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Welcome to Voices From The Archives
A journey through the rich history of Fountain Street Church, a unique, non-denominational congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Through recordings from our archives, we bring you the voices of past ministers, guest speakers, and community leaders as they wrestle with timeless questions of faith, justice, and the evolving role of religion in society.
Each episode revisits key moments from Fountain Street Church's history, from thought-provoking sermons to pivotal discussions on spirituality, social action, and the liberal religious tradition. Whether you're a longtime member or discovering us for the first time, these archival recordings offer insight, inspiration, and a connection to a progressive legacy that continues to shape the present.
Produced by Kayle Clements with assistance from Dick Wood and Nathan Dannison. Theme music by Kayle Clements.
You're listening to Voices from the Archives of the Fountain Street Church, a non-denominational congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
In 2024 and 2025, Fountain Street Church dedicated its sanctuary worship services to the exploration and expression of the divine feminine.
But three decades prior to this, in 1993, the radical theologian and former Catholic priest, Matthew Fox, was invited to host a two-day workshop exploring the feminine mystics of the West.
This event was limited to 200 attendees and quickly sold out.
In that same year, 1993, Reverend Fox was expelled from the Dominican Order and the Catholic Church under orders by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
Ratzinger would go on to become Pope Benedict XVI.
After his trial and expulsion from the Catholic Order, Fox was ordained as an Episcopal priest.
He's the author of 35 books, with millions of copies sold around the world.
Fox is the founder of the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland, California.
His theology focuses on process and liberation, ecology, and panentheism, or "God in all." In this recording, Matthew Fox is engaging with a gathering of Fountain Street Church members in the church social hall, addressing the topic of feminine divinity and theology.
I guess I'm a feminist theologian because Cardinal Ratzinger says I am.
In the formal document where they silenced me three years ago, that was the first formal accusation against me, written on a broken typewriter in the depths of the Inquisition room in the Vatican.
Number one, feminist theologian.
Number two, that I call God mother.
Number three, that I call God child.
And it goes on like that, which tells us a lot more about the Vatican than it does God, or the Goddess.
But it tells us a lot about whom feminism is threatening as well.
Indeed, I got a letter this week—I'm getting a lot of letters these days—from a woman who I last saw 18 years ago, and she's a student of mine in Barrett College, undergraduate women's college.
I taught it in Illinois.
And she said, I remember—she was responding to my question—and she said, I remember something you told me 18 years ago.
She quoted me as saying, you'll be able to tell a Christian by the enemies that they make.
So I'd like to begin with just a brief reflection on what feminism might mean, the definitions of feminism.
And then I'd like to get us into some circle dances, because part of Greek spirituality and feminist spirituality is reclaiming our bodies, and as I said last night, learning to breathe again—as heretical as that sounds to some fundamentalists.
But just a few minutes on what is feminism, because obviously feminism is a broad and generalized concept, and it has many meanings.
And we have to play with it, because those who are threatened by it will, of course, offer up their own definitions of feminism.
Adrienne Rich defines feminism at one point as developing the nurturing qualities of women and of men.
The nurturing qualities of both women and men.
I think that's, in many ways, a very Jewish definition of feminism, because it's about compassion developing the nurturing quality.
Rosemary Ruther, the Catholic feminist philosopher theologian, talks about feminism as the opposite of dualism, that patriarchy is characterized by dualism, body versus soul, matter versus spirit, either/or thinking.
I talked about this last night, quoting Saint Augustine, who no one could accuse of being a feminist.
He said, and I quote, "Man but not woman is made in the image and likeness of God." And his dualism is what I quoted last night, "The spirit of whatever is not matter." That's the perfect patriarchal dualistic statement, if you're looking for a perfect patriarchal dualistic statement.
In 1913, Rebecca West had this statement, she said, "I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is.
I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat." You might call that the political dimension to being feminist.
And it's about throwing off masochism.
It's about throwing off doormatism.
And that is one of Adrian Rich's themes, too, of course, that masochism has to cease.
The "I can't" syndrome doesn't hold anymore.
We all are empowered.
We're all here for a purpose.
And we all have to get into that empowerment and call it forth from one another.
So it is an affront to sadism, to those who want to control others in whatever form or fashion.
