About the Author

Matthew Fox is well-known for having revived the tradition of Creation Spirituality and for being a compelling voice for ecological and socially progressive causes. He is the author of 23 books, including Original Blessing, which has sold more than a quarter million copies. He is the recipient of the Courage of Conscience Award given by the Peace Abbey of Sherborn, Massachusetts. Other recipients have included the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Ernesto Cardenal, and Rosa Parks. He lives in California, where he has founded the University of Creation Spirituality, and is co-director of the Naropa Institute in Oakland.

Reviews

"A sweeping, enticing vision, pulsing with Fox's unrelenting passion."
--San Francisco Chronicle
"Impassioned . . . life-affirming."
--New Age Journal
"A big step toward a new, promising age of human scale and sacred context."
--Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul
"Fox approaches the level of poetry in describing the reciprocity that must be present between one's inner and outer work. . . . [A]n important road map to social change."
--National Catholic Reporter
Advance Praise for Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh
"Matthew Fox writes boldly and brilliantly about the Seven Cardinal Sins of the spirit, and the compassionate blessings of the flesh, all in relation to the attributes of the seven chakras--those energies given to us by God which can be used to become Godly, or Godless. It is a fine blend of his great intellectual prowess, creativity, and love of
humanty."
--Clarissa Pinkola estes, Ph.D., author of Women Who Run With the Wolves, The Gift of Story, and The Faithful Gardner
For the Reinvention of Work
"A sweeping, enticing vision, pulsing with Fox's unrelenting passion."
--San Francisco Chronicle
"A big step toward a new, promising age of human scale and sacred context."
--Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul
" This is a compassionate and powerful call for the reformation of daily work . . . [A] spendidly illuminated path to meaning."
--Paul Hawken author of The Ecology of Commerce
For A Spirituality Named Compassion
"Well worth reading for Fox's timely insights and vivid images."
--Christian Century
"Forceful and compelling. . . . [This book] demands a conversion to Christianityin its essence and fullness . . . impressive . . . a work of marvelous con-
struction."
--Spirituality Today
"Well worth our deepest consideration . . . put[s] compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect."
--The Catholic Register

In the early 1970s, psychiatrist Karl Menninger wondered, Whatever became of sin? At the end of the millennium, mystical theologian Fox (Original Blessing) declares that sin is such an overwhelming part of our cultural context that it is imperative to decide how we are going to talk about it. In spirited and engaging prose, Fox presents his thesis: that we have focused far too long on the sins of the fleshthe titillating sexual peccadilloes of our politicians, for exampleto the exclusion of the sins of the spirit. Quoting medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas, Fox defines sin as misdirected love. He contends that thinking of sin in this way enables us to think anew about what the Catholic Church called the seven cardinal sins: sloth, pride, lust, wrath, envy, avarice, gluttony. Believing that we are not in a position to consider sin unless we first understand our capacity for goodness, Fox argues in the first part of the book that our flesh is good. He does not restrict the term flesh simply to the traditional sense of human weakness; he also affirms the fleshiness of the earth and the universe and demonstrates our human connectedness to the cosmos. In the second part, Fox examines the many definitions that Eastern and Western mystics, theologians and biologists have given to sin. In the third section, he combines the chakra tradition of the East with Aquinass idea of misdirected love to offer a rethinking of the concept of sin: Is sin not a love energy (chakra) that is misdirected? In a final section, the author asserts that the chakras teach us to direct the love-energies we all possess and proposes seven positive precepts for living a full and spirited life, including Live with moral outrage and stand up to injustice. Fox tries to take a hard look at the magnitude of evil in the world, yet his focus on directing our love in more positive directions offers little more than sweetness and light. (May)