Yesterday, the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act yet again.1

This ruling makes it more difficult for communities of color to challenge voting maps that weaken their political voice. In effect, the Court has made it easier for those in power to redraw boundaries in ways that further silence people who are already marginalized.2

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 stands as a major moral achievement of the Civil Rights Movement. It came at a high price. People marched across bridges, risking violence. Some were jailed. Some lost their lives. They believed democracy could not be real if whole groups were kept from taking part in public life.

That struggle was not limited to courtrooms. It took place in churches, sanctuaries, prayer meetings, and communities where people saw voting as a statement of human dignity.

This is important to remember because today’s events are often described in dry legal terms—technical rulings, jurisdictional questions, and procedural standards. But there is nothing abstract about the consequences.

When political systems make it harder for certain communities to exercise power, those communities become easier to ignore. Resources shift. Representation shifts. Whose pain matters and whose voice carries weight begins to shift as well.

This is often how democracy erodes, through slow changes that become normal. A protection is lost here, a precedent weakens there. Over time, people get used to situations they once found unacceptable.

Theologically, this matters because scripture consistently asks who is being pushed outside the circle of concern.

The prophets spoke out not just against individual cruelty, but also against systems that gave power to a few while leaving others at risk. Amos stood in a wealthy society and accused its leaders of “trampling on the poor” while pretending to be faithful. Isaiah condemned those who “make unjust laws” that took away protection from vulnerable people. Again and again, scripture focuses on widows, immigrants, the poor, and those with little power, because they were most often left out of the community’s protection.

That is the moral question underneath this ruling.

Who gets protected?
Who gets heard?
Whose participation is considered inconvenient?

Democracy has never been perfect. At its best, though, it means we agree that no group should be shut out forever from helping shape our shared community.

We should also acknowledge the spiritual danger of this moment. In times like these, it’s easy to feel exhausted. People start to think the system is too broken, the damage too great, and the results already decided. Cynicism takes hold, and stepping back can seem safer than getting involved.

Authoritarian movements depend on that emotional shift. They depend on people becoming tired enough to disengage.

But the Civil Rights Movement was not born out of optimism. It grew from discipline, courage, spiritual strength, and communities willing to face disappointment without giving up their moral vision.

Howard Thurman wrote that our task is to stay human, even when circumstances tempt us to do otherwise. I believe that is part of what we are called to do now.

We need to resist not just unjust systems, but also the slow fading of our own moral imagination because this is about more than one court ruling.

It is about the kind of society we are becoming.

It’s a society where democracy shrinks, even as we keep talking about freedom. Participation is still possible in theory, but in reality, it becomes more and more unequal. Power protects itself, all while claiming that everything is normal.

History shows us where that road can lead. But history also gives us other stories. People can come together. Communities can push back. Even when institutions are in decline, moral clarity can endure.

The question is whether we keep acting as if democracy is someone else’s job to protect, or if we realize its survival depends on everyday people choosing, again and again, to include everyone in the circle of human dignity.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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Reflection Questions

1. Where do you see democratic erosion becoming normalized in our society?

2. When have you felt tempted to disengage out of exhaustion or cynicism?

3. What practices help you remain morally awake in moments when institutions feel fragile?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer For Moral Courage

Divine One,
we confess how easy it is to grow tired.

The problems feel large.
The systems feel heavy.
The future can feel uncertain.

Do not let exhaustion harden into indifference.

Keep our moral imagination alive.
Help us remember that democracy is not sustained by institutions alone, but by people willing to protect one another’s dignity.

Give us courage when we feel discouraged.
Give us clarity when the language of justice is distorted.
Give us endurance for the long work of building a society where every voice matters.

And when we are tempted to withdraw, remind us that hope is not passive.
It is practiced.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Expanding the Circle

Today, spend time reflecting on the phrase “the circle of human dignity.”

Write down the names of people or communities who are most vulnerable to exclusion in this moment. Be specific.

Then ask yourself:

• Who becomes easier to ignore when systems change?

• Who loses protection first?

• Who benefits when participation becomes more unequal?

After reflecting, take one concrete action that strengthens your participation rather than weakening it. You might call an elected official, support an organization working to protect voting rights, have a meaningful conversation, or spend time learning more about the history of voting rights in your community.

Authoritarian systems depend on exhaustion and disengagement. Democracy survives when ordinary people continue to participate, even when the work feels slow.

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Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

May 27, 2026, 12pm ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be hosting an online experience titled “Reclaiming the Power of Imagination: A live experiential webinar with Jackie Sussman." Jackie, a psychotherapist, author, and leading expert in Eidetic Image Psychology, has spent over forty years helping leaders and individuals unlock creativity, uncover hidden strengths, and move through limiting patterns. During this session, she will lead a live Eidetic process shaped by mythic imagery, offering a direct experience of the work. REGISTER HERE.

On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This retreat is about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

EcoAmerica and Blessed Tomorrow have created a Climate Film Series to ground climate action in faith within communities. Each 20-minute video comes with a FREE discussion toolkit featuring scripture, prayer, reflection questions, and practical actions you can take right away. Watch the series. https://blessedtomorrow.org/faith-climate-film-series/

My colleagues at The Hartford Institute for Religion Research released new findings Friday showing American congregations have made measurable gains since the pandemic — but the picture is complicated. The report, “Signs of Rebound Amid Uneven Recovery: The Changing Congregational Landscape,” draws on a national survey of 7,453 congregations conducted between September and December 2025.

The team over at Political Research Associates are hosting a webinar titled, “Challenging the Christian Right: Rifts & Strategies.” It will be on May 14 at 1pm ET. You can register here.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

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2

Sherrilyn’s Newsletter

SCOTUS Drops The Other Shoe on the Voting Rights Act

Today’s decision renders Section 2 [of the Voting Rights Act] all but a dead letter….The decision here is about Louisiana’s District 6. But so too…about the many other districts, particularly in the South, that in the last half-century have given minority citizens, and particularly African Americans, a meaningful political voice…

Read more

3 days ago · 185 likes · 1 comment · Sherrilyn Ifill

Yesterday, King Charles addressed the United States Congress in a rare speech from a foreign leader.1

What stood out to me was not just what he said, but how he said it. His words were measured, thoughtful, informed, and calm.

He spoke as someone who understands the weight of history and how fragile democracy can be. He talked about alliances, shared responsibility, climate change, and the need for countries to work together in a challenging world. He did not act outraged, mock his opponents, or reduce complex issues to simple slogans.

For a moment, many of us were reminded that leadership does not have to look like the chaos we have grown accustomed to.

Realizing this brings both comfort and sadness. It’s comforting to know that a different kind of leadership still exists. But it’s also sad because so much of our public life is now shaped by spectacle, humiliation, impulsiveness, and constant conflict.

We are living in a moment where dysfunction is often mistaken for strength. Rage is confused with authenticity. Cruelty is reframed as honesty. Leaders who dominate the emotional atmosphere receive more attention than those who cultivate wisdom, steadiness, and discernment.

That distorts us over time.

This is especially true for younger generations.

I worry about our children. If all they see is leadership built on contempt, performance, and grievance, they begin to assume that this is simply what power looks like. They inherit a diminished moral imagination about what public life can be.

That’s why moments like yesterday are important. It’s not because King Charles is perfect, or because monarchy can’t be criticized. It’s because he showed us something we risk losing: elderhood.

An elder is more than just an older person. An elder knows how to handle power without letting it take over. They show restraint, can deal with complex situations without overreacting, and understand that leadership is not just about expressing themselves. It’s about taking care of others.

In modern Western culture, we rarely talk about elderhood because our society values newness, speed, disruption, and attention. Elders act differently. They don’t try to take over the room; they try to steady it. They know leadership isn’t just about getting their way, but about making sure life can go on.

That kind of leadership still exists in the world.

Young people need to see it.

They should know that public life does not have to be organized around humiliation and fear. We need them to encounter leaders who think before they speak, who understand history, who respect institutions without worshipping them, and who recognize that words shape the emotional life of nations.

This isn’t just wishing for a more polite time. Being polite by itself doesn’t bring justice. But there is a profound difference between leadership that inflames every wound in a society and leadership that tries to hold a society together while telling the truth about the challenges it faces.

We are hungry for that difference right now.

The real question after yesterday’s speech isn’t whether we agree with every policy or political system. It’s about what kind of leadership we are starting to accept as normal.

Every culture ends up reflecting what it rewards.

• If we reward spectacle, we will produce more spectacle.

• If we reward cruelty, we will normalize cruelty.

• If we reward wisdom, steadiness, and depth, we create space for those qualities to grow.

This is true for nations, but also for communities, families, groups, and even ourselves.

Leadership is never only “out there.” We practice it every day in how we carry ourselves, how we respond to conflict, and whether we add to the chaos or help steady the room.

Yesterday showed us that a different way is still possible.

And in times like these, that reminder is important.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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Reflection Questions

1. What qualities do you most long for in leadership right now?

2. Who has modeled elderhood for you in your own life?

3. In your daily interactions, do you add to the emotional chaos around you or help steady the room?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer For Wisdom and Steadiness

Spirit of Life,
we are living in anxious times.

So much of public life rewards speed, outrage, and performance.
So much of our culture mistakes noise for strength.

Teach us another way.

Form in us the qualities of true elderhood.
Give us wisdom that does not need attention.
Give us steadiness that does not depend on control.
Give us the courage to speak truth without humiliating others.

Help us become people who calm fear rather than inflame it,
people who create space for dignity, thoughtfulness, and care.

And remind us that leadership begins long before positions of power.
It begins in how we carry ourselves toward one another each day.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Steadying the Room

Today, pay attention to the emotional atmosphere around you. Notice when conversations become reactive, performative, or driven by outrage. Notice how quickly anxiety spreads from one person to another.

Instead of matching that energy, practice becoming a steady presence.

Slow your speech. Listen carefully. Resist the urge to react immediately or dominate the conversation.

Ask yourself: What would an elder do in this moment?

Choose one interaction today in which you intentionally bring calm, clarity, or thoughtfulness into the room.

Small acts of steadiness matter more than we often realize.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

May 27, 2026, 12pm ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be hosting an online experience titled “Reclaiming the Power of Imagination: A live experiential webinar with Jackie Sussman." Jackie, a psychotherapist, author, and leading expert in Eidetic Image Psychology, has spent over forty years helping leaders and individuals unlock creativity, uncover hidden strengths, and move through limiting patterns. During this session, she will lead a live Eidetic process shaped by mythic imagery, offering a direct experience of the work. REGISTER HERE.

On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This retreat is about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

My colleagues at The Hartford Institute for Religion Research released new findings Friday showing American congregations have made measurable gains since the pandemic — but the picture is complicated. The report, “Signs of Rebound Amid Uneven Recovery: The Changing Congregational Landscape,” draws on a national survey of 7,453 congregations conducted between September and December 2025.

I am very lucky to collaborate with the great team at Church Anew in a number of ways. We are dreaming up a preaching conference and wonder who you might like to learn from (if you are a preacher-type). If you have a moment, fill out this form.

My colleague, the amazing Rev. Anna Golladay, is hosting another online training in Protest and Action Chaplaincy. This course offers a framework for providing compassionate, grounded spiritual care during protests, advocacy gatherings, and social movements. Drawing from a variety of faith traditions and critical social justice theory, it equips chaplains, pastors, and spiritual leaders to respond with integrity, purpose, and preparedness. LEARN MORE HERE.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

This past weekend, a man tried to break through security at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, intending to harm the President and others there.1

Things could have turned to mass violence, but they didn’t—and that’s important. Still, we shouldn’t see this as just a one-time event. We need to consider what kind of environment makes something like this possible.

This didn’t happen without reason. We live in a culture where anger is often stirred up, grievances are rewarded, and people with different views are not just disagreed with but diminished, mocked and treated as enemies. This isn’t just a problem for one group; it affects everyone. It shapes Trump’s supporters, and it shapes those who oppose him. It influences how we see the world and what we think is possible.

Leadership plays a central role in this. When a leader consistently uses language that dehumanizes, ridicules, and frames conflict as domination, it does not remain at the level of rhetoric. It begins to shape the emotional life of a nation. It lowers the threshold for what feels acceptable. It teaches people how to express their anger.

So when violence erupts, we cannot only ask who acted. We have to ask what kind of moral environment made that action feel possible.

The President was asked by a reporter why there have been repeated attempts on his life. He responded that being a force for impact makes you a target.2 That explanation is too simple. There have always been leaders who brought significant change without cultivating a culture of contempt. There have been leaders who faced deep opposition without encouraging dehumanization. We have to be more honest about what is happening.

We’re not just seeing political fights. We’re seeing our shared sense of right and wrong break down. When people stop seeing each other as human and deserving of respect, violence becomes easier to imagine. It’s not certain to happen, but it starts to seem possible in new ways.

This is where the theological work begins. Our faith traditions don’t deny anger. Anger can be a faithful response to injustice. It shows that something is wrong and harm is happening. The prophets spoke from that place. Jesus acted from that place when he overturned the tables in the temple. People remember that moment for its force, but it wasn’t random or out of control. It was focused and called out a system that turned devotion into exploitation.

But these traditions also set limits, even if we don’t always see them clearly.

Anger that is not formed becomes destructive. It narrows our vision and reduces the complexity of human beings. It begins to divide the world into those who are right and those who are wrong, those who belong and those who do not. Over time, it tempts us to believe that harm is justified if it serves our side.

