our exclusive Facebook online community is the perfect place to continue your discovery process after each class. Here, you can continue the discussion about your course materials and interact with your fellow students to take your exploration to an even deeper level.
An Unprecedented Opportunity to Join the Online Course, The 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality
We feel honored that Matthew Fox and Brian Thomas Swimme have chosen to partner with The Shift Network to offer this exclusive LIVE online course. This is a unique opportunity to interact directly with a renowned spiritual pioneer as well as a professor of cosmology whose powerful insights and pioneering work are helping us heal and awaken ourselves and our world.
If you’re serious about learning how the mystics and modern physics can help you navigate your spiritual evolution and life with greater ease, joy, purpose, and fulfillment, then you owe it to yourself, your loved ones, and our world to take this one-of-a-kind program.
If you’re ready to take the next step in your own evolution, click the register button below to reserve your space now.
Your Satisfaction Is 100% Guaranteed!
Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed! If you don’t absolutely LOVE The 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality — or don’t feel that it meets your needs — please submit your refund request form on or before December 17, 2024 and we’ll happily issue qualifying customers a refund.
More Praise for Matthew Fox...
— Bestselling Author Mirabai Starr: “Matthew Fox Will Go Down in History as One of the True Spiritual Geniuses of Our Age”
— Bestselling Author Andrew Harvey: “Matthew Will Illumine Your Life as He Has Illumined Mine”
I think of Matthew Fox as God’s Talent Scout for all the pivotal figures and ideas he has reclaimed for the reform of Christianity. He knows the sources and translates them into modern idioms for the rest of us! What he has done with Hildegard, Eckhart, and Aquinas himself makes him a major teacher and guide.
Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque, New Mexico
With his characteristic vigor, wit, and startling insight, Matthew Fox reclaims living wisdom from the murky recesses of theology. Who knew that Thomas Aquinas was so extravagantly brimming with a vital blend of earthy reverence and contemplative quietude, blessing the holiness of all that is incarnational while exalting the One that transcends all distinction? May these distilled teachings contribute to mending the torn web of the world.
Author of Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce & Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics
Author of A New Christianity for a New World
More Praise for Brian Thomas Swimme...
As a theoretical physicist interested in the wider cultural and spiritual implications of modern science, I have long been a fan of the work of Brian Thomas Swimme, who has a particularly inspiring take on the standard scientific paradigm — that the universe is not just something to be theoretically understood but something we can have an experiential relationship with. In his newest book, Cosmogenesis, he intermingles his description of the development of his ideas with his own very personal history. Poignant, epic, and fascinating, it is quite simply a joy to read.
Imperial College London, physics department
Cosmogenesis is a remarkable story threaded into the dynamic unfolding of our emerging universe. The weave here of poetics, spirituality, and science is exquisite. Swimme’s narration will carry you along in his poignant journey toward universe-as-teacher. You will discover your personal entry into a cosmos speaking through you.
Yale University, co-author of Ecology and Religion
This is a brave, paradigm-shifting, page-turning book; vulnerable and intimate, vast, and lyrical. By sharing the challenges and breakthroughs of his own personal story in the style of an auto-cosmology, Brian Thomas Swimme impactfully reveals epic twists and turns of the Universe Story. Powerful storytelling throughout evokes a new and much needed cosmology that meaningfully brings together subjective lived experience and recent scientific discovery.
Author of Learning to Lead Together: An Ecological and Community Approach and co-founder of Global Generation
About Matthew Fox
EDIT
Matthew Fox is a prolific author of books dedicated to renewing the ancient tradition of Creation Spirituality, including Original Blessing... A Spirituality Named Compassion... and Christian Mystics. This earth-based mystical tradition is feminist, welcoming of the arts and artists, honors Indigenous wisdom, works with science, and is committed to interfaith approaches and eco, social, and gender justice.
Matthew’s effort to reawaken the West to its own mystical tradition has sparked awareness of Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, and the mysticism of Thomas Aquinas, as well as the wisdom tradition that nurtured Jesus. Matthew’s work helps reconnect science and spirituality by honoring the sacredness of the Cosmos, and interacting with contemporary scientists who are also mystics. He believes that “by reinventing work, education, and worship, we can bring about a nonviolent revolution on our planet.”
Matthew received his doctorate summa cum laude in the history and theology of spiritualities from the Institut Catholique de Paris. A member of the Dominican Order for 34 years, he established an Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality that operated for seven years at Mundelein College in Chicago, and for 12 years at Holy Names University in Oakland.
He founded the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland in 1996 and was president and professor until 2005 when he left to create a pilot project to reinvent the educational experience for inner-city teenagers.
Matthew is a recipient of many awards, including the Gandhi King Ikeda Award from Morehouse College, which is awarded for dedication to peace, unity, nonviolence, and justice. He also received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award —other recipients have included the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, and Rosa Parks. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Academy for the Love of Learning in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
About Brian Thomas Swimme
EDIT
Brian Thomas Swimme, PhD, is director of the Third Story of the Universe at Human Energy, a nonprofit public benefit organization, and professor of cosmology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He received his PhD from the department of mathematics at the University of Oregon in 1978 for work in gravitational dynamics.
Brian brings the context of story to our understanding of the 13.8 billion-year trajectory of the Universe. Such a story, he feels, will assist in the emergence of a flourishing Earth community. He's author of Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe… The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos… and The Universe is a Green Dragon. He's co-author of The Universe Story, which is the result of a 10-year collaboration with cultural historian Thomas Berry.
Brian also created, with Bruce Bochte, three educational video series: Canticle to the Cosmos… The Earth’s Imagination… and The Powers of the Universe. He co-wrote, with Mary Evelyn Tucker, and hosted the 60-minute film, Journey of the Universe, which was broadcast on PBS television stations nationwide and won the Northern California regional Emmy for Best Documentary in 2011.
His most recent media work, created with Monica DeRaspe-Bolles and Devin O’Dea, is the popular YouTube video series, “The Story of the Noosphere.” He lectures widely, and has presented at conferences sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The World Bank, UNESCO, The United Nations Millennium Peace Summit, and the American Museum of Natural History.
