A Covenant for Times Like These
A Meditation by Rev. Cameron Trimble
“The believers, in their love, mercy, and compassion for one another, are like one body. When any limb aches, the whole body reacts with sleeplessness and fever.” — Prophet Muhammad, Hadith
My colleague Imam Osman recently told me this story from his Islamic tradition…
When the Prophet Muhammad (blessings be upon him) arrived in Medina, he was not entering a peaceful city. He was arriving as a refugee.
Medina—then called Yathrib—was a community frayed by years of conflict. Rival tribes had been locked in cycles of retaliation that no one could fully remember the beginning of, only the damage. Jewish clans, Arab tribes, and newly arrived followers of Muhammad lived side by side but did not yet know how to live with one another. Grievances lingered between neighbors. Trust had worn thin. Violence had become familiar enough to feel inevitable.
The Prophet had been invited there precisely because the city was unraveling. The people did not ask him to take control. They asked him to help them survive themselves.
Instead of embracing systems of punishment, he urged the creation of a covenant. The Charter of Medina named a shared moral framework for a plural community. It did not erase religious difference or demand uniform belief. It organized responsibility. It said, in effect: we will belong to one another even when we are not the same.
Alongside that charter came a teaching—simple, profoundly practical—about how a fragile community could hold together without tearing itself apart.
The Prophet instructed the people in four ways of living.
Behave in ways that are trustworthy and peaceful. Let your presence be something others can rely on. Let your conduct make violence unnecessary rather than inevitable.
Eat together as a full community. Share food across difference. Let the table become a place where fear loosens its grip and people remember that the person across from them has a face, a story, a body much like their own.
Keep relationships strong between you. Tend them deliberately. Repair what frays. Do not allow resentment to quietly do the work of separation for you. Understand that the strength of the whole depends on the health of the bonds between its parts.
And pray to your God at night. To pray at night is to practice faith without imposing it, to remain grounded without demanding attention, to remember God while making space for neighbors whose prayers rise in different ways.
These were not lofty ideals offered from a distance. They were survival practices. Over time, they rewove the relational fabric of that community.
You can feel how embodied they are. Trust is something the nervous system recognizes before the mind names it. Eating together requires proximity and vulnerability. Maintaining relationships demands humility and patience. Prayer, in its deepest sense, becomes a way of steadying the body when fear is trying to take control.
This teaching does not pretend conflict disappears. It assumes it will arise. What it offers is a way of living through conflict without surrendering our humanity to it.
We can learn so much from this teaching today.
We are living in a time when centralized power thrives on fracture. Fear is circulating deliberately. Communities are being told they are safer alone than together. We are encouraged to look upward for rescue rather than toward one another for strength. The result is isolation, exhaustion, and a creeping sense that we are on our own.
The wisdom that emerged in Medina pushes back against that story.
It teaches that safety is created through trust practiced over time. It reminds us that food shared across difference can stabilize a community more effectively than rhetoric shouted across divides. It insists that relationships, when tended, become a form of moral infrastructure. It affirms that spiritual grounding—however one names it—is essential when public life becomes disorienting.
The story of Medina shows us that communities do not survive fracture by becoming harder. They survive by becoming more bound to one another in intentional ways: Trust. Shared meals. Strong relationships. Spiritual grounding.
These are the scaffolding of a future that refuses to be ruled by fear.
And they remain available to us—here, now, together.
We are in this together,
Cameron
Reflection Questions
Where do you notice fear or fragmentation shaping your relationships or community right now, and what might trust look like in that place?
Who are the people with whom you need to share space, food, or honest conversation in order to strengthen the bonds that sustain life?
What practices help you stay grounded when public life feels unstable or overwhelming?
A Prayer for the Day
A Prayer For the Courage of Covenant
God of many names and deep belonging, You know how fragile communities become when fear takes hold. You see how easily we turn inward, protect ourselves, and forget one another. Teach us the courage of covenant. Help us become trustworthy in our presence, generous at our tables, faithful in our relationships, and grounded in what gives us life. When power fractures and fear multiplies, anchor us in practices that restore dignity, connection, and care. Make us people who know how to live together without erasing difference, and who choose belonging over domination. Hold us steady, and help us hold one another. Amen.
Spiritual Practice
Practicing Covenant
This week, choose one embodied act of covenant:
Share a meal with someone you don’t normally eat with.
Reach out to repair or strengthen a relationship that has grown strained.
Commit to a brief morning or nightly practice—prayer, breath, or silence—that grounds you when fear is loud.
Do not rush this. Let the act work on your body as much as your mind.
Notice what steadies. Notice what reconnects.
Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…
February 5, 2026 - Margaret Wheatley and and I are launching a new online course called “Leading with Spirit,” a six-session journey into soul-grounded leadership designed to deepen your trust in guidance, nurture perseverance, and rekindle imaginal wisdom for our fractured world. Take a look at the course outline. We are really excited and hope you can join! Scholarship are available if needed. Learn more here!
February 11th and 25, 2026 - Join Our “Building a Culture of Leadership Within Congregations” Cohort facilitated by Rabbi Benjamin Ross and me! A two-session course for ministers and faith leaders ready to strengthen how their congregations and ministries identify, develop, and support leaders. Learn more here.
March 17, 23, 31 and April 7, 2026 - Mark your calendars! Matthew Fox and I will be hosting another 4-part series on “Visions for the Common Good.” We are finalizing details now, and the registration page will open soon.
July 19-24, 2026 - Join me on retreat in the back-country of beautiful Wyoming. The Art of Wilding is a 5-Day Expedition for Women Leaders. We will spend the week reconnecting to nature, exploring our inner landscapes for change, and engage the wisdom of spiritual teachings. Click here to learn more.
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 cool folks over at Spiritual Wanderlust are launching a new program called “Night School.” It’s a twelve-month journey through the Dark, offering the rituals, practices, and companionship humans have long relied on in times of deep transformation. You will be accompanied by elders and teachers who have walked this terrain deeply, including James Finley, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Ronald Rolheiser. I think this looks amazing.
Randy Woodley is offering a 15-part series on his Substack which is teaching me so much about how democracy does and doesn’t work for people. Randy is a Cherokee descendant recognized by the Keetoowah Band, a recovering academic, and a storyteller. You should check out his work.
If you are part of a congregation, you should check out the great resources at Church Anew. They produce ready-made resources and formation materials. Amazing stuff.
If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.
It turns out the radical solution to social collapse is not “more yelling,” but eating together and acting like we’re in the same body.
Very inconvenient for outrage culture. Very effective for civilization.
Blessed are the covenant-makers, for they ruin fear’s business model.
Perhaps it has already started (if the posts are true) when some Minnesota National Guard came the other day with pizza and warm drinks to share with some protesters. I saw two different posts of the Guard doing this. One said it was because the Guard wanted to remind people that they too were people, family and friends... they were trying to deescalate the tension. Made sense to me.