Scripture is clear about where this leads. In the story of Cain and Abel, anger doesn’t stay inside; it changes how Cain sees the world. God tells Cain that sin is “crouching at the door,” and he must learn to control it.3 The warning isn’t about anger itself, but about what happens when anger takes over. Cain stops seeing Abel as his brother and starts seeing him as the problem. When that happens, violence becomes possible.

This is the pattern we see.

Anger that starts as a reaction to injustice can, if not shaped, become a reason to harm others. It can make us believe someone else isn’t fully human or doesn’t deserve restraint. It can make things that once seemed unthinkable start to feel necessary.

That’s the deeper danger we face now—not just that violence happens, but that it starts to make sense in the way we think.

We’re not separate from this. We take part in it. The way we talk, what we repeat, what we support, and how we treat those we disagree with all shape our environment. This isn’t about blaming ourselves for someone else’s actions. It’s about seeing that we’re all shaped by something, and we all help shape it too.

Our job isn’t just to stop violence. It’s to become people who don’t see violence as an answer to the world’s problems. That takes discipline, restraint, and a real commitment to seeing others as human, even when we strongly disagree with them.

This doesn’t mean we ignore harm. It means we refuse to become people who act in the same harmful ways.

What happened this weekend should make us pause, not just because of what almost happened, but because of what it shows about the world we live in. The real question now is not just how we respond, but who we are becoming as a result.

That’s where the real work is.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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Reflection Questions

1. Where do you notice anger shaping the way you see other people right now?

2. When does your anger move from naming harm to reducing someone else’s humanity?

3. What helps you stay grounded when strong emotions begin to take over?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer For the Formation of Our Anger

God,

you know the anger we carry.

You know what we have seen and what we cannot ignore.

Do not take our anger away,
but do not leave it unformed.

Teach us how to hold it without letting it take over.
Teach us how to respond without causing harm.

Help us see others clearly, even in conflict.
Help us remain grounded in what is right, not just what is reactive.

Shape us into people who can face what is broken
without becoming part of the damage.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Staying Present with Anger

Today, when you feel anger rise, pause before you respond.

Name what you are reacting to. Be specific. Let the anger point to what matters to you.

Then ask yourself a second question: What would it look like to respond to this without causing harm?

If you are in conversation, slow down. Listen carefully. Resist the urge to escalate.

If you are alone, write down what you are feeling. Notice where your thoughts move toward judgment or dismissal.

Choose one response that reflects your values rather than your reaction.

Return to this practice throughout the day.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

May 27, 2026, 12pm ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be hosting an online experience titled “Reclaiming the Power of Imagination: A live experiential webinar with Jackie Sussman." Jackie, a psychotherapist, author, and leading expert in Eidetic Image Psychology, has spent over forty years helping leaders and individuals unlock creativity, uncover hidden strengths, and move through limiting patterns. During this session, she will lead a live Eidetic process shaped by mythic imagery, offering a direct experience of the work. REGISTER HERE.

On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This retreat is about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

My colleagues at The Hartford Institute for Religion Research released new findings Friday showing American congregations have made measurable gains since the pandemic — but the picture is complicated. The report, “Signs of Rebound Amid Uneven Recovery: The Changing Congregational Landscape,” draws on a national survey of 7,453 congregations conducted between September and December 2025.

I am very lucky to collaborate with the great team at Church Anew in a number of ways. We are dreaming up a preaching conference and wonder who you might like to learn from (if you are a preacher-type). If you have a moment, fill out this form.

My colleague, the amazing Rev. Anna Golladay, is hosting another online training in Protest and Action Chaplaincy. This course offers a framework for providing compassionate, grounded spiritual care during protests, advocacy gatherings, and social movements. Drawing from a variety of faith traditions and critical social justice theory, it equips chaplains, pastors, and spiritual leaders to respond with integrity, purpose, and preparedness. LEARN MORE HERE.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

I have just returned from nearly two weeks in Italy. While I was there, I had a powerful conversation with a local woman who gifted me with insight into friendship, gratitude, harm and care.

She started by talking about history. She explained how Italians remember what the United States and Canada did during World War II. She spoke about being liberated from fascism, what it meant to be freed from authoritarian rule, and the lasting gratitude to the US and Canada that followed. She said Italians have often felt that their relationship with the United States and Americans was like family.

Then she talked about the present.

She told me that when she meets American these days, many of them apologize. They try to explain. They carry something that looks like shame.

She said it hurts her to hear that.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “We understand you cannot control the actions of one man or one administration.”

Then she paused.

“But I understand it feels like a mark on you as an individual,” she said. “We carry it too. We weren’t proud of Mussolini or some of the leaders we have had in our past.”

She then named the point of current tension. The United States launched an attack on Iran without consulting its allies, without any discussion beforehand, and without the kind of coordination that real relationships need.

“Most Italians feel this is not how you treat your friends,” she said.

What she was naming was not just a political failure. It was a relational one. And she recognized it because Italy has lived this before. Authoritarianism is not theoretical for Italians. It is historical memory. They know what it looks like when power acts without accountability, when decisions are made without consultation, and when relationships are treated as inconveniences.

German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood this from the inside. He watched his own government sever its commitments one by one, incrementally, through decisions that each seemed containable, until suddenly nothing was. He wrote that responsible action requires remaining tethered to others, and that decisions made in isolation never stay isolated. They ripple outward. They rewrite what people thought they could count on.

That is what my new friend in Italy was talking about. She wasn’t expressing her nation’s outrage at one decision. She was describing how trust is suddenly eroded.

This is how relationships work. They are not held together just by treaties, but by expectations and the habit of showing up for each other. When that fabric tears, it doesn’t tear cleanly. It frays, and people on the other side feel it coming apart before they can even name it.

For a growing number of Americans right now, this carries a special kind of weight.

We did not make these decisions.

And we are connected to them anyway.

That connection can lead us to feel shame, become defensive, or try to explain ourselves too much. But there might be another way to handle it, not as something to run from, but as something to carry with honesty. We can admit harm where it exists. We can listen when others share how it has affected them. We can stay in relationship even when trust is strained—because Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, was right: peace is not a place we reach. It is something we practice, built in small moments of honest contact, one conversation at a time.

You and I cannot control what is decided at the highest levels of power.

But last week in Italy, I spoke with a woman who still believes friendship between peoples is possible. She mourned what is being lost and was still willing to say so to a stranger from the country that is causing great harm.

That felt like something worth caring for.

The fabric of our shared life is either weakened or repaired in moments just like that.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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Reflection Questions

1. Where have you felt the weight of representing something larger than yourself in this moment?

2. How do you respond when others name harm connected to your country, community, or identity?

3. What does it look like for you to remain in relationship when trust has been strained?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer For The Work of Repair

God,

we are bound to one another in ways we do not choose
and cannot escape.

When harm is done in our name,
give us the courage to face it without turning away.

Keep us from defensiveness that closes the door
and from shame that silences us.

Teach us how to remain present.
To listen with honesty.
To speak with humility.

Where trust has been broken,
show us how to begin again.

Not with grand gestures,
but with steady acts of care.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Encountering Difference

This week, seek out one honest conversation across difference: political, national, cultural, generational.

Do not defend your point of view. Do not try to explain your perspective. Simply listen to how things look from where the other person is standing.

Before you go into that conversation, take a few minutes to sit quietly and ask yourself: What am I afraid to hear? Let that question open you. Then go.

Afterward, write down one thing that shifted.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

May 27, 2026, 12pm ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be hosting an online experience titled “Reclaiming the Power of Imagination: A live experiential webinar with Jackie Sussman." Jackie, a psychotherapist, author, and leading expert in Eidetic Image Psychology, has spent over forty years helping leaders and individuals unlock creativity, uncover hidden strengths, and move through limiting patterns. During this session, she will lead a live Eidetic process shaped by mythic imagery, offering a direct experience of the work. REGISTER HERE.

On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This retreat is about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

I am very lucky to collaborate with the great team at Church Anew in a number of ways. We are dreaming up a preaching conference and wonder who you might like to learn from (if you are a preacher-type). If you have a moment, fill out this form.

My colleague, the amazing Rev. Anna Golladay, is hosting another online training in Protest and Action Chaplaincy. This course offers a framework for providing compassionate, grounded spiritual care during protests, advocacy gatherings, and social movements. Drawing from a variety of faith traditions and critical social justice theory, it equips chaplains, pastors, and spiritual leaders to respond with integrity, purpose, and preparedness. LEARN MORE HERE.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

For the past two days, I have been in Biella, a small town in northern Italy known for producing some of the finest yarns and fabrics in the world.

The process starts long before the factory. Wool comes straight from sheep, still full of natural oils and dirt, what they call “greasy wool.” It’s brought to these mountain towns, where cold, clean snowmelt water flows. It’s some of the purest water in the world and helps shape the fabric’s quality.

The wool is washed in water from the river, then processed, spun, woven, and finished by people who have spent a lifetime learning how to do this well. You can see it in their hands. You can hear it in how they talk about the material. Their relationship to the fabric is not only technical. It is attentive. It is practiced. It is, in every sense, a craft.

When they are not talking about weaving, they are talking about the weather.

This year there was almost no snow. The rivers still run, but everyone notices the difference. The water is lower. The temperature has shifted. Climate change is not abstract here. It has entered the work itself.

At the same time, many of the smaller family factories are closing. You can walk along the river and see them. Buildings that once held generations of skill now sit empty. The larger manufacturers remain, but they operate differently. They survive by producing for luxury markets that can absorb the cost.

When you speak with the older artisans, you sense the shift. They do not romanticize their work. They know how demanding it has been. But they speak about what is being lost with a clarity that is difficult to ignore. The younger generation is not taking it up. The machines can produce the fabric. The market rewards speed and volume. The system moves in that direction.

But something is missing.

One man said it best: “These machines can make the fabric, but it has no soul.”

It would be easy to dismiss that as nostalgia. It would be easy to hear it as resistance to change. But standing in those spaces, it feels more serious than that.

It raises a deeper question about what we mean by progress.

We have been trained to measure progress by scale, speed, and efficiency. If something can be made faster, in greater quantity, at lower cost, we assume it is better. If technology replaces human labor, we call it advancement.

That story has shaped the modern world.

It has also narrowed it.

Wendell Berry has argued for decades that an economy organized around efficiency will eventually degrade the very things it depends on. Soil. Community. Craft. Attention. When these are treated as secondary, the system continues to function, but something essential begins to erode.

You can see that erosion here in Biella, not only in the disappearance of small factories, but in the disappearance of a way of creating. A way of paying attention. A way of relating to the material world that requires time, patience, and skill.

Simone Weil wrote that attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. That kind of attention is embedded in this work. It cannot be automated. It cannot be scaled without being changed. When it disappears, we lose more than a product. We lose a way of being human in the world.

This is where the theological question comes into focus.

If creation is not simply raw material to be used, but something we are in relationship with, then the way we craft things matters. The pace matters. The relationships within the process matter.

But the story of progress rarely accounts for this. It assumes that more, faster, and larger are always better. Those assumptions are not neutral. They carry a vision of the world in which value is measured by output rather than by relationship.

Pope Francis warns in Laudato Si’ that when we treat the world as an object, we lose the capacity to recognize that we belong to it. That loss is both ecological and spiritual.

You can feel that tension here. The remaining factories are impressive. The machines are precise. The output is consistent.

But when you stand with someone who has spent a lifetime learning how to read the wool, how to adjust the process based on the water, how to sense when something is not quite right, you begin to understand what cannot be replaced.

This is not an argument against technology. It is an argument for discernment.

• What are we gaining, and what are we losing?

• What forms of life are we making possible, and what forms are we allowing to disappear?

We rarely ask those questions because the momentum of the system carries us forward. It tells us this is simply how things work. But it is not inevitable. It is a set of choices. And like all choices, it reveals what we value.

The grief you hear from these artisans is not only about their work. It is about a world that is narrowing its understanding of value. It is about the loss of practices that formed people over time, that required commitment, that connected human skill to the materials of the earth.

That grief is worth listening to because it helps us see more clearly what is at stake.

The question is not whether change will come. It will. The question is whether we will recognize that we have confused growth with goodness, and efficiency with wisdom.

A world can become more productive and less alive at the same time.

If we do not recover a deeper sense of value, we will continue to produce more while experiencing less, and call that success.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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A Note from Cameron

I am away for the next two weeks on a trip to Italy. A little work and a little fun. I will do my best to send out meditations, but if I miss some days, don’t worry. I will be back in the swing when I return.

Reflection Questions

1. Where do you see the effects of “progress” in your own life, and what has it made possible?

2. What has been lost that you might not have named before?

3. Where can you choose attention, care, or craft over speed and efficiency?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer For Discernment in a World of Speed

Holy One,
we are shaped by the systems we inhabit.

We move quickly. We produce. We adapt.

Help us see clearly what this way of living is doing to us.

Give us the wisdom to discern what is good
and the courage to question what is assumed.

Teach us to value what cannot be measured easily.
To honor the work that forms us.
To care for what is being lost.

Keep us grounded in a way of life
that reflects your care for creation.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Slowing the Work of Your Hands

Choose one ordinary task today. Do it more slowly than usual. Pay attention to the material. The texture. The process. Notice where you are tempted to rush. Resist that impulse.

Let the task take the time it needs.

This is not about productivity. It is about recovering attention. And remembering that how we do something shapes who we become.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

May 27, 2026, 12pm ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be hosting an online experience titled “Reclaiming the Power of Imagination: A live experiential webinar with Jackie Sussman." Jackie, a psychotherapist, author, and leading expert in Eidetic Image Psychology, has spent over forty years helping leaders and individuals unlock creativity, uncover hidden strengths, and move through limiting patterns. During this session, she will lead a live Eidetic process shaped by mythic imagery, offering a direct experience of the work. REGISTER HERE.