So as a masochist frees herself or himself, the sadist is also put into some moments of self-reflection.
Madeline L'Engle says this, she says, "It is simplistic to say that when women guide the way of life, society is feasible.
There's time for music and beauty and things of the spirit.
And that when men are in charge, there is war, and the tribal dances become war dances.
Simplistic or not, that is the basic pattern throughout history." She's referring, I think, especially to the-- she's being developed by feminist archaeologists who, for over a 35,000-year period in Europe, have not found any evidence of war or forts, either war as defense or war as offense.
Instead, they found over 10,000 figurines of a pregnant goddess.
Now, the male archaeologists thought that this surely meant orgies, projection.
What the goddess means is the honoring of the creative powers within all of us, women and men, as divine powers.
And then when a civilization truly honors the creative power, then the creative power does not get owned, kept-- let's say kept-- by a military establishment.
Think about it.
What has characterized 20th century, if not the art of war.
Taking our creative powers of science, technology, money, all that, and pouring it into more and more efficient war weaponry.
Well, that seems not to have been the case until the Indo-European invasions around 4500 BC when patriarchy seems to have moved in to Europe and pushed aside the goddess tradition.
So the goddess tradition is for men as well as women.
And when the last time the goddess tradition came roaring into the West was the 12th century, the century of Hildegard of Bingen, whose paintings you'll see later this afternoon, the century that gave us Chartres Cathedral, and over 125 years, 500 churches the size of Chartres, everyone dedicated to Mary, the goddess in Christianity.
And even the word "cathedral" was invented then, and it means "chair," "throne." Now today, due to patriarchy, clericalism, and anthropocentrism, if you ask most Catholics what's a cathedral, they say, "Oh, it's the place where the bishop sits on his throne." That's totally erroneous.
It is a place where the goddess sits on her throne overseeing the order in the universe.
It's a cosmological throne, just like Isis, the pictures, that's why you have the black Madonna in all these 12th century cathedrals.
It's Isis sitting on her throne, the divine child on her lap, ruling the universe with compassion and wisdom.
That is "cathedral." That's what "cathedral" means.
We've wandered a long way from its original source.
Today, I believe the 1990s, the nearest thing to the 1990s is the 12th century, because that's the last time in the West when we were truly exposed to an influx of a new cosmology and with it the goddess and the green man.
And remember, the green man is on every one of these 12th century cathedrals as well.
He's often pictured with a long beard that's a wreath.
And he represents the green element in nature and in maleness.
So men are by no means excluded from the arrival of the goddess and of a healthy feminine spirituality.
In fact, what the men's movement is about is finding how we, too, have been victimized just as a slave master is victimized by slavery.
So men have been hoodwinked by their own success during the patriarchal period, and it hasn't been good for our souls, not at all.
Susan Goblek in her book "The Reenchantment of Art" defines feminism this way.
She says, "To see our interdependence and interconnectedness is a feminine perspective that has been missing, not only in our scientific thinking, policymaking, but in our aesthetic philosophy as well." And her definition of feminism is interdependence, interconnectedness, and what she calls our capacity for relatedness.
It emanates, she says, from the feminine side of the psyche.
Images that speak to the bond of connectedness and challenge the dualistic consciousness of the modern world system create a break in the boundaries to encapsulate our current consciousness.
So relatedness, interdependence, and so forth.
And Charlene Spretnik in her book "States of Grace" talks about the goddess as representing the creativity in the universe, laced throughout the cosmic manifestations all around us.
The divine is imminent, not concentrated in a distant seat of power.
So the whole sense of the imminence of divinity.
Well, those are a few examples of, I think, working definitions of feminism.
I guess I would just put my own this way, incorporating those, that it is an alternative way of looking at the world from patriarchal's dualistic way.
Instead of seeing the world in terms of fear, it's seeing the world in terms of trust.
Instead of seeing the world anthropocentrically, it's seeing it in terms of the whole, cosmologically.
Instead of settling for gender injustice, it's about gender justice.
And it's about bringing forth the wisdom of women, and indeed the wisdom of wisdom.
And wisdom is almost always depicted as a feminine energy, Sophia.
Wisdom is bringing forth a feminine side of God, to balance out an excessively masculine projection onto divinity.
