Author: MotherhoodsMatter

FREEDOM FOR EVERY ONE

On Monday the 6th of January, 84 years ago, in 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, facing the aggressions of an expanding fascist tyranny, proclaimed four freedoms for all people in the world.

Today I rewrite his articulation of those four freedoms for every creature in the world:

We seek to make our world happy and secure. Therefore we look forward to a world founded upon four essential freedoms for all creatures.

The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every creature to worship God and connect with the universe in its own way–everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want–which, translated into world terms, means economic and ecological understandings, which will secure to every human nation and to every flock, herd and other grouping of living creatures, a healthy, peaceful life for its individuals – everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, might mean a world-wide reduction of armaments and all types of weapons of destruction of habitat to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighboring nation or other species–anywhere in the world.

The reality is that this might be a vision of a distant millennium. But it is a dream of a kind of world probably not attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis sort of order of tyranny which dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb, the crash of a clearfelled forest or any other wanton selfish destruction of habitat.

Geoff Fox, January 6, 2025, Melbourne, Australia

MY VISION FOR ALL CREATURES

As a human being, I believe we all need to hold and respect the diversity of many theological positions that are “both/and” in nature.

And we cannot assume that our spirituality is separate from or superior to the spirituality or other beings in God’s creation.

  • In the Christian faith of both my theologian grandfathers, J.R. Blanchard and A.C. Fox, Jesus is both fully God and fully man.
  • God is both transcendent and immanent.
  • God is both merciful and just.
  • We can know God both through faith and reason.
  • Churches and temples and mosques are not only divine mysteries but also human institutions.
  • Human nature (a highly evolved subset of animal nature) is both good (made in the image of God) and sinful (in need of forgiveness).
  • Religious ceremony requires both sacrifice of selfishness and community sharing. (Often the same thing.)

Geoff Fox, January 4, 2025, Melbourne, Australia

(Apologies to Father Jim Crisman of Colorado for using his words and changing them to suit me better. The above word art by me uses a painting of Saint Francis of Assisi by Francisco Fernández of Madrid – born 1606, died 1646.)