On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This retreat is about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

My colleague, the amazing Rev. Anna Golladay, is hosting another online training in Protest and Action Chaplaincy. This course offers a framework for providing compassionate, grounded spiritual care during protests, advocacy gatherings, and social movements. Drawing from a variety of faith traditions and critical social justice theory, it equips chaplains, pastors, and spiritual leaders to respond with integrity, purpose, and preparedness. LEARN MORE HERE.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

Over the weekend, I stood in front of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” painting in Milan, Italy.

This painting has been closed off for more than 20 years while restoration expert, Pinin Brambilla Barcilon1 restored and protected it. Being able to see it now feels special. I walked in feeling excited and respectful, ready to see one of the world’s most famous paintings.

But what I saw was not exactly what Leonardo painted. My guide called it a “ghost” of the original.

Leonardo tried a painting method that did not stick well to the plaster. The paint started to degrade sooner than he expected. Over time, the colors faded and details disappeared. What is left has been made stable, but not completely restored.

Then there is the door.

Years after it was painted, monks living in the monastery wanted easier access to the kitchen, so they cut a doorway right through the painting. Because of this, the lower part is missing, and you can no longer see the feet of Jesus.

You can still make out the scene: the way the disciples move, the tension in the room among them. The center of the painting still catches your attention.

But it is not whole.

We know a bit about the original because Leonardo’s students made copies. These copies help us picture the rich colors, sharp details, and how complete the painting once looked.

But the original has been changed in ways that cannot be undone.

Standing there, I found myself thinking about how much of our theological imagination still depends on wholeness.

We are taught to look for purity, coherence, completion. We assume that what is most true is what is least altered. We imagine that the sacred is best encountered in what has not been touched by time, loss, or interruption.

But that is not the witness of the tradition. The central image of the Christian faith is not an untouched body. It is a broken one.

The resurrected Christ is not restored to an earlier state. The wounds remain. The body is changed, recognizable and yet not the same. The story does not move backward into perfection. It moves forward, carrying the marks of what has happened.

In other words, loss is not outside the life of God. It is taken up into it.

Julian of Norwich wrote, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”2 She wrote this in a world that was far from whole. Her hope did not depend on things going back to how they were, but on the belief that meaning and goodness are not gone just because something has been lost.

That is what I felt in that room.

I did not feel a longing to restore the painting to its original form. Instead, I recognized that it still offers something real. The loss is clear. The damage cannot be denied. But the scene remains. It still brings people together. It still speaks.

There is a kind of incarnation in that. It is not about the divine entering a perfect form. Instead, it is about the divine staying present in a form changed by time, by human need, by carelessness, and by devotion.

We tend to imagine that God is most present where things are intact. But the tradition keeps pointing us elsewhere…toward bread that is broken, toward bodies that carry wounds, toward communities that are fractured and still called into being.

We do not encounter God by escaping what has been altered. We encounter God within it. This does not make loss easy. It does not remove grief. It does not ask us to pretend that what has been cut away does not matter. The missing feet matter. The lost color matters. What was once whole is no longer whole.

But the presence of God is not limited to what remains intact. It is found in what remains. And what remains is not simply something to preserve. It is something to tend, to be with in relationship.

This is how we take part in the ongoing work of creation. It has never been about keeping things perfect and unchanged. It is about bringing life forward through change, loss, and time.

Leonardo’s original painting will not return. But the story has not ended. What remains keeps shaping us. It keeps inviting us to respond. It becomes the ground where new beauty, meaning, and faithfulness can grow.

The same is true for us. We tend what remains as an act of trust. We care for what is still here, even as we make room for what has not yet taken shape. That is where God meets us.

That is where the new artistry begins.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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A Note from Cameron

I am away for the next two weeks on a trip to Italy. A little work and a little fun. I will do my best to send out meditations, but if I miss some days, don’t worry. I will be back in the swing when I return.

Reflection Questions

1. What in your life feels like a “ghost” of what it once was?

2. Where are you tempted to dismiss something because it is no longer whole?

3. What remains that is still worth your attention and care?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer For What Remains

God of truth,
we long for things to be whole.

We grieve what has been lost,
what has changed,
what cannot be restored.

Help us not turn away.

Teach us to see what remains.
To honor what still carries life.
To care for what has endured.

Even in fragments,
even in altered form,
help us recognize what is still sacred.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Standing Before What Is Still Here

Set aside twenty minutes if you can. This is not a quick exercise. It is a way of seeing.

Begin by bringing to mind something in your life that has changed in a way you did not choose. It could be a relationship that is no longer what it was. A community that has shifted. A part of your own identity that feels altered. Something that once felt whole and now does not. Name it specifically. Do not edit it. Do not rush past it.

Now, stay with it long enough to feel the loss.

• What is no longer here?

• What has been cut away?

• What do you miss?

Let yourself grieve it honestly. This matters. Do not skip this step. When you are ready, shift your attention.

Ask a different question: What remains?

Be precise. Not what you wish remained. Not what you hope will return. What is actually still here? Name it. It may be small. It may feel partial. It may not look like enough. Stay with it anyway.

Now, take one more step. Place yourself in relationship to what remains.

Ask: What does this ask of me now?

• What kind of attention does it require?

• What kind of care?

• What kind of presence?

Sit with that question until something concrete emerges.

Then, if it helps, open your hands physically in front of you. In one hand, imagine what has been lost. In the other, what remains. Hold both. Do not try to resolve the tension between them. This is the place where most of us want to rush forward, to move on, to make meaning too quickly. Stay here instead. This is where faith deepens.

Finally, close with a simple commitment: I will tend what remains.

Carry that into the day as a way of moving through the world. Return to it when you feel the pull to compare the present to the past or to dismiss something because it is no longer whole.

This is how we participate in the ongoing work of creation.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

May 27, 2026, 12pm ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be hosting an online experience titled “Reclaiming the Power of Imagination: A live experiential webinar with Jackie Sussman." Jackie, a psychotherapist, author, and leading expert in Eidetic Image Psychology, has spent over forty years helping leaders and individuals unlock creativity, uncover hidden strengths, and move through limiting patterns. During this session, she will lead a live Eidetic process shaped by mythic imagery, offering a direct experience of the work. REGISTER HERE.

On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This retreat is about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

My colleague, the amazing Rev. Anna Golladay, is hosting another online training in Protest and Action Chaplaincy. This course offers a framework for providing compassionate, grounded spiritual care during protests, advocacy gatherings, and social movements. Drawing from a variety of faith traditions and critical social justice theory, it equips chaplains, pastors, and spiritual leaders to respond with integrity, purpose, and preparedness. LEARN MORE HERE.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

This week, journalist, Damian Carrington, at The Guardian reported that the world’s largest oil companies are making more than $30 million an hour in excess profits as war drives up global energy prices. Since the conflict escalated, these companies have taken in tens of billions in windfall gains while households across the world absorb rising costs for fuel and electricity.1

He writes:

ExxonMobil, which has a long record of denying climate change, will take in $11bn in unearned war profits in 2026 if the $100 price endures. Shell will get a $6.8bn boost. The value of both companies, like others, has risen significantly due to increases in share prices in the month after the Iran war began: ExxonMobil is worth $118bn more, Shell $34bn more.

Chevron is on track to make windfall profits from the Iran war of $9.2bn, according to the analysis. The company’s chief executive, Mike Wirth, has also benefited, selling $104m worth of Chevron shares between January and March.

These numbers are not hidden. They are reported plainly. War raises prices. Higher prices generate profit. That profit goes to those at the top, not to the people who are paying the price. We can understand the mechanics and still miss the meaning.

Professor, Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghait,2 says it this way:

“It has become evident that we are in a time of moral collapse: a time when plunderers of foreign territories, the environment, bodies, minds, and economies, who know they are on the decline, are trying to seize and exploit as much as they can before they are vanquished.”

Jewish ethics has a concept called geneivat da’at. People often translate it as deception, but that word does not capture its full meaning. It is more about relationships and is more serious. It means shaping reality so others cannot see clearly. It is stealing someone’s understanding. It’s not a lie, exactly. It’s harder to call out.

When people call profits from war “market responses,” they aren’t owning the full truth. The words are technically correct, but they miss the moral side. This language separates the human story from the economic facts. It lets us talk about prices without talking about people’s pain.

Once we make that separation, the system keeps going without being challenged. This is how moral harm spreads, not just through actions, but also through the way things are explained.

The prophets in the Hebrew Bible did not accept that split. They kept economic life and moral life connected. They said that how wealth is made is just as important as how it is used. They did not let people hide behind complicated ideas or distance.

They described what was happening in clear, simple words: People were suffering. Others were gaining. The link between the two was not by chance.

We are facing a similar situation now.

Most of us are not making choices in corporate boardrooms, but we are still part of the system. We rely on it and take part in it. The gap between our daily lives and these global patterns is smaller than we might think.

Realizing this can feel overwhelming. It is easier to step back and see it as something too big to understand or too deep to challenge.

But geneivat da’at warns us not to do that. It reminds us that being clear is a moral duty. When the truth is hidden, even by accident, harm keeps happening without anyone stopping it.

So we start by telling the truth as humbly as we can. War is not only a geopolitical event. It is also an economic engine. Suffering is not just a tragedy. In this system, it is also a way for some to make money. We do not have to exaggerate to say this. We just need to avoid making it sound less serious than it is.

Then we have to choose how we will live with what we know, as participants who can pay attention, name what is happening, and, in small but real ways, choose to act differently.

We are not being called to be pure. That idea will fall apart quickly. We are being called to be honest. To reject words that hide harm. To push back against stories that make harm seem normal. To stay aware of the human cost built into the systems we depend on.

If we lose this awareness, we lose something important in ourselves. We risk becoming people who see suffering and call it opportunity.

That is a line we cannot cross without losing our sense of direction.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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A Note from Cameron

I am away for the next two weeks on a trip to Italy. A little work and a little fun. I will do my best to send out meditations, but if I miss some days, don’t worry. I will be back in the swing when I return.

Reflection Questions

1. Where have you accepted language that explains away harm rather than revealing it?

2. What does it cost you, personally, to see this reality clearly?

3. Where are you being asked to stay awake rather than turn away?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer For Clear Seeing

God of truth,
You see what we are tempted to overlook.

You see the lives behind the numbers,
the suffering behind the systems,
the cost behind the convenience.

Keep us from becoming numb.
Keep us from accepting what diminishes life.
Teach us to see clearly and to live honestly
in a world that rewards something less.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

A Ritual of Refusal and Reorientation

Set aside five to ten minutes today for a simple act of attention.

Begin by placing an object in front of you that represents your daily dependence on energy. It could be your phone, your car keys, or even a bill. Let it sit there, visible and ordinary.

Stand or sit quietly. Take a slow breath and name, either out loud or silently:

This connects me to systems I do not fully see.

Let your mind widen. Consider the chain behind it. The land. The labor. The policies. The conflicts. Do not rush past this. Stay long enough for it to feel real, not abstract.

Then speak a simple refusal: I refuse to call harm normal.

Pause.

Follow it with a reorientation: I choose to see clearly and to honor life where I can.

If it feels right, place your hand on the object for a moment as an acknowledgment. You are not outside this system. You are choosing how to live within it.

Close by taking one concrete step today that reflects this awareness. It does not have to be large. It does need to be intentional.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

May 27, 2026, 12pm ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be hosting an online experience titled “Reclaiming the Power of Imagination: A live experiential webinar with Jackie Sussman." Jackie, a psychotherapist, author, and leading expert in Eidetic Image Psychology, has spent over forty years helping leaders and individuals unlock creativity, uncover hidden strengths, and move through limiting patterns. During this session, she will lead a live Eidetic process shaped by mythic imagery, offering a direct experience of the work. REGISTER HERE.

On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This retreat is about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

My colleague, the amazing Rev. Anna Golladay, is hosting another online training in Protest and Action Chaplaincy. This course offers a framework for providing compassionate, grounded spiritual care during protests, advocacy gatherings, and social movements. Drawing from a variety of faith traditions and critical social justice theory, it equips chaplains, pastors, and spiritual leaders to respond with integrity, purpose, and preparedness. LEARN MORE HERE.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

2

Lucid

From Moral Collapse to a Values-Led Politics of Democratic Renewal

Welcome back to Lucid, and hello to all new subscribers. Our next Q&A will take place on Sunday, April 19, 8-9pmET. I am Houston today for conversations on April 16 on democracy and authoritarianism at Rice University and the Progressive Forum, and I’ll be traveling on Friday when our Q&A would have taken place…

Read more

16 days ago · 122 likes · 2 comments · Ruth Ben-Ghiat

During weeks full of conflict, confusion, and noise, something far more miraculous took place that we haven’t had time to meditation on. Four human beings left the earth, circled the moon and returned.

They went beyond the orbit that shapes our daily lives. They passed the familiar edge of our worries and circled behind the moon. From there, they watched the earth fade from view. They call it “Earthset.”

From the surface of the moon, our planet, with every country, every conflict, and every life, slowly slips out of sight. It is hard to take that in.

We are used to living at the center of our own story. The news cycle reinforces that. Everything feels immediate. Everything feels urgent. Everything feels decisive.

But from that distance, the scale changes.

The earth becomes so small that it can disappear behind the edge of another world. Not meaningless. But no longer the whole frame.

