The World We Could Become
A Meditation by Rev. Cameron Trimble
“After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne…” — Revelation 7:9
Last night, the United States lost to Belgium and ended its World Cup run. Like many Americans, I hoped for a different result. Still, as I turned off the TV, I realized the tournament had already given me something more lasting than just a win or loss.
Over the past few weeks, I started noticing countries I rarely think about. I cheered for Norway’s surprising run in the tournament and found myself rooting for Morocco. I learned about Cape Verde, a group of islands off West Africa I knew little about before this summer. I watched fans from Colombia, Japan, Senegal, and Mexico fill stadiums with songs I didn’t understand, but I could still feel their joy.
For one month every four years, something special happens. The world feels interesting again, not threatening or split into friends and enemies. Curiosity takes the place of suspicion.
For a few weeks, millions of us care about places we’ve never been and people we’ve never met. We celebrate great moments no matter which team is playing. We feel sad for countries that barely crossed our minds before. Somehow, another nation’s happiness becomes our own.
Modern life often teaches us to limit our sympathies. Politics divides us into groups. Algorithms show us stories that match what we already think. Fear makes us wary of people who are different. Soon, the world feels smaller. We stop seeing neighbors and start seeing only labels.
The World Cup changes that, at least for a while. It invites us to enjoy each other’s company.
This made me think about the story of Pentecost. It’s one of the most misunderstood stories in the New Testament. Many people think the miracle was everyone speaking the same language. But Luke actually says the miracle was that people from many nations each heard the good news in their own language.
Differences were not erased. They were honored. Understanding didn’t require everyone to be the same. It just required openness.
Maybe that’s why the story has lasted for two thousand years. It gives us a vision of community that doesn’t depend on everyone being the same. It shows a world where our differences aren’t barriers, but the starting point for real connection.
The Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin understood this long before globalization. “The age of nations is past,” he wrote. “The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to build the earth.”
He wasn’t asking us to give up our countries. He wanted us to remember that every nation is part of something bigger. The future won’t be safe if some people thrive while others suffer. We have to learn to share this small blue planet, or we’ll all lose together.
Maybe that’s why this tournament captures our imagination every four years. We already know how to enjoy cultures that aren’t our own. We know how to admire excellence wherever we see it. We know how to let someone else’s celebration become our own. We know how to come together around something beautiful without insisting everyone be just like us.
For a few weeks, the world remembers who it is.
The tournament will end. The flags will be put away. The headlines will change. Politics will demand our anger again, and old divisions will try to get our attention.
But maybe we don’t have to forget so soon. Maybe the World Cup is more than just a sporting event. Maybe it’s a reminder. It reminds us that beneath all our borders and arguments, there’s another possibility, one we sometimes glimpse and instantly recognize because, deep down, we’ve always known it was possible.
We are in this together,
Cameron
Reflection Questions
During these past few weeks, which country or people did you find yourself unexpectedly cheering for? What awakened your curiosity or affection?
Where in your own life have fear or habit caused your world to become smaller than it needs to be?
What would it look like to carry the openness and delight you experienced during the World Cup into your relationships with neighbors, strangers, and those whose stories are different from your own?
A Prayer for the Day
A Prayer For the World We Could Become
God of every nation, You have never loved one people at the expense of another. You have woven humanity from countless languages, cultures, histories, and songs. Forgive us when fear teaches us to make our world small. Expand our hearts. Teach us to delight in gifts that are not our own, to celebrate beauty wherever it appears, and to recognize your image in every face we meet. May we become the kind of people who build bridges before walls, friendship before suspicion, and hope before fear. Remind us that your love has always been larger than our borders. Amen.
Spiritual Practice
Learn Someone Else’s Song
This week, choose one country that captured your imagination during the World Cup. Spend fifteen or twenty minutes learning something about it. Read a poem by one of its writers. Listen to its music. Prepare one of its traditional meals. Learn a few words of its language. Read a bit of its history. Or simply ask someone from that part of the world to tell you about home.
Approach the experience with genuine curiosity, not as a tourist collecting facts but as a neighbor learning another neighbor’s story.
At the end of the day, ask yourself: How has this small act of attention enlarged my world?
The future will not be built only through treaties and technologies.
It will also be built through millions of ordinary acts of curiosity, hospitality, and delight.
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.
Yes, just talking with a friend yesterday who had lived in the US for several years 50 years ago, and she remembered how staggered she was then at the woeful ignorance of the people around her about the rest of the world. Hopefully, this WC has made some there curious about the wonderful people the world over!
Though I’m not a big football fan (American “football” is SO misnamed!), I’ve been a lifelong fan of the Olympic Games, summer and winter, for this very reason. Thank you for lifting up the excellence of global sport and international borderlessness. As so you so aptly close each letter, Cameron…
”We are in this together.” May we truly recognize that and live in peace.