Available for Pre-Order: Release Date: November 10, 2026

Matthew Fox’s new book, with foreword by Mirabai Starr, offers a powerful new interpretation of the great Christian mystic, John of the Cross. By employing the four paths of Creation Spirituality, he makes him come alive again. John only had access to the traditional paths of purgation, illumination, and union to interpret his profound poetry, and he had the Spanish Inquisition breathing down his neck, so his writings are sometimes misunderstood—or not seen clearly. Matthew Fox shows how John was in fact way ahead of his time.

Fox recognizes some of John's greatest poems including the legendary “Dark Night” and "Spiritual Canticle" as prison literature, part of his prophetic vocation or the Via Transformativa path of Creation Spirituality, the struggle for justice. The Via Creativa also proves paramount since John is considered one of the best poets in the Spanish language to this day. The Via Positiva is stunningly present in his poems as is the Via Negativa and John’s profound sense of the apophatic divinity that names the ineffable darkness and mystery of Divinity. Matthew Fox brings all of this alive for spiritual seekers today and brings John of the Cross into fresh, immediate relevance. The four paths reset John’s  spiritual gifts and genius just when we need them the most: as we find ourselves in a triple dark night—that of soul, society (democracy), and Mother Earth beset by global warming at the hands of humanity.

Reviews

“This book is unputdownable. Truly brilliant. It is a wonderful love letter to the world. And with the insertion of the Via Positiva, it offers a vital fourth dimension, a great honoring, and a beautiful unfolding of San Juan’s great work.” —Robert Holden, author of Higher Purpose: How to Find Meaning, Inspiration and Purpose in Your Life, and Shift Happens

“In this extraordinary work, both of exegesis and prophetic passion, Matthew Fox presents us from the blazing heart of the Christian mystical tradition exactly the guide we need to steer us through the terrifying and all comprehensive dark night we are now enduring. Fox’s St. John not only understands with devastating lucidity all the stages of the dark night process, he also knows how to endure them and live them not only as a dying, but as a birthing into embodied liberation and lived Christhood.” —Andrew Harvey, author of Son of Man and The Magdalene Revolution

“As someone whose heart burns for collective liberation, Matthew Fox’s truly original exploration of St. John of the Cross invigorated my soul. Though I thought I was well-acquainted with John the Mystic, this eye-opening book introduced me to John the Activist and brought a more holistic vision of John into focus. By bringing John’s courageous justice efforts into the foreground and recasting John’s exquisite poetry as prison literature, Fox illuminates the direct but often hidden path between activism and mysticism and affirms their cosmic unity. Then, he lovingly guides us through John’s transformative story, blazing a trail for today's mystic-activists to encounter and embody the Beloved in the midst of our individual and collective dark nights of the soul.” —Christena Cleveland, founder of the Black Madonna Freedom School; author of The Black Madonna: Icon of Resistance and Nourisher of Souls