This is not the first time human beings have seen this.

When the first pictures of Earthrise arrived from space, they changed how people saw the planet. Environmental movements began, and people started talking about earth as one system, a shared home.

But we forget. We go back to our divisions. We split into groups and tell ourselves who belongs and who does not. We create whole worlds from these differences. And then, from time to time, we are given a different view.

Thomas Berry wrote that the earth is not just a group of objects, but a community of living beings.1 This idea is easier to understand when you see the whole planet at once. From space, there are no borders, no nations, no parties, no ideologies. It is just one fragile planet surrounded by a huge, dark space. Maria Rilke once wrote that we are not merely the passing forms of this world, but part of its ongoing life.2 That becomes harder to ignore when you see how small and how singular this place is.

The point of this perspective is not to dismiss what is happening on earth. The conflicts are real. The suffering is real. The decisions being made matter.

But the scale shifts the question. It is no longer only, “What is happening?” It becomes, “What kind of world are we creating on this small, shared home?” Because this is it. As far as we know, there is no other place for us. There is no second earth to start over. This is our home.

Thich Nhat Hanh taught that we “inter-are.”3 Our lives are connected in ways we cannot fully separate. Seeing earth from space makes this clear. We breathe the same air. We depend on the same systems. We are all shaped by the same delicate conditions that allow life to exist.

The perspective does not solve our problems. It does not tell us how to navigate the crises in front of us. But it does make clear what is at stake. Not winning. Not dominating. Not securing advantage over one another. But it is about learning how to live together on this earth.

The astronauts have returned to the noise, just like we do. But for a moment, they saw something we rarely let ourselves see.

Now the question is whether we will let that vision change us.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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A Note from Cameron

I am away for the next two weeks on a trip to Italy. A little work and a little fun. I will do my best to send out meditations, but if I miss some days, don’t worry. I will be back in the swing when I return.

Reflection Questions

1. What shifts in you when you imagine the earth from that distance?

2. How does a cosmic perspective change what feels urgent or important?

3. What does it mean to live as if this planet is truly shared?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer For a Wider Vision

God,
lift our eyes beyond ourselves.

When we become consumed by what is immediate,
remind us of the larger whole.

When we divide and separate,
remind us how deeply we belong to one another.

Give us the wisdom to live gently on this earth,
and the courage to care for what has been entrusted to us.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Expanding the Frame

Find one of the images from this mission. Sit with it for a few minutes. Do not analyze it. Just look.

Notice your scale. Notice the size of the earth. Notice the vastness that surrounds it.

Then ask yourself: What matters now?

Write down what comes.

Carry that with you into the day.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

May 27, 2026, 12pm ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be hosting an online experience titled “Reclaiming the Power of Imagination: A live experiential webinar with Jackie Sussman." Jackie, a psychotherapist, author, and leading expert in Eidetic Image Psychology, has spent over forty years helping leaders and individuals unlock creativity, uncover hidden strengths, and move through limiting patterns. During this session, she will lead a live Eidetic process shaped by mythic imagery, offering a direct experience of the work. REGISTER HERE.

On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This retreat is about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

My colleague, the amazing Rev. Anna Golladay, is hosting another online training in Protest and Action Chaplaincy. This course offers a framework for providing compassionate, grounded spiritual care during protests, advocacy gatherings, and social movements. Drawing from a variety of faith traditions and critical social justice theory, it equips chaplains, pastors, and spiritual leaders to respond with integrity, purpose, and preparedness. LEARN MORE HERE.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

We are being bombarded with news events. We need to slow down and look carefully at what is happening.

On Sunday, the President of the United States posted an image showing himself as a Christ-like figure. The message was clear, blending political power with religious symbolism to suggest unquestionable moral authority. People reacted right away, including some of his own supporters, who called it blasphemous. The image did not go over well.

At the same time, the Vatican responded both to this and to the escalation of the Iranian war. The Pope openly condemned the growing violence and refused to support the stance being taken. This is important. Religious leaders did not simply agree; they set a clear limit.

Meanwhile, on the world stage, we saw another kind of failure. JD Vance faced two important moments: supporting Viktor Orbán and trying to negotiate a ceasefire with Iran. He did not succeed in either case. Having influence did not lead to results. Power did not guarantee skill.

Back in the United States, two members of Congress have announced their resignations because of sexual misconduct. Their actions were called out, and they could not keep their positions.

Beneath all of this, the Epstein files remain unresolved. This network of abuse and complicity still hangs over everything, with no full accountability yet.

Put these together and a pattern begins to emerge. This isn’t partisan. It’s structural.

Power is not just used; it is also maintained. It protects itself by enforcing rules selectively, choosing which violations matter and which can be ignored. The institutions we depend on, like ethics committees, courts, and elections, are not separate from this process. They help keep the system steady by deciding what is a crisis and what can be treated as normal.

That stabilization is not automatic. It requires alignment.

• Media ecosystems that reinforce rather than disrupt.

• Courts that are willing to narrow their focus.

• Voters who remain loyal or disengaged.

• Economic conditions that do not collapse under pressure.

• International alliances that hold just enough to prevent fracture.

When those elements align, the system appears stable. When they don’t, the seams begin to show. We are seeing those seams.

The language we have been given no longer matches what is happening. We are told that no one is above the law, but some clearly are. We are told that accountability applies to all, but it does not. We are told that institutions are neutral, but they are shaped by power. We are told that violations have consequences, but only some do.

That gap creates tension. And tension exposes structure.

• The Christ-image did not consolidate authority. It fractured it.

• The Vatican did not legitimize power. It resisted it.

• Diplomacy did not stabilize the situation. It revealed inexperience.

• Political protection did not fully hold. Some leaders fell.

• Geopolitical pressure did not produce submission. It produced resistance.

None of this means the system collapses. None of this guarantees justice. But it does tell us something important. The stabilization is not complete. The system is shifting. Some people and groups are pushing back. In some areas, the usual rules of power do not completely apply.

That matters because it means the future is not locked in. It means outcomes are still uncertain. What people do, both together and on their own, still affects what happens next.

We are not outside this. We are inside it. The real question is whether we will see what is truly happening, or accept words that hide the truth. Will we give up in frustration, or stay involved where change can still happen?

There is more uncertainty than most of us would like. But there is also more possibility than we are often told.

That is enough to keep going.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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Reflection Questions

1. Where do you see the gap between what is being said and what is actually happening?

2. What part of this moment feels most destabilizing to you?

3. Where do you still see movement, possibility, or resistance?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer for Clarity and Steadiness

God,
help us see what is real.

When language distorts,
when power obscures,
when the truth feels unstable—

steady us.

Keep us from looking away.
Keep us from becoming numb.

Give us the courage to stay present
and the wisdom to act where we can.

Hold us in the tension of this moment
without letting us lose ourselves.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Reading the Seams

Choose one event from the past few days. Do not skim it. Sit with it.

Ask yourself:

• What is being presented?

• What is actually happening?

• Where is the gap?

Write down what you see in clear, simple language.

Then ask one final question: Where is there still movement here?

Let that guide your attention today.

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Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

TODAY!!! April 14, 2026, 11am ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be joined by Rev. Shawna Bowman, an amazing artist and pastor of Friendship Presbyterian Church, for a conversation about art as resistance and what it means to show up as a creative individual in a world in need of justice. Shawna will be leading a community of practice starting in April on the Commons. If you want to learn more, register here.

May 27, 2026, 12pm ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be hosting an online experience titled “Reclaiming the Power of Imagination: A live experiential webinar with Jackie Sussman." Jackie, a psychotherapist, author, and leading expert in Eidetic Image Psychology, has spent over forty years helping leaders and individuals unlock creativity, uncover hidden strengths, and move through limiting patterns. During this session, she will lead a live Eidetic process shaped by mythic imagery, offering a direct experience of the work. REGISTER HERE.

On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This retreat is about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

My colleague, the amazing Rev. Anna Golladay, is hosting another online training in Protest and Action Chaplaincy. This course offers a framework for providing compassionate, grounded spiritual care during protests, advocacy gatherings, and social movements. Drawing from a variety of faith traditions and critical social justice theory, it equips chaplains, pastors, and spiritual leaders to respond with integrity, purpose, and preparedness. LEARN MORE HERE.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

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Last week, I had the good fortune to spend time in conversation with global activist and author, Lynne Twist.1

Lynne has seen things most of us have not. She has been in places where children are starving. She has walked through rainforests that have been cut down to nothing. She has stood with people whose lives have been torn apart by war. She does not speak about injustice from a distance.

So when she said, “I’m a pro-activist,” I listened closely.

At first, it sounded like a shift in emphasis. Focus on what you are for instead of what you’re against. But that’s not what she meant.

Lynne is not someone who has stepped away from what she is against. She has too much clarity for that. The suffering she has witnessed demands a response.

But what shapes her life is not reaction. She is drawn by a vision.2 She has given her life to commitments she knows she will not complete. That is how she understands a committed life: not something you finish, but something that organizes you. It tells you where to go, who to stand with, what to build, and what to refuse.

That is different from reacting to what is wrong. It is living from what must become.

We have a lot to be upset about these days. Our anger is not the enemy. It’s a signal. It lets us know when something’s wrong, when something we care about is being hurt. It shows us what we love. In that way, anger acts like a guardian. It stands up for what matters and won’t let it be harmed without a response. That’s not something we should get rid of. But a guardian can’t be your whole life.

If anger takes over, it starts to fight everything. It looks for battles because that’s what it knows. It can forget what it was trying to protect in the first place.

You can sense when this happens. Everything starts to feel like something to fight. Your temper flares, your imagination shrinks, and you end up reacting instead of creating.

This is the shift Lynne is talking about. Being a “pro-activist” means letting your heartbreak and anger show you what you love, and then staying focused on that. It means letting what you support become your starting point.

Lynne says, “I think a conscious leader is also someone who’s committed to something way larger than their own life, way larger than their own company, committed to some stand or vision greater than they can accomplish in their lifetime so their identity isn’t based in it. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela and Jane Goodall and the people we truly admire are up to something larger than their own life, and their life is a contribution to that continuum rather than their identity.”3

That kind of commitment requires something more than reaction; it requires imagination. bell hooks wrote, “What we cannot imagine cannot come into being.” If we can’t name the world we want, we’ll keep circling what we oppose and reacting to the same patterns, instead of building something new.

So the question becomes very practical:

• What are you really building?

• Where are you putting your time?

• What are you making stronger in the world right now?

These questions are part of resistance. They’re what give resistance meaning. The goal isn’t just to stop harm. The goal is to make something better possible.

That is a different kind of courage. It stays close to what is broken without letting it set the direction. It lets heartbreak clarify what matters, but it does not live there. It is organized by a commitment.

A commitment that may take a lifetime.

A commitment you may never see completed.

A commitment that begins to shape who you become.

I see that in Lynne. She does not wait for conditions to improve. She does not organize her life around what she opposes. She gives herself to what she knows must grow, and she stays with it long enough for something real to take root.

That is the work. May it be so for all of us.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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Reflection Questions

1. What are you against right now, and what does that reveal about what you love?

2. Where has your anger started to narrow your attention or imagination?

3. What are you for, and how is that shaping your actual choices?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer for Freedom from Possession

God,
there is so much right now that pulls at our anger.

We see what is broken. We feel it in our bodies.
We know what we stand against.

Do not take that clarity from us.

But do not let it consume us either.

Turn us, again and again, toward what we love.
Toward what is worth protecting.
Toward what is worth building.

When we grow tired, steady us.
When we lose our way, reorient us.
When our anger begins to narrow our vision, widen it again.

Give us the courage to keep showing up,
not only to resist what harms,
but to live into what heals.

Let our lives take shape around what is good.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Reorienting Your Attention

Set aside ten to fifteen minutes today. Begin by naming one thing that is making you angry right now. Be specific. Write it down. Let yourself feel it without rushing past it.

Then ask a second question: What does this anger reveal that I love?

Stay with that. Do not settle for a quick answer. Let the connection become clear. If you are angry about injustice, what is the form of justice you long for? If you are angry about harm, what kind of care are you committed to?

Write that down too.

Now shift your attention.

Ask: What is one way I can give my energy to this today?

Keep it concrete: something you can actually do. A conversation. A choice. A commitment. An act of care. A small step toward building what you just named.

Do it.

At the end of the day, return to what you wrote. Notice what changed. Notice where your energy went.

This is how you begin to live from what you are for, not by abandoning your anger, but by letting it point you toward something larger, and then staying there.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

NEW!!! April 14, 2026, 11am ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be joined by Rev. Shawna Bowman, an amazing artist and pastor of Friendship Presbyterian Church, for a conversation about art as resistance and what it means to show up as a creative individual in a world in need of justice. Shawna will be leading a community of practice starting in April on the Commons. If you want to learn more, register here.

NEW!!! On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This retreat is about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

The Convergence Music Project has scheduled the fall conference on October 7-10, 2026 in Louisville, Kentucky. We will sing new community songs created specifically for this time in our history and explore together how the songs we sing in worship (and beyond) can empower and encourage us as we live out the biblical call to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.” Learn more here.

A group of faith leaders joined MPR News host Angela Davis for a North Star Journey Live event at our studios in downtown St. Paul on Thursday, March 26, to talk about what they experienced on the front lines of the immigration enforcement surge and how their faith both compelled and comforted them. Listen here.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

We use the word hope in many ways.

We hope things improve. We hope leaders make better decisions. We hope the systems we depend on stabilize. We hope we will be okay.

