Becoming a People
A Meditation by Rev. Cameron Trimble
“The task of the prophet is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness alternative to the dominant culture.” — Walter Brueggemann
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
Reflection Questions
What did you notice in yourself as you watched or participated in the protests this weekend?
Where do you see power shaping daily life in ways that often go unquestioned?
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.
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.
The Prophetic Imagination, by Walter Brueggemann (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978; 2nd ed. 2001)
Wheatley, Margaret J. Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2017.
Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. New York: Dial Press, 1963.
Thurman, Howard. Jesus and the Disinherited. Boston: Beacon Press, 1949.
here's hoping that this energy will show up at the voting box. Bless your efforts