Staying Without Surrendering Your Soul
A Meditation by Rev. Cameron Trimble
“Do not remain where your soul grows smaller.” - Teaching from the desert ammas and abbas (early Christian monastics)
In an earlier meditation this week, we remembered that St. Benedict told his communities to stay: to root themselves in place, in relationship, in shared life. Stability, he taught, is how love survives collapse. You do not run every time the world shakes. You commit. You tend. You remain.
But long before Benedict organized communities that stayed, another stream of elders stepped away for a time — the Desert Mothers and Fathers — because they wanted to learn how to live in the world without becoming shaped by its distortions.
At first glance, these look like opposite instructions: go vs. stay. Leave vs. root. Desert vs. monastery.
But underneath, they answer the same spiritual problem: How do you remain faithful when the surrounding culture is losing its moral center?
The desert elders left noise to recover clarity. Benedictine communities built structure to protect clarity. Both traditions understood that without intentional spiritual formation and maturity, power, fear, and spectacle will train the soul faster than truth will.
The desert was never the final destination. It was a training ground for perception.
One elder taught that the first task of spiritual life is learning to see your own reactions clearly: how quickly anger justifies itself, how easily fear pretends to be wisdom, how often ego disguises itself as courage. Silence exposed all of that, not to shame people, but to free them.
Benedict took the next step. He asked: once you learn to see clearly, how do you live faithfully in community over the long haul? His answer was not intensity but rhythm — prayer, work, shared meals, mutual care, accountability, humility, repair.
So the question for us is not whether to leave or stay. Most of us are not called to geographic withdrawal. We are called to interior non-cooperation with corruption while remaining deeply committed to one another.
You can stay without surrendering your soul. But it takes practice.
It takes boundaries around attention. It takes rhythms that interrupt outrage. It takes communities that tell the truth to one another gently and directly. It takes prayer, or silence, or honest reflection that clears emotional distortion before it hardens into identity.
Right now many people feel spiritually flooded, saturated with alarm, analysis, reaction, and dread. The nervous system never powers down. The moral imagination never gets quiet enough to hear wisdom instead of impulse.
The elders would recognize this immediately.
They would not tell you to disappear. They would tell you to build inner ground. They would tell you to create small deserts of clarity inside daily life — spaces where truth can speak without competition — so that when you act, you act from depth instead of reactivity.
Benedict would agree. Stay. But stay awake. Stay rooted. Stay practiced in humility and courage. Stay shaped by love more than by fear.
The goal is never escape.
The goal is freedom — the kind that lets you remain fully human when systems forget how.
We are in this together,
Cameron
Reflection Questions
Where do you feel spiritually flooded right now — and what signals tell you your soul needs clearer ground?
What practices help you stay present without becoming hardened or reactive?
Who helps you remain honest, humane, and courageous when pressure rises?
A Prayer for the Day
A Prayer For Rooted Clarity
Steadying God, You meet us in deserts and in communities, in silence and in shared tables. Clear our sight where fear distorts it. Slow our reactions where anger rushes in. Strengthen our roots where courage feels thin. Teach us how to remain — not numb, not captive, not bitter — but awake, compassionate, and brave. Anchor us in rhythms that restore the soul and friendships that tell the truth. Make us people who can stay without surrendering what is sacred within us. Amen.
Spiritual Practice
Build One Small Rule of Life (Today Only)
Instead of designing a big plan, create a one-day rule of life:
Choose three anchors for today only:
one moment of silence or prayer
one act of embodied care (walk, meal, rest, stretch)
one relational act (encourage, check in, repair, thank)
Write them down. Practice them. Let today be stable ground. Tomorrow you can choose again.
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.
Your writings have been particularly helpful for me this week after spending much of the past weekend wondering how to navigate numerous relationships with both close friends and family. There was a very real part of me that simply didn’t know how I could continue to show up in many of those relationships and yet I knew in my heart I still loved these people and couldn’t imagine walking away from them. I had the profound sense that was not the answer yet I saw no way forward that didn’t require me to abandon a part of myself that felt like betrayal.
Thank you for providing me the hope I was praying for and directing me towards a path I was sure existed but could not find on my own. Reading your post today I thought of Marianne Edgar Budde’s beautiful book, “How We Learn to Be Brave. Decisive Moments in Life and Faith.” She, too, writes about the “go vs stay, leave vs root” question. I appreciate being reminded of the importance of building a spiritual ground on which we can stay true to ourselves and stay in community with those who see the world differently. 💞🕊️🙏🕊️💞
“Make us people who can stay without surrendering what is sacred within us”. Thank you