In the Western mystical tradition, it is about bringing forth the Godhead, and not just God.
God is about history, the Godhead is about mystery.
God is about redemption and liberation, but the Godhead is about silence and being.
The awesomeness of being.
The image I have of Godhead is a great, big, cosmic mama, on whose lap all creation exists.
And as Eckhart says, God changes, the Godhead never changes, in the sense that the Godhead is just being, it's not about action.
God is about action, the Godhead is about non-action.
So the Godhead is a great archetype of mysticism.
And of course, the repression of mysticism has paralleled the excesses of patriarchy.
Because patriarchy is about control, and mysticism is about letting go.
Sinking, as Eckhart put it, sinking into divinity.
So therefore, it's about the imminent, it's about the presence, the omnipresence, it's about panentheism.
Everything in God, God in everything, as distinct from theism, which is us here, God out there.
Ewing says there are two ways to lose your soul, one is to worship a god outside of you.
So the mystical tradition is also about finding the divine within.
Not just within oneself, but also within all things.
What Hildegard called the glittering, glistening mirror of divinity that is shining in every creature in the universe.
Every creature, she says, is a glittering, glistening mirror of divinity.
The whole tradition of our being images of God, mirrors of the divine.
And I'm just going to invite you to draw as I go along, whatever you want to draw.
Some may want to take notes too, that's your business.
You can use the front and back of the page.
But mysticism is about heart work, awe work, right brain work.
Therefore, the avenue in is imaging, circle dancing, breathing, silence, awe and music and art and so forth, all these are ways into our mystical life.
So this is why I'm just inviting you to respond as you want to respond.
Now I'm going to be covering several topics, so you know, kind of be still and listen for something that moves your heart.
Don't just draw about something, respond in terms of your heart being moved.
Because there are going to be many images.
You see, one way that you educate the right brain is through showers, showering of images.
It's the left brain that looks for distinction and analysis and division, and that's a great way to learn.
But we're going to let our left brains be under the chair right now, let them rest.
And you're going to be showered with a lot of images from some wonderful people over the centuries.
And just listen to what moves you and utter whatever you want to utter.
And you can wait till it actually arrives.
What I'd like to do is to begin with a biblical source of our feminine mystics, which is of course our wisdom literature, and I'd like to share with you a few images from that as we get started.
Then I'm going to move into some themes that you find common in these great feminist mystics of the Middle Ages, including Hildegard of Mingen, 12th century; Mechthild of Magdeburg, 13th century; laywoman, Julianna Norwich, 14th and 15th century; hermitess, and also Meister Eckhart.
These are the four people I'll be drawing on as I go through some of these feminist themes.
But first, a few images from the wisdom literature.
Here's from the book of Proverbs.
Wisdom calls aloud in the streets.
She raises her voice in the public squares.
She calls out at the street corners.
She delivers her message at the city gates.
Wisdom is a street person.
Doesn't talk about her being up in the top of the skyscraper.
She's telling her wisdom wherever she goes.
Now the early Christians picked up on this, and the first name given Jesus in the New Testament was Sophia, "Lady Wisdom." And Matthew's gospel is built entirely around the theme of wisdom, teaching wisdom.
In the streets, Christ came as wisdom.
Again Proverbs 8, "Yahweh created me when the divine purpose first unfolded before the oldest of the divine works.
From everlasting I was firmly set, from the beginning before earth came into being.
The deep was not when I was born.
There were no springs to gush with water.
Before the mountains were settled, before the hills I came to birth.
Before God made the earth, the countryside, or the first grains of the world's dust.
When divinity fixed the heavens firm, I was already there." That sense of the preexistence of the divine feminine of wisdom as a partner with divinity.
In the book of Sirach, from which we get John 1, John 1 is not about Logos, that's a second generation male thing.
It's primarily about wisdom from the book of Sirach, which says, "I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and I covered the earth like mist.
I had my tent in the heights, and my throne in a pillar of cloud.
Alone I encircled the vault of the sky, and I walked on the bottom of the deeps.
Over the waves of the sea and over the whole earth and over every people and nation I have held sway.
Among all these, I searched for rest, and looked to see in whose territory I might pitch my camp." The whole idea that wisdom encircles the whole earth, it's common to all cultures, all religions, all nations.