Most of the time, hope is tied to an outcome we can imagine. It carries a picture of the future we want and a belief that, somehow, we or someone else will get us there.

That kind of hope is fragile. It rises and falls with the news cycle. It depends on conditions we do not control. When those conditions deteriorate, hope begins to thin. It becomes harder to sustain.

There is another way of understanding hope.

John of the Cross wrote in a time of upheaval and deep personal suffering. He was imprisoned by his own community. He had no reason to believe that his work would succeed or even continue. And yet he wrote about a form of hope that does not depend on visible progress or personal accomplishment.

He describes a path where a person releases their need to possess, to secure, to hold onto outcomes. “To come to possess all,” he writes, “desire the possession of nothing.” He is not rejecting the world. He is naming a different way of being in it.

He continues, “To come to be what you are not, you must go by a way in which you are not.”

While this may seem like abstract spirituality, it’s actually a description of what it feels like to live without a clear map, to move forward without knowing how things will resolve, to act without being able to guarantee that what you do will endure.

That is where many people find themselves now.

The systems we relied on do not provide the same stability. The future is harder to picture. The connection between effort and outcome feels less certain. It is natural to want clarity, to want assurance that what we are doing will matter.

John does not offer that assurance. He offers something else.

He describes a kind of freedom that comes when we are no longer driven by the need to secure the future for ourselves. We can act because something is right, not because we can see where it leads. We can participate in what is good without needing to hold onto the result.

This kind of hope does not withdraw from the world. It does not give up on change. It removes the demand that the future confirm us. It allows us to remain engaged without being controlled by outcomes.

Much of our exhaustion comes from trying to carry what is not ours to carry. We try to hold the whole future in place. We measure our actions against results we cannot produce on our own. We lose heart when the scale of the work exceeds what we can see.

John’s insight loosens that grip. We are not asked to guarantee the future. We are asked to participate in it. To act with clarity. To remain connected to what is real. To contribute to life where we can, without needing to secure how it unfolds.

This is a braver form of hope.

It does not rise and fall with the latest development. It is not dependent on visible progress. It is sustained by a deeper orientation, a willingness to stay engaged in what is good, even when the outcome remains open.

We do not need to know where everything is going.

We need to know how we will live within it.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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Reflection Questions

1. Where have you tied your sense of hope to outcomes you cannot control?

2. What would it mean to act without needing to secure the result?

3. Where are you being invited to stay engaged, even without clarity?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer for Freedom from Possession

God,
release us from the need to hold the future.

Free us from the belief that everything depends on us,
and from the fear that nothing will change.

Give us the clarity to act with integrity,
and the freedom to let go of what we cannot control.

Keep us steady in what is good,
even when the way forward is not clear.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Loosening the Grip

Set aside ten minutes today. Sit somewhere you can be still without interruption.

Begin by naming, as clearly as you can, one outcome you are trying to control. Be specific. It might be something in your work, a relationship, the direction of the world, or a situation that feels urgent and unresolved.

Say it out loud or write it down: This is what I want to happen.

Then notice what sits underneath it. Fear, responsibility, urgency, hope. Do not rush past this. Let yourself feel the weight of it.

Now ask a second question: What is actually mine to do here?

Keep your answer concrete. What is the next step that belongs to you?

It may be a conversation. A decision. A small act of care. It may be as simple as telling the truth about what you see.

Sit with that for a moment.

Then, deliberately release the rest. You can do this physically if it helps: open your hands, place the paper down, or take a breath that marks the shift.

You are not stepping away from responsibility. You are stepping out of the illusion that you can carry the whole outcome.

Return to this throughout the day. Each time you feel yourself tightening around what must happen, come back to the same movement:

• Name what you want.

• Discern what is yours.

• Release what is not.

This is how a deeper form of hope takes root.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

NEW!!! April 14, 2026, 11am ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be joined by Rev. Shawna Bowman, an amazing artist and pastor of Friendship Presbyterian Church, for a conversation about art as resistance and what it means to show up as a creative individual in a world in need of justice. Shawna will be leading a community of practice starting in April on the Commons. If you want to learn more, register here.

NEW!!! On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This retreat is about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

The Convergence Music Project has scheduled the fall conference on October 7-10, 2026 in Louisville, Kentucky. We will sing new community songs created specifically for this time in our history and explore together how the songs we sing in worship (and beyond) can empower and encourage us as we live out the biblical call to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.” Learn more here.

A group of faith leaders joined MPR News host Angela Davis for a North Star Journey Live event at our studios in downtown St. Paul on Thursday, March 26, to talk about what they experienced on the front lines of the immigration enforcement surge and how their faith both compelled and comforted them. Listen here.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

Novel Peace prize winner, Wangari Maathai, did not begin with a movement. She began by listening.

Women in rural Kenya told her they were walking farther each day for firewood. Their crops were failing. The soil was eroding. The water was disappearing. What looked like an environmental crisis was, in their lives, a daily grind of exhaustion and hunger. So she started with something small and practical. She told them to plant trees.

That decision did not stay small.

As the trees took root, so did something else. Women began organizing. They earned income. They reclaimed land. Very quickly, the work became political, because it had to. You cannot restore land in a system that is actively destroying it.

When the Kenyan government tried to take Uhuru Park and build a massive development, Maathai stood in the way. She wrote letters. She organized protests. She showed up in public when it would have been safer to stay quiet. She was beaten by police. She was arrested. She was called a threat to the nation.

At one point, she and other women gathered in the park to demand the release of political prisoners. They planted trees as an act of protest. When the police came, they did not come gently. The women were attacked. Maathai herself was beaten.

She kept going.

She knew something most of us are still learning. Political corruption, oppression, ecological protection and human dignity are not separate issues. They are one struggle. If you address one honestly, you will eventually have to face the others.

Over time, what began with a handful of seedlings became a movement that planted tens of millions of trees and helped reshape the political imagination of a country.

But the real story is not the number of trees. The real story is that she refused to stop.

She once said, “It’s the little things citizens do. That’s what will make the difference.”1

I want to encourage us to remember Maathai’s story when we are tired and discouraged. Change rarely comes through dramatic gestures or single moments that resolve everything overnight. It comes through repeated acts, carried out over time. It’s the work that continues when no one is watching. The choice is to build something that may not fully take shape in your lifetime.

This is the kind of courage we need now.

We are living in a time when large systems are unstable. The scale of the problems in front of us can make individual action feel insignificant. It is easy to believe that unless something is immediate and sweeping, it does not matter.

That is not how change has ever worked.

Margaret Mead, who spent her life studying how cultures form and change, once observed that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. In her words, it is the only thing that ever has.2

The movements that endure are built slowly. They are sustained by people who stay with the work, even when the outcome is uncertain. They are rooted in practices that restore life in tangible ways. They are midwives of hope for a more just and generous world.

Planting a tree does not solve everything. But it does something real. It restores soil. It holds water. It creates shade. It becomes part of a larger system that supports life. When enough people do that kind of work, something begins to shift, slowly but surely.

The question for us is not whether we can fix everything that is breaking.

We cannot.

The question is whether we will commit to the kind of work that restores what is possible.

• Where are the places in front of you that need tending?

• Where can you plant something that will outlast this moment?

• Where can you contribute to life in a way that is concrete, relational, and sustained?

We do not need to see the whole future to begin. We need to know where to put our hands. And then we need to keep going.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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Reflection Questions

1. What is one small, concrete action you can take that contributes to life around you?

2. Where are you tempted to dismiss your contribution as too small to matter?

3. What would it look like to stay committed to something over time, even without the assurance of a certain outcome?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer for the Courage to Keep Planting

God,
give us the patience to do small work well.

When the problems feel too large,
show us what is ours to tend.

Strengthen us to keep going
when the results are slow,
and the work feels unseen.

Help us trust that what is planted in care
can grow into something that sustains life.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Plant Something Real

Do one tangible act today that contributes to life.

• Plant something.

• Support someone who is building something good.

• Repair something that has been neglected.

Choose something that requires your attention, not just your opinion. Then return to it. This is how endurance is formed.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

NEW!!! April 14, 2026, 11am ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be joined by Rev. Shawna Bowman, an amazing artist and pastor of Friendship Presbyterian Church, for a conversation about art as resistance and what it means to show up as a creative individual in a world in need of justice. Shawna will be leading a community of practice starting in April on the Commons. If you want to learn more, register here.

NEW!!! On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This retreat is about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

The Convergence Music Project has scheduled the fall conference on October 7-10, 2026 in Louisville, Kentucky. We will sing new community songs created specifically for this time in our history and explore together how the songs we sing in worship (and beyond) can empower and encourage us as we live out the biblical call to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.” Learn more here.

A group of faith leaders joined MPR News host Angela Davis for a North Star Journey Live event at our studios in downtown St. Paul on Thursday, March 26, to talk about what they experienced on the front lines of the immigration enforcement surge and how their faith both compelled and comforted them. Listen here.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

Yesterday, the world prepared for catastrophe.

The US president threatened the possible genocide of an entire people. He did not hold back in his words. He seemed willing to consider outcomes that should never be considered, especially by someone in power. For hours, no one knew if his words would turn into action. For hours, millions around the world feared the US might start a nuclear war.1

Then, just before the deadline, a ceasefire was announced. We are told it will last two weeks.2 It gives us enough time to catch our breath, but not enough to pretend this situation is normal.

We have to be honest about our current situation. This is more than just a period of political tension. We are living through a time when systems are failing. Institutions that once brought some stability, like government, international diplomacy, and economic systems, are not working as they used to. The standards that guided leaders seem meaningless. Indeed, the US President has proven to the world that he is unfit for office and should be removed. The safeguards are weaker than we thought.

This is what it feels like to live through collapse. Collapse does not happen all at once. It comes in waves. One system fails while another keeps going. Some norms vanish while others remain. People adjust as things change, often without fully realizing what is happening.

But sometimes, the truth becomes impossible to ignore. Yesterday was one of those times.

The biblical tradition does not protect us from seeing things clearly. It was shaped during times of upheaval, like exile, occupation, failed kings, and the loss of land and order. The prophets did not promise that everything would stay together. They spoke honestly about what was falling apart and asked people how to live faithfully in those times.

Jeremiah stood at the temple gates and warned that the things people trusted would not save them.3 Ezekiel wrote from exile, trying to understand a world where everything had fallen apart.4 Jesus was executed by a political system that kept order through violence.5

These stories are not far removed from us. They show what happens when systems break down and power turns dangerous.

Hannah Arendt wrote that “the sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be either good or evil.”6 She was talking about violence in bureaucracy, but her point applies more widely. Harm often spreads not just by intent, but by becoming normal, as people slowly accept things that once seemed unthinkable.

Dorothy Day said it more simply: “Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.”7 She was not talking about just one government or one time. She was pointing out a pattern, how systems that exploit and exclude can become so familiar that people stop fighting them.

That is the real danger in times like these.

It is not just that leaders act recklessly or cruelly. The bigger risk is that the rest of us start to adjust. We explain it away. We go along with it. We tell ourselves this is just how things are now.

Our spiritual task is to resist getting used to it. It means seeing things clearly without looking away. It means naming harm for what it is. It means refusing to believe the lie that this is normal or acceptable. And it means staying grounded as we do this work.

We still have responsibilities. We speak out against what is wrong. We put pressure on those in power. We protest. We vote. These are not just symbolic gestures. They are how a society tries to fix itself, even when its systems are under strain.

But we also care for something deeper. We look after the quality of our own lives and relationships. We refuse to let fear decide how we treat each other. We stay connected to what is real and good, even when the bigger systems feel shaky.

This is where many people feel the strain most strongly.

It is exhausting to stay involved when the future is uncertain. It is hard to keep showing up when we do not know what will happen. It is tempting to pull back, to care only about what we can control.

There is wisdom in knowing our limits. But pulling back also comes with a cost.

Václav Havel wrote that hope is “not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”8 This kind of hope does not rely on quick results. It comes from a commitment to live by what is right, even when the future is unclear.

This is the kind of steadiness we need right now.

The ceasefire gives us a short break. It does not fix the deeper problems. It does not repair the systems that are failing. It does not promise what will happen next. But it gives us time to choose how we will live right now.

Collapse is not just about what is breaking down. It is also about what is being born. It shows us the limits of the systems we trusted. It shows the character of our leaders. Most importantly, it shows who we are becoming in response.

We cannot control how global events unfold. But we can choose to stay clear, grounded, and committed to the work that is ours.

That is no small thing.

That is how we shape the future, even now.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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Reflection Questions

1. Where do you see evidence that systems are not holding in the ways they once did?

2. What are you tempted to normalize that you know, deep down, should not be accepted?

3. What practices help you remain grounded and engaged at the same time?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer for Steadiness in Collapse

God of truth,

You who remain when everything else is shaken,
steady us now.

Give us clear eyes to see what is breaking,
and the courage to name it without fear.

Guard us from becoming numb or indifferent.
Strengthen us to act where we can,
and to remain faithful where we must wait.

Hold us in a hope that does not depend on outcomes,
but on the integrity of how we live.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Refusing Normalization

Today, notice one thing that has become normalized that you know is not right. Name it clearly, even if only to yourself. Then take one step that interrupts that normalization.

• Speak about it with someone you trust.

• Write to a leader.

• Support an organization resisting it.

• Or simply refuse to participate in it where you have a choice.

This is how we remain awake.

