I almost scrolled past her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She was a middle-aged woman, maybe from New Zealand (I’ve never been good with accents), speaking straight into her phone the way thousands of people do every day. My thumb was already moving. Then she said something that stopped it: the world has been spiritually darkening, and politics is not the answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I listened on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What we need to do, she said, is alchemise our dark energy into something positive<\/em>. If enough of us did that, the world would really begin to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I should tell you where I come from. I was raised in the Protestant faith, and I spent two years of my early life in full-time Bible college. So “alchemy” is not a neutral word for me. It carries a whiff of suspicion, maybe even fear. It belongs to an ancient, speculative tradition that mixed chemistry, philosophy, and mysticism in pursuit of one goal: turning base metals like lead into gold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s an odd choice of words. And I suspect she was building a following, and that if I kept walking down her path I’d find things I’d hesitate to pick up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But if I squint a little and set the fear aside, even at the risk of losing a few of you here, it’s a remarkable metaphor. It may be the best one I’ve found for the kind of cultural change I’ve been writing about for years now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Think about our discourse right now. Rushed. Fear-based. Weaponized by politicians and talking heads who have learned that anger holds attention better than anything else. That’s our lead. Heavy, dull, and everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It could use a little alchemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In my new book, Room to Be Human<\/em>, I explore the work of Dr. Lisa Miller, a researcher at Columbia who found that our brains are wired for spiritual awakening. Here’s the part that stays with me: that spiritual capacity appears to share neurological ground with our heavier states. In her research, a strong spiritual life and depression seemed to move in opposite directions. Where one grew, the other shrank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My interpretation, and it is mine, not hers, is that we have something like a single room in us that can be filled with gold or with lead. And we get some say in which.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think this matters more than we realize. We are not passive containers waiting to be filled by whatever the world pours into us. We are participants. We choose, at least partially, what we allow to take up residence in that inner space. I could be wrong about this, but the research suggests we have more agency than our anxious culture wants us to believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seen through that lens, I can imagine a world where we deliberately strengthened our spiritual capacity, individually and together. Fear would diminish. Depression and anger would follow it out the door. And that change would ripple into everything we do, including how we vote, whatever name we give the source of it. She called it simply “the source.” I have my own words. You have yours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s a chapter in Room to Be Human<\/em> called “The Callings.” In my first book, Better Places<\/em>, I wrote about the few callings I’ve heard in my life, including one I set down: ministry in the Lutheran church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s what I’ve noticed. I have only ever heard a calling when I was connected to a source. Never in the noise. Never when I was chasing something. Never when I was doom-scrolling at midnight or arguing with strangers in comment sections. The callings came in the quiet. In the spaciousness. In the moments when I had stopped trying to control what happened next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which makes me wonder how many of us have missed our callings because we were too distracted by less golden pursuits. Greed. Ambition. Fear. The endless scroll I almost kept scrolling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A million missed callings in our country? A billion in the world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t know. But in my experience, the question is worth sitting with. Because what I do know is this: the noise is designed to keep us from hearing anything true. The algorithms reward outrage. The news cycle rewards fear. Our devices reward constant checking, constant refreshing, constant consumption of information that rarely nourishes and often poisons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not an accident. There is money in keeping us reactive. There is power in keeping us afraid. And there is profound loss when a generation misses its callings because it was too busy being angry about things it couldn’t control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now imagine the opposite. A world of found callings. Teachers who were meant to teach, teaching. Healers healing. Builders building. People doing the work their hearts had been quietly asking them to do all along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What would that world need from politics? Probably a lot less than we think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I spent years in government contracting, watching how policy gets made and unmade. I’ve seen good people try to fix broken systems and bad people exploit them. And what I’ve come to believe is that political change, while necessary, is downstream of something deeper. Politics reflects who we already are. It doesn’t transform us into something better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The transformation has to happen somewhere else first. In the quiet of our own hearts. In the choices we make about what we let into that inner room. In the discipline of turning away from the lead and reaching for the gold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not about disengagement. It’s about engaging from a different place. When we vote from fear, we elect leaders who promise protection through domination. When we vote from wholeness, we elect leaders who build connection<\/strong>. The ballot reflects what’s already alive in us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Please vote. The stakes are real and the outcomes matter. But maybe your vote can become just one more important thing you say from a place of truth, rather than the one place you pour all your fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your daily thoughts, prayers, and words shape the world far more often than any ballot. They’re cast every hour. Every interaction with a neighbor, every conversation with a child, every moment of patience with a stranger who doesn’t deserve it. These are votes too. They count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So perhaps the real work is simpler and harder than we’d like. Still the noise long enough to hear what’s true in your heart. Then live from there.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I was taught long ago that the truth will set us free. The freedom doesn’t come from having the right information or the right political candidates or even the right theology. It comes from something quieter. Something that can only be heard when we stop shouting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t know if the woman from the reel has all the answers. I don’t know if I would follow her down every path she’s walking. But I know this: she stopped my thumb. She made me listen. And in that listening, I heard something that had been trying to reach me for a long time. She may not be my source but she guided me back to it. Remember that next time you argue over faith or politics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We are not stuck with the lead. The heavy, fearful, reactive energy that fills our public discourse is not our destiny. We can choose differently. Not by winning arguments or defeating enemies, but by tending to what we allow into our own hearts. By creating space for stillness. By listening for callings we might have missed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the alchemy that matters. Not turning metal into gold, but turning fear into love. Turning reaction into reflection. Turning isolation into connection. It’s slow work. It doesn’t make headlines. But it’s the only work that has ever actually changed the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And it starts, I think, with a willingness to stop scrolling. To listen. To believe that the gold is already there, waiting for us to notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If these themes resonate with you, I’ve explored them more deeply in my books <\/em>Better Places and the forthcoming <\/em>Room to Be Human. Both are attempts to make sense of what I’ve learned about fear, connection, and the possibility of building something better together.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Word I Was Taught to Fear<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What the Brain Already Knows<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Callings We Never Heard<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The World That Could Be<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
About Your Vote<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Alchemy That Matters<\/h3>\n\n\n\n