It's always ecumenical, always universal.
And wisdom walks through the heights of the sky and on the bottoms of the sea.
She's everywhere.
Now I want to turn to our medieval mystics, how they pick up on this tradition, and the first theme is that of the goodness of creation.
Hildegard of Bingham, 12th century, said, "God is the good, and all things that proceed from God are good." Maestro Eckhart says, "When you talk about the Creator, you're always talking about goodness." And this is why Western religion, when it's always talking about redemption, leaves out God the Creator, leaves out blessing, theology, or goodness.
Blessing is just a theological word for goodness.
So you're not going to talk about goodness if you don't get back to the idea of God as Creator.
Julian of Norwich, "I know well that heaven and earth and all creation are great and generous and beautiful and good.
God's goodness fills all the divine creatures, all blessed works full, and endlessly overflows in them." Notice her use of the word beautiful.
Beauty has been lost as a theological category for the last 300 years because Descartes, philosopher of the Enlightenment, has no philosophy of aesthetics, no philosophy of beauty.
Beauty is not important in a machine.
It's efficiency that's been important.
John Muir says, "Beauty is the most appropriate name for God that there is." This is an ancient tradition.
Aquinas says, "God is superabundant beauty, the most beautiful thing in the universe, sharing that beauty with every being." Julian says, "God is everything which is good as I see it, and the goodness which everything has is God." This is a whole metaphysics of goodness.
God is everything which is good, and the goodness that everything has is God, is divinity.
Aquinas says, "Despair comes from being cut off from your own goodness and how our goodness relates to the divine goodness." This theme of goodness is not about tiptoeing through tulips.
It's about survival.
The whole ecological crisis has happened because our species has not meditated deeply on the goodness, the blessing of creation, healthy forests and soil and air and water.
Thus Hildegard of Bingen, "There is no creation that does not have a radiant, be it greenness or seed, blossom or beauty, it could not be creation without it." All of creation was fashioned to be adorned, showered, gifted with the love of the creator.
The entire world has been embraced by this kiss.
So not only is all creation good, but these mystics celebrate the earth as blessing and good also.
So Hildegard of Bingen says, "Holy persons draw to themselves all that is earthly." All that is earthly.
This is not about escaping the earth.
In the creation trend and feminist tradition, it is about being close to the earth.
In fact, humus, from which you get humility, means earth.
It doesn't mean putting yourself down.
Humility is about being close to the holy earth.
Spirituality is not about climbing Jacob's ladder, getting away from matter, mother, and earth.
It is about dancing Sarah's circle, staying close to the holy earth.
So as Hildegard, "The earth is at the same time mother.
She is mother of all that is natural, mother of all that is human.
She is the mother of all, for contained in her are the seeds of all.
Our bodies, she says, are supported in every way through the earth.
The earth glorifies the power of God." The earth as glorifier.
Mechthild of Magdeburg talks explicitly about celebrating our bodies instead of treating them with distrust and fear.
He says, "Do not disdain your body, for the soul is just as safe in your body as in the kingdom of heaven, though not so certain.
It is just as daring, but not so strong.
Just as powerful, but not so constant.
Just as loving, but not so joyful.
Just as gentle, but not so rich.
Just as holy, but not yet so sinless.
Just as content, but not so complete." Here we have a poem celebrating our bodies.
As I quoted Augustine last night, Augustine says, "The soul makes war with the body." That's patriarchy.
But Eckhart says, "The soul loves the body." And that's what Mechthild has just sung about, creating a poem about that relationship of gentleness and interdependence.
But Julian of Norwich, our own English-speaking mystic, says, "Our sensuality is grounded in nature, in compassion, and in grace.
I said that God is in our sensuality, for God is never out of the soul.
For her, sensuality is the very throne of divinity in our midst, and it's deep within our soul.
God is the ground," she says, "in which our soul stands.
God is the means whereby our substance and our sensuality are kept together, so as never to be apart.
For her then, the incarnation and redemption is about a reconnecting of the divine and the earth, of substance and sensuality." That's her very understanding of the meaning of her Christian faith.
And just so that we don't think this is abstract, Julian of Norwich has a passage where she honors the process of going to the bathroom.
She says, "Food is shut in within our bodies as in a well-made purse.
