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Contemporary Italian philosopher and psychologist (and ex-priest) Vito Mancuso, wrote a very rich Introduction to [Matthew Fox’s] book Original Blessing when it was translated into Italian.  In Italian the title was changed to, In principio era la gioia, “In the Beginning there was Joy” because, as the translator explained to, the word “blessing” in Italian has come to mean something very ecclesiastical, a priest’s blessing or a pope’s blessing, so the word has lost its primary meaning.

 

Mancuso talks about the journey from fall redemption religion to creation spirituality that includes a Via Positiva this way:

 

In putting the good and not the bad at the center, the bene-diction and not the male-diction (or the sin), the joy and not the sorrow, almost automatically brings forth a new pedagogy for which our society, so closed and depressed, has an indescribable need.

          Adapted (slightly) from Matthew Fox, Daily Meditations 9/5/22

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In the beginning there was joy

God spoke a bene-diction

Over the chaos

A creative word of blessing and the world came to be

 

And it was good

 

God spoke a benediction

Over we human creatures

And it was very good

 

What do we lose when we lose the joy

When we make faith

A painful response to malediction

To self-imposed curse

 

What do we lose when instead of seeing ourselves

As blessed, as those who are good to the core,

we see ourselves as rotten to the core?

 

If one lingers around

The fringes of our steepled citadels

And listens, carefully

We can hear the sounds of lament and fear

 

We can see that lament and fear

Transformed into a need to dominate and control

Translated into a lust for political power

And we see the ekklesia align itself

With the malevolent

 

With anger, and hate

Even with cruelty and lies

 

When Jesus was born

The angels did not sing

“you’d better watch out!”

 

The angels sang “glory to God in the highest

And on earth peace to human creatures,

Whom God favors”

 

Original blessing frees us

Frees us, through love (and grace) to offer love

To “be not afraid”

 

I believe that God “rejoices over us with singing” (Zephaniah 3)

I believe that Jesus came so “our joy might be complete) John 15

 

In the beginning, was joy

In Jesus came joy

In the Spirit is joy

 

And I believe that when we live out of blessing

Rather than curse

We can be people who let go of all our old fears

and out subsequent securities

and freely move with God

away from the old

and into the new

 

into Kingdom living

and the way of common good

 

when we live from blessing not curse

we “shall go out in joy and be led back in peace;

the mountains and the hills before us shall burst into song,

and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”  (Isaiah 55)