This is how we live with integrity when systems fail.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

NEW!!! April 14, 2026, 11am ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be joined by Rev. Shawna Bowman, an amazing artist and pastor of Friendship Presbyterian Church, for a conversation about art as resistance and what it means to show up as a creative individual in a world in need of justice. Shawna will be leading a community of practice starting in April on the Commons. If you want to learn more, register here.

NEW!!! On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This retreat is about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

The Convergence Music Project has scheduled the fall conference on October 7-10, 2026 in Louisville, Kentucky. We will sing new community songs created specifically for this time in our history and explore together how the songs we sing in worship (and beyond) can empower and encourage us as we live out the biblical call to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.” Learn more here.

A group of faith leaders joined MPR News host Angela Davis for a North Star Journey Live event at our studios in downtown St. Paul on Thursday, March 26, to talk about what they experienced on the front lines of the immigration enforcement surge and how their faith both compelled and comforted them. Listen here.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

On Easter Sunday morning, the President of the United States issued a stream of public threats toward Iran, filled with language that once would have been unthinkable from the office he holds.

The words themselves matter (he is threatening war crimes), but so does what they reveal. Leadership is not only about policy or position. It is about presence, restraint, and the capacity to hold power without being consumed by it. We are watching what happens when that capacity fails.

When leaders lose their grounding, the consequences move outward. They shape the tone of public life. They destabilize relationships between nations. They introduce volatility into systems that depend on a measure of steadiness. Other leaders begin to calculate differently. In short, trust narrows. Risk expands.

The biblical tradition knows something of this pattern. It records, with striking honesty, what happens when power detaches from wisdom.

King Saul begins with promise and ends in unraveling. The text describes a mind that grows increasingly agitated, suspicious, and unable to discern reality clearly. His fear turns inward and outward at the same time, and he begins to lash out at those closest to him. David, who once soothed him, becomes a target. The kingdom fractures under the strain of a leader who can no longer govern himself.

King Nebuchadnezzar, in the book of Daniel, builds an empire and then loses his grip on what is real. He is described as living like an animal, his mind untethered, his power intact but unusable. The story is not subtle. It names the danger of authority without humility, power without limits, leadership without self-knowledge.

These stories are diagnostic for this time. They describe what happens when a human being is given power that exceeds their capacity to carry it.

James Baldwin once observed that “the most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”1 There is a similar danger in a leader who believes they cannot be held accountable, who no longer recognizes limits, who confuses impulse with authority.

Buddhist teacher, Pema Chödrön, teaches that when we are overwhelmed by fear, we either grasp for control or push away what we cannot tolerate.2 When that pattern takes hold in someone with immense power, it does not remain a personal struggle. It becomes public consequence.

We are not only dealing with political decisions. We are dealing with the interior life of leaders. That may be the harder truth to face. It means the stability of nations can hinge, in part, on whether those entrusted with power have done the work to remain human under pressure.

The prophets understood this. They did not only critique policies. They paid attention to the posture of the king, the condition of the court, the ways in which power insulated itself from correction. They knew that once a leader surrounds themselves with voices that echo rather than challenge, the descent can accelerate.

There is a moment, in every system, when people begin to see clearly what is happening. The question is what they do with that clarity.

Some will normalize it. They will explain it away, adjust their expectations, and continue.

Others will begin to tell the truth about what they are witnessing, even when it carries a cost.

This is where leadership widens beyond a single office. Leadership becomes collective.

Howard Thurman wrote about the “growing edge” of a society, the place where new life is possible because people refuse to accept what diminishes human dignity.3 That edge is not held by those in power alone. It is held by communities, by individuals, by those who choose to remain grounded when the systems around them begin to lose their balance.

We cannot control the interior life of those who hold high office. We can decide how we will live in response.

We can refuse to mirror instability with instability. We can resist the pull toward fear-driven thinking. We can stay rooted in relationships that hold us accountable and keep us connected to reality.

This is the work of disciplined, mature leadership. It is the work of remaining human in a moment when power itself seems to forget what that means.

The biblical witness does not promise that such moments resolve quickly. It does insist that they do not have the final word, because power that loses its mind eventually collapses under its own weight.

What remains, and what rebuilds, are the communities that learned how to live with clarity, courage, and care in the midst of it.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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Reflection Questions

1. Where do you see instability in leadership affecting the wider world right now?

2. How do you notice fear or reactivity shaping your own responses?

3. What practices help you remain grounded and clear when the systems around you feel unsteady?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer for Steadiness in Unsteady Times

God of wisdom,
You who see clearly when we cannot,
steady us in this moment.

When power becomes unmoored,
anchor us in what is real and life-giving.

Keep us from being pulled into fear or reaction.
Give us the clarity to see,
the courage to speak,
and the discipline to act with integrity.

Hold us in community with one another,
so that we do not lose ourselves
in the confusion of these days.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Staying Grounded in Reality

Today, choose one grounding practice that reconnects you to what is real. It might be stepping outside and noticing the physical world, calling someone you trust for an honest conversation, or writing down what you are seeing without exaggeration or minimization.

As you do, ask yourself:

• What is actually happening?

• What am I adding out of fear?

• What remains true regardless of the noise?

Return to these questions throughout the day. This is how we keep our footing when power begins to lose its own.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

TONIGHT!!!! April 7, 2026, 7-8:30pm ET - Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox and I are hosting another 4-part series on “Visions for the Common Good.” This series includes sessions with David Abram (cultural ecologist), Lynne Twist (global activist), Randy Woodley (Cherokee scholar and wisdom-keeper), and yours truly! All sessions are recorded, and you will get the link if you can’t make it. Learn more here.

NEW!!! April 14, 2026, 11am ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be joined by Rev. Shawna Bowman, an amazing artist and pastor of Friendship Presbyterian Church, for a conversation about art as resistance and what it means to show up as a creative individual in a world in need of justice. Shawna will be leading a community of practice starting in April on the Commons. If you want to learn more, register here.

NEW!!! On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This retreat is about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

The Convergence Music Project has scheduled the fall conference on October 7-10, 2026 in Louisville, Kentucky. We will sing new community songs created specifically for this time in our history and explore together how the songs we sing in worship (and beyond) can empower and encourage us as we live out the biblical call to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.” Learn more here.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

For those of us following the Christian lineage we have just come through Holy Week where we tell the story again of life that is given, taken, and somehow continues. The Christian tradition does not treat this as a metaphor alone. It names a pattern that shows up in the natural world, in human communities, and in history itself. Life unfolds, something ends, and something else begins that could not have emerged any other way.

It is not difficult to see what is ending around us.

We are watching institutions lose credibility that once held public trust. We are watching political systems strain under pressures they were never designed to carry. We are living inside an economic order that has produced extraordinary wealth alongside extraordinary inequality, and the strain is visible in the lives of people who are working harder for less stability. We are also facing ecological limits that can no longer be ignored. The assumption that the earth exists to be used without consequence is reaching its breaking point.

These realities show up in rising costs, in anxiety about the future, in the growing sense that the systems we inherited are no longer capable of holding the life we are asking them to sustain. We can name all of that with clarity.

But Easter does not end with naming what is dying. It asks us to attend to what is coming to life, even when it does not yet have scale or power.

In the Gospel accounts, resurrection is not immediately recognizable. Mary Magdalene mistakes Jesus for a gardener.1 The disciples walking to Emmaus speak with him at length and do not know who he is.2 Recognition comes slowly, and often only in hindsight. This tells us something about how new life appears.

It rarely arrives in the form we expect.

If we are willing to look, there are signs of that kind of life emerging now.

Across the country, farmers are shifting from extractive agriculture to regenerative practices that rebuild soil rather than deplete it. They are planting cover crops, reducing chemical inputs, and learning how to work with natural systems instead of overriding them. These changes do not produce immediate profit at the same scale, but they restore the ground that makes future life possible.

In cities and neighborhoods, people are forming mutual aid networks that operate outside formal institutions. They are sharing food, covering rent, organizing childcare, and responding to crises in real time. These are not large systems, but they are relational. They are built on trust rather than transaction.

We are also seeing experiments in economic life that challenge long-held assumptions. Worker-owned cooperatives are growing in sectors that were once dominated by hierarchical structures. Employees are choosing shared ownership and shared decision-making over models that concentrate power at the top. These efforts are not yet dominant, but they are redefining what participation and responsibility can look like.

At the same time, younger generations are asking different questions about what it means to live a “good life.” They are less convinced that success should be measured by accumulation alone. They are more attentive to mental health, community, and ecological impact. They are pressing institutions to account for how their decisions affect the wider web of life.

These shifts are uneven. They are incomplete. They do not yet add up to a fully formed alternative.

But they are real.

Indigenous teacher, Robin Wall Kimmerer, in Braiding Sweetgrass, writes, “All thriving is mutual.”3 She situates that claim within a wider understanding of life as a network of relationships, where giving and receiving are not transactions but conditions for survival. In that vision, nothing stands alone, and nothing is exempt from responsibility to the whole. That insight is beginning to reshape how people think about ecology, economics, and community life, pressing us to reconsider success not as private gain, but as the capacity for life to thrive together.

Wendell Berry has long argued that “the earth is what we all have in common.”4 That conviction is beginning to move from poetry into practice, as more people recognize that human life cannot be sustained apart from the health of the systems that support it.

What we are beginning to see is the early formation of a different kind of world. It’s a world that takes limits seriously. It understands relationship as foundational, not optional. It measures success by the well-being of the whole, not the advantage of a few.

This is not yet the dominant story. It exists alongside systems that are still driven by extraction and control. It exists in tension with habits that are difficult to change and structures that resist transformation. That tension is part of the moment we are living in.

Easter does not resolve that tension for us. It does not offer a timeline or a clear path forward. It offers a way of seeing.

It trains us to recognize life before it becomes obvious. It asks us to pay attention to what is small, relational, and easily overlooked. It invites us to participate in what is emerging, even when it does not yet have the power to define the whole.

The early followers of Jesus did not begin with institutions. They began with shared meals, mutual care, and a commitment to live differently in the midst of an unchanged world. What they practiced in small communities eventually reshaped the larger one.

That pattern is still available to us.

We are living in a time when something is ending. That much is clear. What is less clear, but no less real, is that something else is already beginning.

The question is whether we are willing to see it, and to give our lives to it before it is fully formed.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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Reflection Questions

1. Where do you see signs of new life emerging that you might have overlooked before?

2. What assumptions about success or stability are you being asked to reconsider?

3. Where might you be invited to participate in what is taking shape, even in a small way?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer for the Courage to Tend What Is New

God of life,

You who bring forth what we cannot yet see,
steady us in this in-between time.

Do not let us become so focused on what is ending
that we fail to recognize what is beginning.

Give us the patience to notice what is small,
the wisdom to nurture what is fragile,
and the courage to align our lives
with what leads toward wholeness for all.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Tending What Is Alive

Today, choose one expression of life that you can support. It might be a local farmer, a community initiative, a cooperative business, or a relationship that needs attention.

Take one concrete step: buy from them, contribute, reach out, or offer your time.

As you do, remind yourself that new worlds are not built all at once. They are grown, tended, and sustained through small, faithful acts over time.

Pay attention to how it feels to participate in something that is coming to life.

Let that awareness guide your next step.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

April 7, 2026, 7-8:30pm ET - Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox and I are hosting another 4-part series on “Visions for the Common Good.” This series will include sessions with David Abram (cultural ecologist), Lynne Twist (global activist), Randy Woodley (Cherokee scholar and wisdom-keeper), and yours truly! All sessions are recorded, and you will get the link if you can’t make it. Learn more here.

NEW!!! On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

My friends at the Center for Action and Contemplation are offering a fantastic program called “Have We Been Here Before? Ancient Wisdom for Days of Disruption.” At this live 90-minute online gathering, CAC Faculty Carmen Acevedo Butcher, Ph.D., James Finley, Ph.D., Fr. Richard Rohr, and guest teacher Kaitlin Curtice, will show you how ancient contemplative wisdom and traditions may support us in times of social, political, and spiritual instability. Sign up here!

The Benedictine Sisters of Erie are hosting a webinar with my friend, Fr. Adam Bucko and Katie Grodon April 14th. Katie and Adam will explore how new expressions of monastic community are bridging this ancient tradition to contemporary seekers in ways that enable more people to commit to lives of prayer, service, and transformation, in and beyond the monastery. Register for free to receive the zoom link.

Have you discovered Randy Woodley’s Substack yet? He is writing a 15 part series about democracy as an indigenous teacher and theologian. He just told me that next he is doing a 7 part series on AI. I can’t wait!

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

Jesus was not killed in a moment of chaos. His death happened through a system that functioned just as it was meant to.

• There was a governor who knew the execution was wrong but chose to keep order instead of doing what was right.

• Religious leaders protected their own positions by siding with those in power.

• The crowd was influenced by fear, rumors, and pressure.

• Soldiers simply followed their orders.

• The process turned a person into a problem that needed to be managed.

The Gospel writers make sure we see this. They slow the story down, name each person involved, and show every step. This story is not just about one man’s suffering. It’s about how a whole society can take part in harm without ever really calling it what it is.

Good Friday is not just about what happened to Jesus. It’s also about how harm gets organized.

Today, we see systems being tested right in front of us. Some policies limit who can take part in public life. Whole groups of people are talked about as threats or burdens. Wars happen far away while markets react instantly. Decisions are made that change people’s lives, but no one seems truly responsible.

Most of this doesn’t feel like a crisis when it happens. It feels routine, legal, and justified. That’s how systems keep going.

On Good Friday, the system didn’t feel like a machine to those inside it. It felt necessary. It felt like keeping order. It felt like doing what needed to be done.