When the time of our necessity comes, the purse is opened and shut again in the most fitting way.
And it is God who does this, for I was shown that the goodness of God permeates us even in our humblest needs." Notice, going to the bathroom is a humble need because it's an earthy need.
And it's this goodness of God that runs through everything, including our natural process of defecation.
And notice, see, you thought you were alone in the privy, but she says, "It is God who does this." This is co-creation.
Nature is doing its thing with us.
All of it is blessing.
This is awfully good advice for Westerners because, obviously, one of our booming industries is laxatives.
And I think one of the reasons is we've had spiritualities that run right up to the top of our chakra and don't deal with our bodily need in our lower chakras.
Eckhart also celebrates the soil of the human soul when he says, "The seed of God is in us.
The seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree, a hazel seed into a hazel tree, the seed of God into God." The whole idea of planting the seed in the earthiness of our souls.
A final theme that I'll treat before we share our drawings is a theme of cosmic awareness, cosmic consciousness, cosmology.
Remember the word "cosmos" simply means "whole," W-H-O-L-E.
Remember I quoted Aquinas last night saying, "This is what spirit is, our capacity to relate to the whole, to the totality of things." The cosmic Christ hymns talk about the Christ who fills the whole creation, who reconciles all things in heaven and all things on earth, a sense of cosmology.
And we've heard the wisdom scriptures that walks through the whole cosmos, connecting all.
So Hildegard of Bingen says, "I welcome every creature of the world with grace." I welcome every creature of the world with grace.
This idea that we're not just here bumping shoulders with the other creatures, we're here to welcome them with grace, to see them as gifts, as every being is, a revelation of the divine.
Aquinas says, "Revelation comes in two volumes, the Bible and nature." The Bible and nature.
Nature as revelation.
This idea has been lost in the West for several hundred years.
Hildegard says, "God has arranged all things in the world in consideration of everything else." What is this intrinsic interdependence and interconnectivity among all things.
Mechthild of Magdeburg says, "The truly wise person kneels at the feet of all creatures." Kneels at the feet of all creatures.
This idea of reverence, awe.
There is awe in every creature because every creature we encounter has a 15 billion year history and that we should approach it as one would any sacred being.
Burning bush.
Moses took his shoes off for the burning bush.
And what we now know is that every bush is burning.
Every being we meet is burning.
Professor Pat McPhysicist in Germany four years ago demonstrated that every atom in the universe contains photons or light waves.
That means every being is burning.
Light waves are in every being.
That is exactly what John 1 says, that Christ is a light in every being in the world.
This fall I was in Canada for a little trip and I saw this amazing maple tree that was so glorious in its colors.
And that's when it dawned on me, Moses saw one burning bush.
We can see every bush burning today.
The sacred is all around us.
The Book of Wisdom says, "The Spirit of the Lord indeed fills the whole world." The Spirit of the Lord fills the whole world.
Again I said last night, we don't have a theology of the Spirit in the West so we've forgotten this cosmology.
The world is filled with the Spirit.
And Hildegard says, "Glance at the sun, see the moon and stars, gaze at the beauty of earth's greening." Now think what delight God gives to humankind with all these things.
Who gives all these shining, wonderful gifts if not God.
It's about delight, about finding the delight in all these shining, wonderful gifts.
Eckhart says, "God loves all creatures equally and fills them with the divine being.
And we should lovingly meet every creature in the same way." And Aquinas says that every creature has a friendship with every other creature and a friendship with God.
See, this was the last time in the West, this medieval Rhineland mystic movement or the Celtic tradition, the last time that we thought this way, that we thought about the interdependence and the kinship and the friendship among all beings and with the divine.
So every creature is a cosmic Christ, that is, every creature is cosmic wisdom.
Every creature is Shekinah, a reflection of the feminine side of God, the feminine face of God, which is glorious and radiant, radiates out, as Hildegard says.
Every creature a glittering, glistening mirror of divinity.
This is now not just a mystical fact, but a scientific fact.
And now when you get that together, mysticism and science, and the artist gets on board to tell us these stories in various ways, create rituals out of them, that's cosmology.
And there we have a renaissance possible.
I think only a renaissance is going to heal this planet, wake us up as a species.
Thank you.