Cosmic Mass, though on hiatus in Oakland due to lack of interest, has found new life in other states and countries. Philip Murray, the youth ministry director at a church in Vancouver, organized one in July that sold out, with hundreds outside begging to get in.
Luther's aim was to reform the Catholic Church. Instead, his actions started a new religion. Fox gave up on changing the church long ago and now advocates a split: "Give them the churches, we'll take Christ and move on." While he may not have swayed hearts and minds in the Vatican, Fox has changed the way many Christians think about their faith. Jubilee's Hanger says: "I don't see any big creation spirituality Vatican somewhere 1,000 years from now. I see it as seeping into other denominations, seeping into what's already happening."
James Sanders
Matthew Fox can be both an introverted
scholar and an unreserved theological
combatant.
James Sanders
Wisdom University leaves its downtown
Oakland headquarters this month.
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On a Monday in early August, Fox sits in the living room of his midsize, dark brown house in Oakland, a mile up the road from Wisdom University. It seems as if the whole interior of the house is wood: the floors, the walls, the thick column at the bottom of the stairs. Bright-colored paintings cover the walls, gifts to Fox from Native Americans and Africa-inspired artists. Upstairs, there's an altar room packed with artifacts from Inuits and Navajos, vulture feathers from shamans and boomerangs from Aborigines.
Fox is about to head off on a solo retreat. He'll spend time at an ashram, at a cheap hotel in Palo Alto, then head to the ocean for the weekend. Fox used to travel to Bodega Bay all the time to write and recharge, often bringing his dog, Tristan, a white spitz he called his spiritual director. Tristan died in the early 1990s, and it's been years since Fox took much time to relax. Sometimes, he steals a bit of free time while leading spiritual retreats, or reads novels on long plane trips, but during the week, Fox is usually on call. The administrative duties of being president of a university, even a small one, have turned out to be much more time-consuming than he'd expected.
In fact, this spring Fox stepped down as president of his University of Creation Spirituality, handing the reins to Jim Garrison, co-founder with Mikhail Gorbachev of the State of the World Forum, which brings world leaders together to discuss global issues. With Fox's approval, Garrison changed the name to Wisdom University and broadened its mandate. Eventually, there will be university affiliates worldwide and departments devoted to the wisdom and spiritual traditions of all the world's major religions. Fox will be chair of the creation spirituality department and president emeritus. Garrison plans to move creation spirituality from the school's core concept into a spoke on a much larger wheel.
With these changes, Fox seems concerned about losing control of his own school. In talking about the situation, he uses five variations of the phrase "I'm watching and observing" over the course of two minutes. Next month, when the nonprofit Friends of Creation Spirituality sells the ballroom used for Cosmic Mass, that money will go toward Wisdom University, redoubling creation spirituality's prominence at the school. If things don't work out, Fox might leave. "I'm not married to staying at this place forever," he says, "and yet I want to see it thrive, and see creation spirituality thrive within it."
On the retreat, he'll mull his transition from administrator back to teacher, as well as the future of Cosmic Mass and his reformation. Meanwhile, Fox is writing two more books. One is about reinventing Christianity, a more comprehensive version of the ideas in A New Reformation. Fox calls the other his "educational manifesto," in which he's rethinking the entire educational establishment, preschool through adult learning. "It's going to be an in-your-face, kind of blunt thing," he says. "Short, yeah. One hundred pages, something like that, roughly. I think people are -- I'm just too lazy, too tired to read thick books about education. I just kinda want to hit 'em in the head, wake people up."
It's another in the long line of outsize tasks he feels compelled to perform. "The loud things I've done have been more of a necessity. Take this reformation thing. I would love it if someone else would respond noisily," Fox says. "It's a question of conscience, you gotta do something. I've been given privileges, being a priest, being an author, and being a person with a doctorate of spirituality. I'm responsible, I've gotta speak out. You can't hide in a corner, it seems to me."
Another part of Fox, though, remains reluctant to do anything that exposes him to the public eye. "I don't feel drawn to be any kind of media icon or anything like that. I'm basically a teacher. I love teaching, I love lecturing. I love thinking and reading and writing. That's how I am.
"I'm not a show man," he says, softly, "I'm not a showman."