That’s what makes it so dangerous.

James Cone, in The Cross and the Lynching Tree, wrote that the crucifixion was a first-century lynching.1 Rome used it to send a message: this is what happens when you step outside the boundaries of power. The cross was not just about death. It was a public warning, meant to show the crowd how to behave. Cone says we can’t understand the cross unless we see how it works within systems of domination. It’s not just a symbol. It’s political, social, and real.

Once you see this, it’s harder to distance yourself, because the question changes. It’s no longer, “What happened to Jesus?” It becomes, “How does this keep happening?”

One detail in the story stays with me.

While Jesus is dying, the soldiers gamble for his clothes. They don’t stop or think about what they’re doing. They don’t see the seriousness of their actions. They just keep going. That’s how systems work; they teach people to keep moving forward.

Howard Thurman once asked what happens to the human spirit when it has to live in conditions that deny its dignity.2 He saw that the biggest danger is not just what systems do to outsiders, but also what they do to the people who enforce them. Something narrows. Something hardens. Something learns not to see.

Good Friday doesn’t ask us to put on grief. It asks us to look closely at how harm becomes normal. It asks us to notice where we’re being taught not to see. It asks us to pay attention to the quiet ways we adjust, explain, and move on. And it reminds us that we’re not just bystanders.

The hard truth is that any of these roles could be ours. We might be the anxious leader trying to keep things together, the voice that goes along to avoid trouble, the crowd that believes what it’s told, the worker who follows orders, or sometimes, the one who refuses.

There’s not much resolution in this story. No one steps in to stop the execution. The system doesn’t fix itself in time. The crowd doesn’t change its mind.

What’s left is a witness. A small group stays. They can’t change what happens, but they refuse to leave. They stay present, even when it costs them. Their presence keeps something human alive in a moment meant to erase it.

We’re not separate from this story. We live inside systems that shape people’s lives every day. Some of these systems protect life, and some take away from it.

The work is not to fix everything at once. No one can do that. The work is to stay awake to what is happening. To resist the slow training that teaches us not to see. To remain human in the middle of structures that can make that difficult.

Good Friday doesn’t end with clear answers or victory. It leaves us with a body, a silence, and a question we can’t avoid: What kind of people will we become inside systems like these?

We are in this together,

Cameron

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Reflection Questions

1. Where do you see harm becoming procedural or normalized in the world around you right now?

2. In what ways do you feel pressure to look away, minimize, or move on too quickly?

3. What would it mean for you to “remain present” in this moment, even in a small, quiet way?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer for the Courage to See

God of the broken and the burdened,
You see what we try not to see.
You hear what we have learned to ignore.

Keep us from becoming so adjusted to this world
that we lose our capacity to recognize harm.

Give us the courage to look clearly,
the steadiness to remain present,
and the wisdom to act with integrity
when the moment asks something of us.

Hold us when we feel overwhelmed,
and keep alive in us
what is still tender, still human, still awake.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Interrupting the Drift

At some point today, pause when you encounter a news story, policy decision, or moment of tension that you would normally scroll past or move on from quickly.

Do not analyze it immediately. Do not debate it.

Instead, sit with one simple question: Who is most affected by this?

Let your attention rest there for a few minutes.

If you can, take one small step toward remaining present: reach out, learn more, offer support, or simply refuse to look away.

The practice is not about solving the issue.

It is about interrupting the habit of disengagement and choosing to stay human.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

April 7, 2026, 7-8:30pm ET - Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox and I are hosting another 4-part series on “Visions for the Common Good.” This series will include sessions with David Abram (cultural ecologist), Lynne Twist (global activist), Randy Woodley (Cherokee scholar and wisdom-keeper), and yours truly! All sessions are recorded, and you will get the link if you can’t make it. Learn more here.

NEW!!! On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

My friends at the Center for Action and Contemplation are offering a fantastic program called “Have We Been Here Before? Ancient Wisdom for Days of Disruption.” At this live 90-minute online gathering, CAC Faculty Carmen Acevedo Butcher, Ph.D., James Finley, Ph.D., Fr. Richard Rohr, and guest teacher Kaitlin Curtice, will show you how ancient contemplative wisdom and traditions may support us in times of social, political, and spiritual instability. Sign up here!

The Benedictine Sisters of Erie are hosting a webinar with my friend, Fr. Adam Bucko and Katie Grodon April 14th. Katie and Adam will explore how new expressions of monastic community are bridging this ancient tradition to contemporary seekers in ways that enable more people to commit to lives of prayer, service, and transformation, in and beyond the monastery. Register for free to receive the zoom link.

Have you discovered Randy Woodley’s Substack yet? He is writing a 15 part series about democracy as an indigenous teacher and theologian. He just told me that next he is doing a 7 part series on AI. I can’t wait!

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

Last night, Jewish families sat at tables and told the story of leaving Egypt.

The Passover story opens with a line that is easy to overlook: “A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.”

Joseph once saved Egypt. He interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams, set up grain storage, and helped the nation survive a famine. The whole economy had depended on him. But after that, there is silence. A generation later, the text says the new ruler “did not know Joseph.” This was not just ignorance. It was a choice to refuse.

Pharaoh enjoyed a system he did not create. He received stability, infrastructure, and wealth, but chose not to remember their source or who made them possible. Forgetting in this way makes exploitation possible.

When Joseph is forgotten, the people connected to him become expendable. Their work can be used, their lives controlled, and their presence seen as a threat instead of a contribution.

The story does not start with violence. It starts with a change in the story being told.

“With the Israelites, it was said: they are too many, too strong, too dangerous.”

This shift happens before the first brick is made without straw, before forced labor, before infanticide, and before oppression is obvious. It starts when society tells a new story about the same people.

This is the moment the story asks us to notice.

This kind of forgetting is not just Pharaoh’s problem. It happens again and again.

A group of people contributes, builds, and supports a nation. Their work becomes part of daily life. Over time, it is absorbed, taken for granted, and eventually forgotten. Once it is erased, it becomes easier to justify what comes next. Restrictions feel reasonable. Control feels necessary. Exploitation feels like management.

All of this depends on one idea: we do not know them, we do not owe them, they do not belong (sound familiar?!?).

The Passover story stops this pattern at its beginning.

It does not begin with freedom. It begins by calling out the lie that allowed oppression. The lie is not just that people are dangerous. The real lie is that we can forget what we owe each other and still be human.

The story rejects this idea. It puts memory at the center, not as nostalgia, but as a way to hold us accountable.

“You shall tell your child…”

The command is not just to remember suffering. Passover is a reminder to remember our relationships, our dependence, and how our lives are connected to people we might otherwise ignore.

Once that memory fades, everything else changes quickly. We start talking about people in ways that make it easier not to care about them. We accept things we once would have resisted. We get used to systems that make others pay the price.

The story understands this pattern. That is why it starts at this point.

It does not start at the Red Sea or in the wilderness. It starts when a ruler decides not to know the people who made his life possible.

Passover asks us to find that moment in our own lives.

Where has memory faded so much that it no longer challenges us? Where have we accepted stories about others that make their exclusion seem fair? Where do we benefit from systems we did not build, while choosing not to ask who paid for them?

These are not just abstract questions. They shape how society is organized. They decide who is protected and who is left out. They affect whether we see each other as connected or as expendable.

The story does not solve this for us. It shows us where to look and leaves us with the harder job: to remember in a way that changes how we live.

We are in this together,

Cameron

PS - We need to talk about that insane speech by DJT from last night…but that’s for tomorrow I suppose. God save us…

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Reflection Questions

1. Where do you see “Pharaoh’s forgetting” at work in the world around you?

2. What have you inherited that you rarely stop to question?

3. Who becomes easier to dismiss when their story is no longer told?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer for the Work of Remembering What We Owe

God,

You who remember what we would rather set aside,
keep us from the kind of forgetting that diminishes others.

Do not let us live on the benefits of a story we refuse to name.
Do not let us accept distance where there is responsibility.

Give us the courage to remember honestly,
and the humility to let that memory change how we live.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Restoring the Story

Today, take one thing you rely on—your workplace, your neighborhood, a system that makes your life possible.

Ask yourself:

• Who made this possible?

• Whose labor, whose risk, whose sacrifice is hidden here?

Name them, even if only to yourself. Let that remembering interrupt the story you usually tell. Notice what it asks of you next.

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Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

April 7, 2026, 7-8:30pm ET - Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox and I are hosting another 4-part series on “Visions for the Common Good.” This series will include sessions with David Abram (cultural ecologist), Lynne Twist (global activist), Randy Woodley (Cherokee scholar and wisdom-keeper), and yours truly! All sessions are recorded, and you will get the link if you can’t make it. Learn more here.

NEW!!! On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

My friends at the Center for Action and Contemplation are offering a fantastic program called “Have We Been Here Before? Ancient Wisdom for Days of Disruption.” At this live 90-minute online gathering, CAC Faculty Carmen Acevedo Butcher, Ph.D., James Finley, Ph.D., Fr. Richard Rohr, and guest teacher Kaitlin Curtice, will show you how ancient contemplative wisdom and traditions may support us in times of social, political, and spiritual instability. Sign up here!

The Benedictine Sisters of Erie are hosting a webinar with my friend, Fr. Adam Bucko and Katie Grodon April 14th. Katie and Adam will explore how new expressions of monastic community are bridging this ancient tradition to contemporary seekers in ways that enable more people to commit to lives of prayer, service, and transformation, in and beyond the monastery. Register for free to receive the zoom link.

Have you discovered Randy Woodley’s Substack yet? He is writing a 15 part series about democracy as an indigenous teacher and theologian. He just told me that next he is doing a 7 part series on AI. I can’t wait!

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

Being April Fools Day, I wish this was a joke…

Yesterday, Donald Trump signed an executive order that would tighten federal control over mail-in voting ahead of the midterms. The White House says the order is about “citizenship verification” and “election integrity.”1 It directs federal agencies to help build citizenship-confirmed voter lists and pushes new restrictions on how absentee ballots are distributed.

Legal scholars and voting-rights advocates immediately argued that the order is likely unconstitutional.2 Elections in the United States are administered by the states, with Congress setting the governing rules. The president does not simply get to redraw the terms of participation because he wants a different electorate.

That matters legally, of course. But it also matters theologically.

Scripture returns again and again to the question of honest measures. The commandment in Deuteronomy is concrete: do not keep two sets of weights, one for fairness and one for advantage. Do not rig the scale before the transaction begins. Do not call a distorted measure just because it benefits you.

At first glance, that seems like a rule about the marketplace. It is. But it is also a rule about public life.

A healthy society depends on shared measures. Courts need them. Contracts need them. Elections need them. The vote is one of the ways a people measures consent, legitimacy, and belonging. Once those measures are manipulated, public trust begins to rot from the inside.

This is why voter suppression is never only administrative. It is an attempt to tamper with the scale.

The damage begins before any ballot is rejected. It begins when people learn that access can be narrowed from above. It begins when participation becomes conditional in new ways. It begins when rules are changed close enough to an election that fear itself becomes part of the mechanism. Who will be confused? Who will be discouraged? Who will decide it is too complicated, too risky, too uncertain to try?

Those questions are not accidental. They are part of the design.

This is where the spiritual crisis deepens.

Authoritarianism does not only seize institutions. It corrupts measurement. It teaches people to accept distorted scales as normal. It tells us that fairness is whatever those in power say it is. It insists that legitimacy belongs to the winner, not to the process. Over time, people stop asking whether the measure is honest. They ask only whether their side can survive inside it.

That is a devastating moral shift.

Once we accept unequal weights in public life, we do not keep the damage confined there. We carry it into our relationships. We begin to tolerate double standards. We excuse in our allies what we condemn in our opponents. We lose the discipline of fairness. We lose the ability to live by one measure.

That is why Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s words still matter: “In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”3 He was not distributing blame equally. He was naming the moral field we all inhabit. Public corruption implicates everyone because it degrades the conditions of shared life.

The question before us is larger than this executive order, though it includes it.

What kind of people are we becoming when the measure itself is being tampered with?

Will we learn to live with it? Will we tell ourselves the courts will handle it, someone else will stop it, the machinery will somehow correct itself? Or will we remember that democracy is not self-sustaining? It depends on habits of honesty, restraint, and shared responsibility that must be guarded by ordinary people, not only by institutions.

That work is not glamorous. It looks like paying attention to the details others hope we will ignore. It looks like refusing the lazy language of inevitability. It looks like protecting the conditions that allow our neighbors to participate fully in public life, even when they are not our neighbors politically.

Deuteronomy does not say, “Use honest weights when convenient.” It says, in effect, that a community cannot remain whole when its measurements are false. That is where we are.

The issue is not only whether this order survives a court challenge. It may not. The issue is whether we still recognize a distorted scale when we see one, and whether we are willing to live as if honest measures still matter.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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Reflection Questions

1. Where do you see “unequal weights” showing up in public life right now?

2. Where are you tempted to accept conditions you would have resisted before?

3. What helps you stay clear about fairness when the pressure to adjust is strong?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer for Honest Measures

God of justice,

You who call us to live with integrity,
keep us clear when the lines begin to blur.

Do not let us grow accustomed to what diminishes life.
Do not let us accept as normal what we know to be unjust.

Give us the courage to name what we see,
the patience to remain steady,
and the strength to act with integrity over time.

Teach us to live by one measure—
honest, fair, and shared—
so that our common life may hold.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Holding the Measure

Pay attention today to one interaction, just one. It could be a conversation, a decision, or even an internal judgment.

