Living in a Laboring World
A Meditation by Rev. Cameron Trimble
“The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.” — Rainer Maria Rilke
People keep asking what will replace the world we feel unraveling. I notice how quickly that question turns anxious. We want a blueprint. A platform. A strategy. Something we can defend before it exists.
But the spiritual teachers rarely spoke that way. They spoke as people who recognized a birth when they felt one.
Hildegard of Bingen described creation as viriditas — the greening power of God,1 the living sap rising through what appears dormant. She did not imagine renewal arriving from outside history. She trusted that life pushes upward from within the very soil that looks exhausted.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin later said something similar in different language: the world is not finished. Creation is still underway, and consciousness itself participates in its unfolding.2
We are not waiting for a future. We are standing inside one that has not yet stabilized.
That helps explain why this moment feels both frightening and strangely alive. Old arrangements weaken, and alongside the fear, people feel impulses they did not learn from institutions — mutual aid networks forming overnight, strangers protecting one another, communities feeding people before policies exist to authorize it.
Howard Thurman called this “the sound of the genuine.”3 When external structures lose credibility, something deeper in the human spirit begins speaking again.
We keep thinking a new world will appear after the collapse. But every generation that crossed a historical threshold discovered something else: the new world begins as behavior before it becomes structure.
Rilke advised his students to “live the questions.”4 He did not mean intellectual curiosity. He meant inhabiting uncertainty faithfully enough that life itself has room to answer through you.
That is what is happening now. We are in gestation.
We are learning forms of belonging that do not depend on dominance. We are practicing care before permission. We are discovering courage that is collective rather than heroic.
None of this feels stable yet because birth never does.
The temptation in times like this is either nostalgia or control, to rebuild the past or force the future. Both interrupt the slow intelligence of emergence. Seeds do not open faster because we shout at them. Communities do not mature because we panic.
The mystics consistently warned about this. Meister Eckhart taught that God is found in the ground of the soul where life continually arrives, not in the grasping mind trying to secure outcomes.5 Julian of Norwich saw creation as a hazelnut held in divine love — small, fragile, and still sustained.6 None of them imagined salvation as escape from history. They recognized it as participation in a reality being made new from the inside.
So perhaps the question is not “What will the new world be?” Perhaps the truer question is: What kind of people does a birthing world require?
It requires…
People who can act without guarantees.
People who build trust before certainty.
People who resist cruelty without becoming cruel.
People who keep tenderness alive when hardness feels efficient.
We may not live long enough to see the stability of what is forming. Most generations standing inside transformation never do. But they still participate in it, and their participation becomes the inheritance others call normal.
The world is changing its organizing principles.
The invitation before us is simple, though not easy: Live now in the ways you hope will someday feel ordinary, not because success is guaranteed, but because life is already moving in that direction.
We are not waiting for the new world.
We are learning how to belong to it while it is still becoming.
We are in this together,
Cameron
Reflection Questions
Where do you notice signs of “greening life” — small, relational forms of care — already emerging around you?
What part of you wants certainty before you act? What might faithful participation look like without that certainty?
If the future begins as a pattern of living, what pattern are you practicing right now?
A Prayer for the Day
A Prayer for the World Being Born
God of unfolding life, You do not rush creation, and you do not abandon it. You remain present in what is unfinished, in what feels fragile, in what has not yet learned its final shape. Steady our fear when we cannot see outcomes. Keep our hearts from hardening while we wait for clarity. Teach us to recognize the greening shoots of hope even when they rise through troubled ground. Make us people who can live gently in uncertain times— people who act with care before recognition, who build trust before agreement, who remain open to one another and to You. Let our lives become small places of coherence inside a changing world. Amen.
Spiritual Practice
Acting Before the Blueprint
For one day this week, do one concrete act that belongs to the future you hope for without announcing it, planning it into a project, or waiting for institutional permission.
Examples:
Introduce two people who need community
Share a resource with no expectation of return
Repair a strained relationship with a simple, honest gesture
Help solve a practical problem near you.
The point is not scale.
The point is embodiment.
Afterward, sit quietly for five minutes and notice: Did the action change the situation, or did it change you?
The future often begins that way.
Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…
February - 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. I will be leading a book study on Brian McLaren’s book, Life After Doom, that starts on Feb 17. Join the community here.
February 19, 2026 (next session) - On Feb 5, Margaret Wheatley and and I launched 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. It’s not too late to join. Take a look at the course outline. We are really excited and hope you can join! Scholarship are available if needed. Learn more here!
March, 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, 7-8:30pm ET - Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox and I will be hosting another 4-part series on “Visions for the Common Good.” This series will include sessions with David Abrams, Randy Woodley and Lynne Twist! 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.
Science and Nonduality is offering a Community Gathering with Dr. Lyla June, Kaira Jewel Lingo and Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, facilitated by Rae Abileah on February 26th on how spiritual practice, trauma-aware care, and neighborhood organizing are being woven together as living traditions. Learn more here.
The need for us to persevere and contribute grows ever more challenging as the horror and cruelty escalates, created by leaders with “malevolent incompetence.” Dr. Margaret Wheatley is offering a “Bundle for Good” for shipping within the U.S. She will send you seven copies of Perseverance, and one copy of her book of poems, Opening to the World as It Is. She’s including the poetry book as another means to support you personally. You can learn more here.
The Convergence Music Project is hosting a songwriting event on March 19-21, 2026 in Nashville. No songwriting experience is required, so feel warmly welcome even if you've never written a song before. There will be plenty of content also to further educate, inspire, and develop the gifts of advanced songwriters as well. Learn more.
So many of us are inspired by all that is happening in Minneapolis, even if we are horrified by what the federal government has unleashed in that city. Here is a great article breaking down the “Blueprint for Resistance.”
Millions of people are seeking training in becoming Legal Observers for their communities vulnerable to ICE. Here is a recorded training that is helpful produced by the team at No Kings. If you know of other trainings, please post in the comments below.
The phenomenal team of “Singing Resistance” has gifted all of us a songbook of protest songs that groups are now using across the world. Here is the link. I am marching around my house singing these throughout the day. My dogs are very confused.
If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.
Hildegard of Bingen, Book of Divine Works, trans. Nathaniel Campbell (Catholic University of America Press, 2018).
Teilhard de Chardin taught that the universe is still in the process of becoming and that human consciousness participates in its unfolding (The Phenomenon of Man; Hymn of the Universe).
Howard Thurman spoke of “the sound of the genuine” within each person (The Inward Journey), the inner resonance that guides us toward what is most alive and true.
Rainer Maria Rilke urged his students to “live the questions now” (Letters to a Young Poet). I love the full quote: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.”
Meister Eckhart, German Sermons & Treatises, trans. M. O’C. Walshe, Vol. I
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, ch. 5 (c. 1395), trans. Elizabeth Spearing or Colledge & Walsh editions.
Thank you. This meditation was a balm for my soul today.
Spoken like a true mystic. Thank you for sharing this wisdom.