Matthew Fox doesn't aim to keep cardinals awake at night, but in matters of theology, spirituality, feminism and ecology he certainly does that. He remains a Catholic, he says, because he has both a sense of history and a sense of humour.

We are living in the best of times and the worst of times. We can run but not hide; so much has to change so fast.

Theology. For much of Western theology God is in the sky: for Jesus, the kingdom is among/within us. Matthew Fox's magnum opus in Original Blessing. The most significant thing we can say of or to a human person is not 'you're a sinner' but 'you are like God.' Being made in God's image gives us value, worth, dignity. As the rabbinic saying has it, 'Every time a human walks down the street, that person is preceded by angels exclaiming "Make way! Make way!"' Justice is then the acknowledgement of another's dignity and worth. Injustice is violating the Godlikeness of the other. Rosa Parks' refusal to go to the back of the bus provided the spark for the American civil rights conflagration. But it's our bus too.

Spirituality, for Matthew Fox, is 'living in depth rather than superficially'. Spirituality is a Way, not a religion. Mysticism is returning to our origins, to the essential reality of everything (when we realize the soul is not in the body, but the body is in the soul). Everyone can be a mystic: every young person must have a vision (or they will seek them in drugs and alcohol). The prophet is the mystic in action.

Feminism. Males are running things - the church, banks, medical establishments. Males keep their pain within - that's the way to grow up violent. Every adult male should affirm at least two young men every week. The ordination of women priests is a political and power issue. The majority of Catholics are in favour. Indeed there were no 'priests' in the modern sense in the first couple of centuries anyway.

Ecology. Revelation comes in two volumes - the Bible and Nature, said Aquinas. The origin of the universe is associated, not with guilt or duty, but 'sheer joy'. The earth is not dead - all atoms are 'storms of activity'. Non-western peoples have known about the living earth for thousands of years. Native peoples know the creation stories best. They know our home is the cosmos itself, and they know the importance of ritual and rites of passage (without them there are no elders - or they are playing golf or the stock market); the youth are violent and adults are bewildered. The native peoples don't carry the whole universe's burden on their shoulders: they know they're guests here. Since science and religion split the cosmology lost its conscience. The whole universe is God's temple. Who is buying and selling in this temple? Are we selling our children's heritage for 30 pieces of silver?' (All the rivers in Taiwan are dead). We have destroyed the ozone layer not through ignorance, but through arrogance. Australians are very close to wilderness. There are three ways of responding to creation, according to Abraham Heschel - enjoy it, exploit it, or accept it with awe.

Our challenge is not simply 'jobs versus environment', but reinventing jobs.

Art. 'Nothing is the same as anything else - trees, us, moments in history.' Our need is to welcome artists back home. In the last 200 years, since Newton, we perceive ourselves living in a machine universe, with little spontaneity or freedom. Our world-view is that of an industrial age. Bankers and technicians rule. Artists feel abused, wounded. We need a paradigm shift to bring artists from the periphery to society's centre stage. Modern politics is essentially confrontational: we need rather imagination and ritual This is not 'art for art's sake' but 'art for the universe's sake'. When society affirms its artists, there will be no unemployment.

# 60% of the homeless in San Francisco are Vietnam veterans.

# 'White worship is boring, quite dead!' So we committed to 'ecclesiogenesis' - birthing the church.

You can find a summary of Matthew Fox's creation-centred spirituality in the two articles he wrote for the SCM Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (ed. Gordon Wakefield) on Creation- centred Spirituality and Meister Eckhart. Another place to begin is the little book Manifesto! For a Global Civilization (co-authored with a physicist, Brian Swimme).