Notice the standard you are using.

Then ask yourself: Would I use this same measure if the roles were reversed?

Do not rush to correct yourself.

Just stay long enough to see clearly.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

April 7, 2026, 7-8:30pm ET - Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox and I are hosting another 4-part series on “Visions for the Common Good.” This series will include sessions with David Abram (cultural ecologist), Lynne Twist (global activist), Randy Woodley (Cherokee scholar and wisdom-keeper), and yours truly! All sessions are recorded, and you will get the link if you can’t make it. Learn more here.

NEW!!! On July 19-24, 2026, I’ll be leading a Women’s Wellness Retreat in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and I’d love to extend the invitation to you. We’ll spend five days off the grid, riding horses through wide open landscapes, sharing meals, and creating space to slow down enough to hear ourselves think again. This isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about returning to yourself, settling your nervous system, letting go of what you’ve been carrying, and getting clearer about what matters now. The group will be small (no more than 10 women), and we’ll move at a steady, spacious pace, with plenty of room for both conversation and quiet. I hope you’ll consider joining us.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

The Benedictine Sisters of Erie are hosting a webinar with my friend, Fr. Adam Bucko and Katie Grodon April 14th! Katie and Adam will explore how new expressions of monastic community are bridging this ancient tradition to contemporary seekers in ways that enable more people to commit to lives of prayer, service, and transformation, in and beyond the monastery. Register for free to receive the zoom link.

Have you discovered Randy Woodley’s Substack yet? He is writing a 15 part series about democracy as an indigenous teacher and theologian. He just told me that next he is doing a 7 part series on AI. I can’t wait!

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

This past Saturday, millions of people stepped into the streets for what may turn out to be the largest protest in American history.

People came together in cities and small towns, outside courthouses and along highways. They carried signs and stood side by side, all trying to understand the times we are living in. Their declaration has been a consistent theme: “No Kings.”

People had different reasons for showing up. Some were concerned about the war in Iran. Others were troubled by immigration raids, more federal agents in their communities, higher prices for fuel and food, and a growing feeling that accountability is slipping away.

What held the day together was not a single issue. It was a mutual recognition about power: who holds it, how it is being used, and what happens to a society when power no longer answers to anything beyond itself.

The language of “No Kings” reaches back to the founding of this country, but it also reaches into a much older stream.

The prophets of Israel were not abstract thinkers. They paid attention to how power moved through land, labor, courts, and temples. They watched who benefited and who paid the cost. They spoke into systems that had learned how to justify themselves.

Amos looked at a functioning economy and saw exploitation. Isaiah listened to legal arguments and heard the distortion of justice. Jeremiah stood in a place of worship and named the gap between what people practiced publicly and how they lived.

They were not trying to win arguments with the powerful. They were trying to wake up the oppressed who had come to accept their abuse.

Walter Brueggemann calls this the work of the prophet: to break the “royal consciousness,” which is the settled way of thinking that tells people the current system is just how things are.1

That imagination is persuasive because it feels reasonable.

Over time, people adjust to it. They find ways to live inside it. They explain it to themselves. They learn which questions are worth asking and which ones will cost too much.

Margaret Wheatley observes that in unstable times, people look for anything that restores a sense of order, even if it limits their freedom.2 That pressure is real right now.

That is the environment where protest emerges.

When people gather in the streets, they are not only expressing dissent. They are challenging the assumption that the current power arrangement is fixed. They are testing whether something else might still be possible.

You could sense that this weekend. Not everywhere, but often enough to notice. Strangers spoke more openly. There was less pressure to appear certain, more room to name what feels unsettled.

These times are fragile.

They do not last on their own.

James Baldwin once said that “a People” do not come into being automatically.3 They become a People through what they are willing to face together. Throughout history, there have been moments when collective action has reshaped what is possible. The civil rights movement showed how sustained courage and persistence in the face of struggle could move an entire nation. People gathered not only for a day, but over months and years, turning protest into lasting change.

A crowd can gather quickly. A People takes time.

Howard Thurman pressed this even further. He asked what happens to the human spirit under sustained pressure, conditions in which fear, control, and inequality shape daily life.4 His concern was not only what systems do, but what those systems do to us.

That question sits close to the surface now.

What happens to us when surveillance becomes ordinary?
What happens when violence recedes into the background of daily awareness?
What happens when we begin to measure our own stability against someone else’s precarity?

These are not distant concerns. They form our habits. They mold our relationships. They shape what we come to accept.

Protest can expose that. It can create a moment when people see more clearly the conditions they live in and the ways those conditions are shaping them. That clarity is not the end of anything. It is an opening. The harder work begins after the streets empty.

It appears in how we treat each other when the crowd is gone. It’s inside the choices we make when no one is looking. It’s in whether we let today’s pressures make us smaller, or if we protect a wider idea of what it means to live well together. This can look like listening patiently to someone you disagree with, checking in on a neighbor who might be struggling, or taking time to share resources instead of guarding them closely. It might mean speaking up if you see someone being treated unfairly, making space for new voices in conversations, or showing kindness in small, ordinary ways. These actions may seem simple, but they give shape to the values carried in the streets, weaving them into daily life.

The prophetic tradition does not ask for constant intensity. It asks for steadiness.

It calls for people who can stay human even when it’s hard. People who keep their connections when it would be easier to drift apart. It asks us to center the voices and experiences of those most often left out, recognizing that genuine change is only possible when everyone has a seat at the table. Building a shared life means listening to marginalized perspectives and forging coalitions across difference, so that collective responsibility and equity shape what comes next. People who help shape a shared life without giving in to the rules set only by those in power.

Something changed this weekend. It may not be dramatic. It may not hold true everywhere. But people stepped out of isolation and into proximity. They saw one another. They recognized something about the moment they are living in.

This is how a crowd becomes a People.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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Reflection Questions

1. What did you notice in yourself as you watched or participated in the protests this weekend?

2. Where do you see power shaping daily life in ways that often go unquestioned?

3. What helps you remain steady and connected in a time that pulls toward fragmentation?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer for the Work of Becoming

God of our shared life,

You meet us in moments when something begins to shift,
when what has been accepted no longer holds.

Keep us attentive to what we are seeing.
Keep us honest about what we are becoming.

In a time shaped by pressure and uncertainty,
form in us a steadiness that does not depend on control.

Teach us how to remain connected to one another.
Teach us how to live with integrity inside complex systems.

And where something new is trying to emerge among us,
give us the patience to stay with it.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Staying with What Shifted

Return to a moment from this weekend that stayed with you. Recall where you were, what you saw, what you felt in your body.

Then ask: What did this moment reveal about the world I am living in?

Write your response in a few sentences.

Then choose one way to remain in contact with that awareness this week. A conversation. A change in attention. A small, deliberate act. Stay with it longer than is comfortable.

Formation happens this way: over time, through attention and practice.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

March 31 and April 7, 2026, 7-8:30pm ET - Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox and I are hosting another 4-part series on “Visions for the Common Good.” This series will include sessions with David Abram (cultural ecologist), Lynne Twist (global activist), Randy Woodley (Cherokee scholar and wisdom-keeper), and yours truly! All sessions are recorded, and you will get the link if you can’t make it. Learn more here.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

The Benedictine Sisters of Erie are hosting a webinar with my friend, Fr. Adam Bucko and Katie Grodon April 14th! Katie and Adam will explore how new expressions of monastic community are bridging this ancient tradition to contemporary seekers in ways that enable more people to commit to lives of prayer, service, and transformation, in and beyond the monastery. Register for free to receive the zoom link.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now

A Sufi story…

A man is on his hands and knees under a streetlamp, searching.

Another passerby stops. “What are you looking for?”

“My key,” the man says.

The passerby kneels down to help. Together, they search the ground, moving their hands through the small circle of light. After a while, the passerby asks, “Are you sure you lost it here?”

The man gestures toward the darkness beyond the lamp. “No. I lost it over there.”

The passerby sits back. “Then why are you looking here?”

“Because the light is better here.”

This Sufi teaching story is old, but it doesn’t feel far away. It feels like a mirror.

We spend hours following the war in Iran, watching the strikes, the retaliation, and the slow spread of a conflict that no one seems able to stop. We read about burning refineries and tighter shipping lanes, knowing it won’t stay contained. Soon, it will affect supply chains and show up in higher and higher prices of fuel and food.

We talk about corruption, what’s being hidden, who is being protected, and whether accountability still exists. We share bits of reporting, trying to figure out what’s true and what has been kept out of sight.

We argue about federal power, the reach of Homeland Security, and the presence of agents in places that once felt civilian. We wonder if this is really protection, or if something else is happening right in front of us.

Beneath it all, the same questions keep coming up: How bad will this get? Who is really in charge? Can we trust what we’re told?

All of this happens where the light is bright. Information never stops. Analysis comes right away. We can stay informed, involved, and ready to respond.

But it is not where the key was lost.

The key was lost in the conditions that made all of this possible, and those are harder to face.

It was lost in an economy that relies on extraction and calls it growth, where whole regions can be destabilized to secure energy and still be described as a tactical need. It was lost in political systems that reward loyalty over truth, where corruption isn’t a glitch but a feature, managed as long as it’s useful.

It was lost as state power slowly expanded. Most people didn’t agree to it directly, but learned to accept it, bit by bit, until what once seemed unthinkable started to feel normal.

It was lost as accountability faded, where those in power rarely face consequences for the harm they cause, and the rest of us slowly learn to expect less.

It was lost in us. In how we adapt to things we once would have resisted. In how quickly we move past what should stop us. In how we live with contradictions, calling out injustice while still benefiting from the systems that cause it.

These are not well-lit places.

They are harder to face because they don’t offer simple answers. They involve more than one side. They ask more from us than just paying attention. They ask us to reckon with them.

So we stay where the light is better.

We stay focused on updates, arguments, and analysis, circling what’s easy to see, while the deeper work waits in places we’d rather avoid.

The Sufi teachers didn’t want to make us feel foolish. They wanted to show us how we avoid what really matters.

The key is not lost where the light is better.

It is lost where it was lost.

If we want to find a future that’s more honest, accountable, and humane, we’ll need to leave the circle of light and step into the places where the truth is harder to see, but still there.

The good news is that we don’t have to solve everything to start. We just have to be willing to step, even for a moment, beyond the circle of light.

We are in this together,

Cameron

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Reflection Questions

1. Where do you notice yourself staying in “well-lit” conversations that feel active but do not lead to deeper truth or change?

2. What is one reality, personal or communal, that you sense you have been avoiding because it feels harder to face?

3. Where might you be invited to step beyond the familiar and into deeper clarity?

A Prayer for the Day

A Prayer for the Courage to Step Beyond the Light

God of truth and mercy,

You meet us not only in what is clear,
but in what we would rather not see.

Give us the courage to face what is real—

Where we have grown accustomed to what diminishes life,
restore our clarity.
Where we have turned away to protect ourselves,
restore our strength.

Hold us steady when the ground feels uncertain.
Guide us toward what is honest,
what is just,
what is still possible.

And remind us, again and again,
that even in the dark,
we are not alone.

Amen.

Spiritual Practice

Stepping Beyond the Circle

Today, notice where your attention naturally goes. Pay attention to what feels immediate, visible, and easy to engage: news, commentary, analysis, conversation. There is nothing wrong with this, but do not stop there.

Then ask yourself: What am I not looking at?

Choose one small step beyond the “circle of light.”

It might be:

• Initiating a conversation you have been avoiding

• Reading a perspective that unsettles your assumptions

• Naming a truth, out loud or in writing, that you have softened

Do not try to resolve it. Just stay present. Even a few minutes of honest attention begins to shift what is possible.

Subscribe now

Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…

My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.

TODAY!!! March 26, 2026, 7–8:30pm ET – FREE WEBINAR - I’ll be joined by Ruth Dearnley, OBE, Founder and President of Stop the Traffik, for “Stop the Exploitation of Children: Disrupting Human Trafficking at Its Source.” As Board Chair of Stop the Traffik USA, this work is deeply personal to me. We cannot rescue our way out of trafficking; we must prevent exploitation by disrupting the systems and financial flows that profit from vulnerability—and congregations can play a powerful role in building community resilience. Ruth will share how technology and data are exposing trafficking networks globally, and how congregations can lead local awareness and prevention campaigns that reduce vulnerability and protect children. I hope you’ll join us. Learn more and register here.

March 28, 2026 - No Kings Protest! We are marching again. Mark your calendars and find the nearest protest site. Make your protest signs. Knit your red hats. Get your water bottles and sunscreen ready. We head back into the streets for peaceful protest on behalf of a more just world. I'll see you out there. Register here.

March 31 and April 7, 2026, 7-8:30pm ET - Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox and I are hosting another 4-part series on “Visions for the Common Good.” This series will include sessions with David Abram (cultural ecologist), Lynne Twist (global activist), Randy Woodley (Cherokee scholar and wisdom-keeper), and yours truly! All sessions are recorded, and you will get the link if you can’t make it. Learn more here.

I drafted a Strategic Framework for Congregations as we move into the coming years of increased authoritarianism around the world. If interested, you can download it here.

Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…

I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.

The Benedictine Sisters of Erie are hosting a webinar with my friend, Fr. Adam Bucko and Katie Grodon April 14th! Katie and Adam will explore how new expressions of monastic community are bridging this ancient tradition to contemporary seekers in ways that enable more people to commit to lives of prayer, service, and transformation, in and beyond the monastery. Register for free to receive the zoom link.

If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.

Subscribe now