By JOHN NORTH

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It is time to break up “the empire,” theologian Matthew Fox said during an address at which he spoke for about an hour  — and fielded questions from the audience for another 15 minutes — on the evening of  Nov. 16 at Jubilee Community Church in downtown Asheville.

Besides his talk, he also led the two morning celebration services earlier that Sunday at Jubilee. His evening talk, titled “Going Deeper With Matthew Fox,” lasted about an hour and was followed by a 15-minute question-and-answer session with the attendees and capped with a book-signing.

Fox is the author of “The Pope’s War,” “Christian Mystics” and “Original Blessing,” among many books, and is, according to a press release, “an internationally acclaimed theologian and spiritual maverick who has spent the last 40 years revolutionizing Christian theology.”

He was a Roman Catholic, but was expelled from the Dominican order to which he had belonged for 34 years by Cardinal Ratzinger for teaching liberation theology and creation spirituality.

The program started with the song “Soul Friend” performed by the Rev. Howard Hangar, Jubilee’s founder and leader. “You’re part of the universe — you’re not just an observer,” Hangar told the estimated 250 people in attendance.

Hangar said of Fox, “His rabbinical nature helps me feel fully alive. It somehow endorses and gives me a stamp on all my crazy ideas in this life. It’s a gift to man — and we’re privileged to have him here today.”

Beginning on a humble note, Fox said, “Howard advertised this as ‘Going Deeper’ ... that’s cool. I don’t know exactly what that means, but the four things I plan to talk about are” the mystic warrior that we are, what science and spirituality coming together today, how to make the new economics working for everybody and a few words about creativity

“It’s about depression, despair, cynicism, the lack of energy. If we need anything today, we need new forms of education, politics, governing, raising food” and other things.

“Our times has the word ‘couch potato-itis’” A contrast to that condition is Thomas Aquinas —  “people forget that he was condemned three times before they canonized him… He said zeal is the opposite of inertia. It comes from the intense experience of things…”

Fox told of telling a man who came back from Vietnam and who had been a soldier, “but now I’m going to make you a warrior. First, they trained him to play the flute…. The soul grows by subtraction, not by addition... Everyone of the lessons was like that. So learning to let go is a big part of warrior energy. But also learning to care.”

Further, Fox said, “Nobody said it better than Haffiz (a Muslim mystic)…. ‘It is a naive person who does not realize we engage in a …. battle.’ That’s the mystic. A mystic is a lover.

“A soldier is given a focused task. Kill the enemy. The warrior has to develop an inner life. Purify your wants and longings and engage fear and inheritance of the past.”

Again referring to Haffiz, Fox said the mystic talked about “guarding the jewel of the heart versus the dark ooze of the past.”

Fox said his examples show how “the warrior is willing to stand in the present, not overwhelmed by fears of future or shadows of the past.”

He then said, “This whole thing about being lovers. I’d like to begin with men... We’re far too rational. We’re too literal to be in touch with our intuition ... our right brain. Do not make intellect your God. Values do not come from the intellect. Values come from intuition.

“If we live in a society that ignores intuition… We are sucked into the values of the empire. We not only are missing intuition, mysticism, we’re also missing values. What we need is a cosmic religion. The first expression of cosmic religion is the conscience.

“It is not intellect, but intuition, that guides humanity. This is why I think I derive so much juice from the mystics. The mystics swim in intuition.

“‘The God-thirsting person sees God everywhere,’ (Ralph Waldo) Emerson said. The great plenitude of being” is “metaphysical combustion. Disappearing into the beyond. It is this transition that the poet celebrates.”

After a pause, Fox said, “We’re talking here about falling in love with creation.…Now the archetype for the omnipresence of God within us” is The Buddha, who “is remembered and honored as a historical figure who lived to be about 84 years old. But the living Buddha” is still around.

Likewise, he said that, “in the West, the historical Jesus lived to (age) 30,” but the cosmic Jesus” remains here.

As for recovering the sense of the whole, he said, “Christ is the fire that connects everything within the heavens and on the earth… The meta-cosmic Christ. I don’t know what the meta-cosmic anything is… except really, really big.” (The crowd laughed.)

“I wrote a book about 25 years ago called ‘The Coming of the Cosmic Christ.’ It’s an achievement of the left brain to give us experience....

I don’t know who God is, but I’ve got a story to tell. Whenever the water struck a stone, it had something to say. That is the Cosmic Christ. Every being is part of holiness, that’s the message of the Gospel... That’s why falling in love” means the warrior becomes a lover. “When you love, you defend what you cherish.”

He added that “the Cosmic Christ is not just the life in all things, but the wounds… the genius, the politician, the poet...

“If this is true, isn’t it something very important? It’s through this awareness that the sake of the sacred.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of two stories on Matthew Fox’s talk at Jubilee. The second (and final) installment will appear in January’s Daily Planet.