The Soil Beneath
A Meditation by Rev. Cameron Trimble
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” — Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī
This one is a bit long and a bit nerdy…but I hope you can stick with me. :)
I have been asking myself: Why does authoritarianism feel so alive right now, not only in the United States, but across so many parts of the world? Why does it no longer sound shocking to hear people speak passionately about strongmen, mass deportations, suspended rights, militarized borders, and the disciplining of dissent?
The easy answer is to blame a single leader or a single election. That answer does not go deep enough. What we are living inside of now did not arrive in 2016 or 2024. It has been building, metabolizing, and hardening for a very long time.
Part of what makes authoritarianism feel “new” is that many of us were raised inside a story that told us history was bending steadily toward justice. We were taught that the horrors of the twentieth century had inoculated us against their return. We trusted that institutions would hold. We assumed that cruelty belonged to a past we had outgrown.
But there is another story running underneath that one.
This country was built on historic asymmetry: some bodies made disposable so that others could feel secure; some lands made extractable so that others could grow rich; some lives marked as expendable so that others could imagine themselves protected. That pattern never disappeared. It simply learned how to speak the language of normalcy.
For African American communities, Indigenous nations, and generations of immigrants, state violence is not an anomaly. It is an everyday threat. It is a memory carried in the body. It is a grief passed down like an heirloom. It is the knowledge that law has not always meant protection, and that power has not always meant justice.
When people say, “This feels new,” what they often mean is, “This has now reached people who were previously insulated from it.”
Authoritarianism does not erupt out of nowhere. It grows from soil long fertilized by historical disposability. It feels plausible to those who benefited from that asymmetry and now fear its unraveling. It also feels plausible to those terrorized by it who are offered the false promise of inclusion in the protected class.
The violence is not new. What is new is its formalization into open policy and public ritual.
There is another layer beneath this one.
Our culture is exhausted. Metabolically exhausted.
We are not only tired in the ordinary sense. We are relationally exhausted. We are spiritually depleted. Mystic James Finley says we have “depth deprivation.”
We live inside an order that consumes connection and produces fear. It devours trust, moral imagination, and courage, and replaces them with distraction, competition, and low-grade dread. It trains people to survive rather than to belong. It teaches them to treat their lives as projects instead of as gifts.
When people are deprived of the freedom to participate meaningfully in shaping their futures, something inside them withers. Vitality does not disappear; it curdles. It turns into resentment and the longing for someone who promises control.
This is why authoritarianism so often feels like relief to a frightened, depleted population. Fear is a cheap energy source. It is easy to manufacture. It is highly controllable. A culture that has burned through its relational and moral capital becomes metabolically dependent on it.
And then there is the third strand, the one that lives in our minds.
We are losing our capacity to hold complexity.
We are being trained to collapse ambiguity into certainty, difference into threat, tension into a single, strong story. Plurality requires patience and humility. It asks us to live without simple villains and simple heroes. It demands that we hold multiple truths without erasing someone in the process.
Authoritarianism offers an escape from that work.
It gives us one story, one enemy, one explanation, one glorious past, one promised future (Make America Great Again!). It trades moral complexity for emotional simplicity. It replaces responsibility with compliance.
These three realities—historical asymmetry, metabolic exhaustion, and epistemic closure—are not separate problems. They are braided together into a single suffocating cord.
The asymmetry tells us whose lives are expendable.
The exhaustion supplies the fear that makes cruelty feel necessary.
The closure provides the story that justifies it all.
This is why authoritarianism feels both like a rupture and like a harvest. It grows from patterns we never fully confronted. It feeds on wounds we never healed. It stabilizes violences we never named.
And still.
This is not the only story being told right now.
Alongside the fear and the exhaustion and the closure, people are remembering how to protect one another. Communities are organizing themselves without waiting for permission. Neighbors are showing up when institutions fail. Grief is becoming moral clarity rather than private shame.
History does not move in a straight line. Civilizations decay. Orders collapse. Arrogance devours itself. But new relational fields also emerge in the cracks.
The question before us is not only how authoritarianism is taking hold. The question is what kind of people we will become inside this moment.
Will we allow exhaustion to hollow us out?
Will we allow fear to train us into compliance?
Will we allow simple stories to erase complex lives?
Or will we tend the harder, slower work of keeping our humanity intact?
Authoritarianism depends on our exhaustion, our isolation, and our surrender to simplicity.
Our resistance will not look like a single dramatic uprising. It will look like a thousand small refusals to let fear decide who we become.
This is not a comforting meditation. I don’t have a lot of comfort to offer. But I do trust this: civilizations do not only fall because of tyrants. They fall because people forget how to belong to one another. It’s the essence of all spiritual teaching.
We are not living at the end of history. We are living at the end of a story that never told the whole truth.
Something else is trying to be born.
And whether it lives or dies will depend, in part, on whether we are willing to metabolize our grief, hold our complexity, and choose relational courage over the seductive ease of closure.
We have been here before.
And we are not alone in it now.
We are in this together,
Cameron
Reflection Questions
Where do you notice exhaustion shaping your moral imagination right now? What has become harder to hold with tenderness, patience, or complexity?
What fears are most tempting you toward simple stories, strong answers, or emotional closure? What do those stories protect you from having to feel or confront?
What small, relational acts of courage feel available to you in this moment—not as heroism, but as disciplined faithfulness?
A Prayer for the Day
A Prayer for Staying Human
Holy Mystery of Life, We bring you our grief, our fear, and our exhaustion. We bring you the part of us that is tired of holding complexity, the part that longs for relief more than truth, the part that wonders whether gentleness still has a future. We confess how easy it is to forget one another when the world feels unstable. How tempting it is to collapse into certainty when ambiguity feels unbearable. How seductive it is to trade responsibility for belonging, and courage for the false safety of silence. Hold us steady in this unraveling time. Teach us how to metabolize our grief without hardening. Teach us how to tell the truth without turning it into spectacle. Teach us how to remain human when cruelty demands compliance. Give us eyes to see one another again. Give us hearts that refuse disposability. Give us the slow, durable courage of people who remember how to belong. We place ourselves back inside the long work of repair, trusting that what is being born in the cracks still needs our tenderness, our clarity, and our participation. Amen.
Spiritual Practice
Refusing Closure
Set aside ten quiet minutes this week. Bring to mind one complex situation or person you’ve been tempted to reduce to a single story. Notice the fear or exhaustion beneath that impulse.
Without trying to fix anything, name three truths about that situation that do not fit into a simple explanation.
Let them remain unresolved.
Then place your hand on your chest and say aloud: “I choose complexity over closure. I choose humanity over certainty.”
Close by asking: What kind of presence does this moment require of me? Carry that question with you through the week.
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.
🙏
“We are not living at the end of history. We are living at the end of a story that never told the whole truth.”
What a powerful statement! Amen and Amen! I’m a retired, middle school science teacher in rural South Carolina……. (A precarious position in the face of inerrant dogma) I learned, early on that loud proclamations gave no room for growth. Young people…… even the traumatized….. feel authenticity and respond to awe and wonder….. What a privilege to share lives in this setting!
Adults are a bit more difficult, and holding the tension and recognizing their humanity is challenging…..but not impossible.
Thank you Dear Cameron….. again and again, thank you. I am so encouraged by your life and by the growing community you foster.
I don't write my thanks often enough, but I am deeply grateful for your wisdom and clarity. Every. Single. Time. Your words are just what I need to hear in my heart, my mind, my resolve to then uplift ny community here in upstate NY. Thank you.