ARTICLES

In The Foxtrap

DEFROCKED DOMINICAN'S UNIVERSITY OF CREATION SPIRITUALITY

By George Neumayr

Students pound on drums and dance. A teacher chants and passes out Hershey's kisses. Adminstrators hug and giggle.

A scene from a child care center? No, it is a day at a university which offers accredited Master's degrees. Founder and president Mattew Fox, the infamous defrocked Dominican, calls his school in downtown Oakland, "The University of Creation Spirituality (UCS)."

For Fox, who was expelled from the Dominican order in 1992 at the Vatican's request, UCS is something of a second chance. In 1995, the 57-year-old renegade priest lost control over the Institute in Culture and Spirituality, a program he had led for over a decade at Holy Names. The Catholic college in Oakland had indulged Fox, even permitting him to hire a witch named Starhawk to teach in his program. But in 1995 Holy Names marginalized Fox. He got the hint, and in January, 1996 UCS was born.

Located above a piano store on a busy Oakland street, UCS is umistakably Fox's. Walk into UCS's communal room (which takes up most of the school's space) and you will find: a wooden sculpture of two unidentifiable creatures hugging (the placard below reads in part, "The life within the wood was resurrected after being doomed to a future of chainsaws and termite infestation"); "Trash" art ("Make Art Not Landfill: Taking a Second Look at Trash," a sign reads); a sculpture of a "castrated and eviscerated" man with machine gun bullets wrapped around his legs; drawings of the "Zen of Metamorphosis"; misshapen dolls and masks pinned to walls; "A Mandala," a drawing which, according to the placard, represents, among other things, "the menstural blood that flows freely"; "Emily's Cloak of Empowerment," a dress designed for the school's "Feminist Awakening" course ("My ten year old daughter Emily and I made this cape to transport her into womanhood...," the caption reads).

Prominently displayed near the center of the communal room is a sclupture of a dove in human hands, beneath which reads, "The Peace Abbey-Courage of Conscience Award, Presented to Mattew Fox For Giving Voice to the Cosmic Christ Within." Near the front of the room is a table displaying, among other materials, a promotional pamphlet advertising "The McKinnon Touch: Full Body Massage" and the Catholic Women's Network newspaper. In the student lounge hangs a National Catholic Reporter article about 15 women suggested for the archbishop's position in Chicago).

Six or so classrooms surround the communal room, each emblazoned with the name of a "spiritual" leader Fox admires: Sojourner Truth, Gandhi, Eckhart, etc. There is also a "sacred cave," which a staffer describes as a "chapel," but which is simply a bare, carpeted room with a few cushions, candles and a small running fountain.

Fox says in UCS's brochure that the program is "modeled on a cathedral school." His course list tells a different story. From a faculty which features Jerry Brown, UCS students take such courses as: Advanced Dreamwork, The Historical Jesus as Ecological Sage, Creation Spirituality and the Gay and Lesbian Experience, Sacred Sexuality, and Massage as Meditation. (Matthew Fox's assistant, Mel Bricker, a friendly man who wears an earring in his left ear, estimates that five or six faculty members are Catholic.)

What are UCS's courses like? I attended Sister Jose Hobday's course, "Native American Rituals, Storytelling, and Spirituality," on May 21 to find out.

As I entered the class, Hobday, an active Franciscan nun of "Seneca Iroquois descent," pounded a drum. One student greeted me, "I'm Sunrise, just like the morning."

As students found their seats, Hobday passed around Hershey's kisses. Hobday began the class by recounting the parable of "The Fairy Flower and the Orchid." Hobday then asked the students to tell their own stories. A middle-aged woman obliged her with a story about a "woman who found pennies every day." Another woman told a story about advice she received from a psychic reader. "You have the guru within you...Get on the road and kill the Buddha," Hobday instructed the woman and the class.

In the course of the story-telling, Sister Hobday suddenly asked, "Where's the moon?" "It is a full moon," a student informed her. Later, Hobday told some "knock-knock jokes."

Before the break, Sister Hobday led the class in an Indian dance ritual. Hobday pounded a drum and chanted, "Drum beat in the heart beat, the beat of the universe," as students, with bells on their feet and wooden shakers in their hands, hopped and twirled, first slowly, then frenetically, as the drum pounding intensified. "Sand Painting," Hobday told the class, would follow.

Before leaving, I asked a student what the difference was between UCS and the Holy Names program Fox had left. "Fewer limitations," the student replied.

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