How Do We Create A Future Worth Living In?
A Meditation by Rev. Cameron Trimble
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.” — Deuteronomy 30:19
This week, I am on Star Island off the New Hampshire coast speaking at the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science. This year’s theme is Co-Creating a Thriving Future: An Alchemy of Belief and Choice.
As a theologian and futurist, I engage the primary inquiry of this conference every day: How do we create a future worth living in?
This question feels especially urgent right now. We’re facing changes in climate, democracy, technology, religion, economics, and global politics all at once. The speed of these changes can leave us feeling lost or powerless. It’s easy to think the future is just happening to us, instead of something we help shape.
But there’s a powerful story in the Jewish tradition that offers another way to see things.
This story comes from the Babylonian Talmud, in a well-known passage called The Oven of Akhnai. I’ve shared it before, but it’s worth repeating. A group of rabbis are having a heated debate about a point of Jewish law. Rabbi Eliezer is sure he’s right, but the others disagree.
The argument grows even more intense.
Determined to prove his point, Rabbi Eliezer doesn’t just rely on logic or tradition. He turns to miracles.
“If the law agrees with me,” he says, “let this carob tree prove it.”
The carob tree pulls up its roots and moves hundreds of feet away.
But the other rabbis aren’t convinced.
Rabbi Eliezer tries again.
“If the law agrees with me, let this stream prove it.”
The stream starts to flow backward.
Still, the rabbis won’t give in.
Then the walls of the study hall start to cave in.
Even that doesn’t change their minds.
Finally, Rabbi Eliezer calls on heaven itself.
A voice speaks from above: “Why do you dispute with Rabbi Eliezer? He is correct in every matter.”
At that moment, one of the rabbis rises to his feet and quotes the Book of Deuteronomy: “It is not in heaven.”
His answer is surprising.
The rabbis explain that after God gave the Torah to people, it was now up to humans to interpret and live by it. God trusted people to use their judgment and wisdom together. In other words, the future was now in our hands.
I find this story inspiring. The rabbis aren’t turning away from God. They’re taking responsibility.
Maybe that’s our spiritual challenge today. We spend a lot of time wondering who will shape the future. Will it be governments, markets, artificial intelligence, corporations, scientists, or religious leaders?
The rabbis give us another answer. The future isn’t in heaven or somewhere far away. It comes from the choices we make together today, in this very moment.
This doesn’t make science less important. In fact, it makes it even more meaningful. Science helps us understand reality, shows us the results of our actions, and broadens our sense of what’s possible.
Faith does something else. It asks what’s worth creating, what we owe each other, and what kind of world we want to leave for our children and grandchildren.
Political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote, “the miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, natural ruin is ultimately the fact of natality.”1 She meant that every new person brings the chance for a new beginning. People have the amazing ability to change history and create something new.
This ability isn’t magic. It’s about responsibility, courage, and imagination.
This week, scientists and theologians will meet on a small island off New Hampshire to ask what kind of future we can build together. This isn’t just an academic question. It’s also a spiritual practice.
Faith has never claimed to know exactly what the future will bring. Faith means being willing to help create a future that matches our deepest hopes. Maybe the oldest wisdom is still true.
It is not in heaven. It never was.
We are in this together,
Cameron
Reflection Questions
Where in your life have you been acting as though the future is something happening to you rather than something you are helping to create?
What assumptions about the future have you inherited that may no longer serve this moment?
If “it is not in heaven,” what responsibility is being entrusted to you, your community, or your generation?
A Prayer for the Day
A Prayer For the Courage to Co-Create
Creator of all that has been and all that has yet to be, You have entrusted this beautiful, broken world to human hands. When we are tempted toward despair, give us imagination. When we are tempted toward certainty, give us curiosity. When we are tempted to wait for someone else to save us, give us courage. Teach us to become worthy ancestors. Help us build communities that nurture life, protect what is fragile, and create futures that our children will bless. And remind us, again and again, that hope is not prediction. It is participation. Amen.
Spiritual Practice
Practicing Future Memory
Set aside fifteen minutes today.
Imagine that it is the year 2045.
You are sitting with a child, grandchild, student, or young person whom you love. They ask you a simple question: “When the world seemed to be changing so quickly, what did you decide to do?”
Write your answer. Do not write what you wish someone else had done. Do not write what governments or institutions should have done. Write what you hope you will be able to say honestly.
Then ask yourself: What small action could I take this week that would make that future memory true?
The future is not in heaven.
It is being created 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.
June 30, 2026, 12:30-1:30pmET - Book Club in The Commons - FREE - We are reading our next book, The Glorians by Terry Tempest Williams. We will meet each Tuesday for 6 weeks. It’s such great fun. I hope you will be a part. All are welcome! RSVP HERE.
July 14, 11:00 - 12:30pm ET - Community Conversation on The Commons - Margaret Wheatley will be joining me for a conversation on how we build “islands of sanity” in a world that feels increasingly fragile. She has identified five pillars in the architecture of resilient community. For those of us wishing to form and be in healthy community with others in this time, you don’t want to miss this conversation. REGISTER HERE.
September 8, 2026, 7-9pm ET, ONLINE EVENT - I’ll be hosting a powerful online gathering on The Black Madonna: Sacred Wisdom for a World in Crisis with Matthew Fox, Alessandra Belloni, and Christena Cleveland. We will explore the Black Madonna as a symbol of resilience, liberation, sacred feminine wisdom, and healing in a fractured world through conversation, story, music, and spiritual reflection. If you feel drawn toward a deeper encounter with the Divine Feminine and the ancient traditions that continue to nourish movements for justice and wholeness, I hope you’ll join us. Learn more and REGISTER HERE.
October 6, 2026 - 7-8:30pm ET, ONLINE EVENT - Matthew Fox and I are teaming up again to launch a series called Journeying with the Mystics. The mystics have always emerged in times of uncertainty. They appear when old certainties are crumbling, when institutions no longer provide easy answers, and when people find themselves longing for a deeper experience of the Sacred. Join us for an 18-session exploration of the teachings of St. John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, Hildegard of Bingen, Kabir and Rumi, Meister Eckhart and more. This is more than a lecture series. It is an invitation into a living spiritual journey. REGISTRATION COMING SOON!
October 18-21, 2026 - PREACH! 2026 Conference- I’ll be co-hosting PREACH in Minneapolis with Church Anew, a new gathering for preachers, storytellers, worship leaders, and spiritual communicators navigating what it means to speak with clarity, compassion, and courage in a changing world. If you’ve sensed that the preaching moment has changed and are longing for thoughtful community and renewed imagination for this work, I hope you’ll join 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.
June 29, 2026, 12pm ET - ONLINE WRITING GROUP - My dear friend, Meryl Marshall-Daniels, is leading a writing group open to all. This is a simple and spacious writing circle for people who want time to listen inwardly and put words on the page without overthinking, performing, or polishing. Meryl offers a prompt designed to invite reflection, imagination, and attunement to what is already alive within you. The practice honors writing as a way of listening, of letting images, memories, questions, and insights surface in their own time. Learn more here.
My friends over at Spiritual Wanderlust have some of the coolest classes. One I am particularly drawn to is their Celtic Spirituality School where you get to learn from people like John Philip Newell, Ilia Delio, Carl McColman, Sharon Blackie, and more. Read more about their program.
If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 247.