Spirit Matters

The prolific and provocative priest, Matthew Fox, returns to Spirit Matters to speak about two totally different but strangely relate new books. Fr. Fox earned a doctorate in the History and Theology of Spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and was a priest in the Dominican order for more than 30 years before running into trouble with the Vatican. He subsequently became an Episcopal priest, renowned as an innovative theologian, author, and outspoken activist for social justice. His 44 books have been translated into other languages more than 70 times. Among them are Original Blessing; The Coming of the Cosmic Christ; One River, Many Wells; The Hidden Spirituality of Men; Christian Mystics; and The Pope’s War. His work has contributed a great deal to the modern rediscovery of the Christian mystical tradition and to a rethinking of Christian theology. As the founder of the University of Creation Spirituality in California, he has reinvented forms of education and worship. His Cosmic Mass, which mixes music, dance, and other contemporary art forms with the western liturgical tradition, has been celebrated more than 100 times in cities throughout North America. He conducts dozens of workshops each year, serves as visiting scholar at the Academy for the Love of Learning in Santa Fe NM, and continues to turn out books. Here, we talk about two of them: The Beloved Will Guide You: St. John of the Cross and the Triple Dark Night of Our Times, and the provocatively titled Trump and the MAGA Movement as Antichrist. This conversation is not to be missed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠Dana Sawyer⁠ is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and World Religions at the Maine College of Art & Design and the author of biographies of both Aldous Huxley and Huston Smith.

This episode's guest is⁠ Michael Schauch⁠ . Michael is an alpinist—meaning he climbs high mountains—and an award-winning author

Mirabai Starr returns for her third visit to Spirit Matters. Mirabai is an award-winning author of creative non-fiction and contemporary translations of sacred literature. She taught philosophy and world religions at the University of New Mexico-Taos for 20 years and now teaches and speaks internationally on contemplative practice and inter-spiritual dialog. I first became aware of Mirabai because of her books about – and translations of – some of the pre-eminent Christian mystics—John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila—and later interviewed her about her other excellent books, such as Wild Mercy, which is about female mystics from different traditions, Caravan of No Despair, which is about her own heart-wrenching loss and the transformation that can come from grief, a subject she’s helped a great many people deal with in workshops and online programs, and Ordinary Mysticism: Your Life as Sacred Ground. She’s back now with a revised and expanded edition of her 2012 book, God of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As always with Mirabai, the conversation offers much to learn and much to feel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cynthia Abulafia is an author, an academic, and a devotee of the Goddess. She is, in her words, committed to giving language to the divine feminine and restoring the experience of embodiment as the heart of spiritual practice. A longtime student and teacher of non-duality, she guides people through kundalini awakenings and spiritual emergence with grounded tools rooted in embodiment, breath, and the context of sacred texts and traditions. Her debut book, Embodying the Goddess: How to Awaken Curiosity and Reverence on the Spiritual Path, which was released in January 2026, was "inspired by 20 years of kundalini awakening, 20 years of study in non-duality traditions, and the work of the great philosopher Utpaladeva (900s CE)." In it, Cynthia challenges the “transcendence bias” of patriarchal spirituality and offers a path of radical integration. If you're curious about the divine feminine, the phenomenon of kundalini awakening, and about grounding nonduality in the apparent dualism of embodiment, this is the conversation for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices