The Forgotten Path
A Meditation by Rev. Cameron Trimble
“Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” — Jeremiah 6:16
This week, I’m on Star Island with scientists, theologians, artists, and futurists for the annual Institute on Religion in an Age of Science. The theme this year is Co-Creating a Thriving Future: An Alchemy of Belief and Choice.
It’s a big question: What does a thriving future look like? Is it still possible?
Many of us here aren’t optimistic. We are “collapse-aware.” We know climate change is accelerating. Our ecosystems are under real stress. Human greed still shapes our economic and political systems, making inequality and exploitation worse instead of better. We don’t assume that thriving futures are guaranteed.
We’re probing something deeper: What can we offer now, and in any future, that is rooted in kindness, creativity, and generosity? How do we live with integrity, even if the future is uncertain or less hopeful?
We often try to answer these questions by looking ahead. We study trends, predict possible futures, imagine new technologies, and search for innovations to solve problems that keep getting more complicated.
But yesterday, I heard a Buddhist teaching that made me wonder if we’re looking at the question the wrong way.
The Buddha tells of a traveler walking through a forest. The traveler sees a narrow opening in the underbrush, just a faint path nearly lost to time. Curious, he moves the branches aside and starts to follow it.
The path leads him deeper into the forest.
Eventually, he comes upon something amazing.
He finds an ancient city standing before him.
The city’s streets were once carefully planned, its buildings beautifully built, and its public spaces made for people to thrive. It wasn’t destroyed by war or disaster. It was simply left behind. Over time, the forest covered it, and the path to it faded from memory.
The traveler goes back to tell the king.
“There is an ancient city waiting to be restored.”
The Buddha explains that enlightenment is like this. He didn’t invent wisdom; he found a path people had forgotten how to follow.
We often talk about the future as if it depends on new inventions. We say we need new technologies, new institutions, new economic systems, and new ways to govern. Maybe that’s true.
But I wonder if our biggest problems aren’t about lacking innovation. Maybe they’re about forgetting ancient paths.
The cultural historian Thomas Berry said modern societies made a huge mistake when we started seeing the world as “a collection of objects” instead of “a communion of subjects.”1 We forgot that rivers, forests, animals, ecosystems, and even future generations are connected to us, not just here for us.
What else have we forgotten? It seems we’ve forgotten that people thrive in communities, not just markets. That having enough can feel abundant. That wisdom grows over generations, not in news cycles. That democracy relies on trust as well as fair policy. Maybe we’ve forgotten that the Earth is not just a storehouse of resources, but a living community we belong to, that we are OF the earth, not just ON the earth.
The more I think about the Buddha’s story, the more empowered I feel. The ancient city wasn’t destroyed. The path wasn’t erased. It was just forgotten.
I wonder if our real task now is not just to dream up futures that have never existed, but to remember the futures that once guided us and learn how to move toward them again.
Maybe faith is a kind of remembering, a way of knowing that another way of being human in relationship with the world has always been possible.
Maybe the path beneath us is older, wiser, and more lasting than we thought.
We are in this together,
Cameron
Reflection Questions
What wisdom, practice, or way of being do you suspect our culture has forgotten?
When you imagine a thriving future, what assumptions are you making about what is new and what might need to be remembered?
What “abandoned path” in your own life is waiting to be rediscovered?
A Prayer for the Day
A Prayer For the Forgotten Path
God of the ancient path, When we become lost in our own inventions, help us remember. When we mistake novelty for wisdom, help us remember. When fear tells us that there is no way forward, help us remember. Teach us to listen again to the earth, to one another, to the wisdom of our ancestors, and to the quiet truth that still lives beneath our forgetting. Give us courage not only to imagine new futures, but to recover the goodness, the beauty, and the belonging we have always needed. May we become faithful travelers, willing to follow the faint traces of hope through the forest. Amen.
Spiritual Practice
Walk the Forgotten Path
Today, take a walk. It may be through a forest, a neighborhood, a city park, or simply around your block.
As you walk, ask yourself: What have I forgotten that I once knew?
Allow memories, experiences, relationships, teachings, or intuitions to emerge. Perhaps you have forgotten how to rest. Perhaps you have forgotten how to trust others. Perhaps you have forgotten the joy of creating something with your hands. Perhaps you have forgotten that enough can be abundance. Perhaps you have forgotten that you belong to a community larger than yourself.
Carry a notebook. Write down whatever path reveals itself.
At the end of the day, choose one small act that honors what you have remembered.
The future may not depend entirely on discovering something new. It may also depend on recovering what we have always needed.
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.
July 7, 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.
Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988), p. 16.
I'm reading a new book right now titled AMERICAN INDIGENOUS DEMOCRACY, writings from Haudenosaunee people. In North & South America we have people among us who are steeped in 'ancient ways'. The Eagle & Condor prophecy from the Andes (I think) points to mutual wisdom of both head and heart (=VAST oversimplification on my part about this), a vision that has a lot of darkness between here and there but a beautiful possibility.
This is so appreciated, thank you!