The World That Could Be
This Great Idea is entirely Rev. Cameron Trimble’s, who shared it in her Governing in Service to Life, Piloting Faith post, September 24, 2025.
I cannot commend it enough.
This Great Idea is an essential response to Rev. Michael Piazza in his September 23, 2025 Liberating Word post, ‘We’re Used to It’, in which he asks, ‘Where is the outrage over the death of democracy? …When does acquiescence become complicity? At what point do our distraction, despair, numbness, and apathy make us collaborators with evil?’
Rev. Cameron Trimble does not see the apathetic acquiescence Piazza sees. She not only sees resistance, she sees resistance succeeding. As she writes in, Every Act of Courage Counts (Piloting Faith, September 23, 2025), ‘Pushback works… The forces of authoritarianism depend on our despair. Our leaders want us overwhelmed. Silenced. Exhausted. But we are not powerless. Our voices, our art, our protests, our lawsuits, our neighborly care, our votes, our prayers – they are firewalls. They are sacred.’
And she sees – and shares – a vision of what is possible.
Rev. Trimble acknowledges the crumbling of empire and particularly long-standing beloved institutions (see also Rev. Michael Piazza’s Spiritual Jetlag for truth-telling and hopeful vision for the church).
Then Trimble asks, ‘What if governance was no longer organized around control, consumption, and coercion, but around care, stewardship, and sacred reciprocity?
What if, instead of departments focused on war, punishment, and profit, we organized our shared life to reflect what truly matters, to nourish the web of life we all depend on?’
Then she invites us to imagine:
- A Department of Earth Stewardship
- A Department of Care and Continuity
- A Department of the Common Good
- A Department of Just Transitions
- A Department of Lifelong Learning
- A Department of Reciprocity and Labor
- A Department of Restorative Justice
- A Department of Infrastructure and Repair
- A Department of Peace
Her vision for the work of each department is life-giving and so deeply hopeful – even as she acknowledges that, ‘This may sound far-fetched. But so did abolition. So did marriage equality. So did every act of liberation until it arrive.
Our sacred texts remind us: without vision, the people perish. The Hebrew prophets knew this. Jesus knew this. The Buddha knew this. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) knew this. The mystics, the sages, the elders have always known: We must hold a vision of what love requires, even when the world is falling apart.
So let us not despair. Let us imagine.
Let us write the policies of the world that could be – not as fantasy, but as foretaste.’
~~~
Read Rev. Cameron Trimble’s full post here.
I commend Dr. Cynthia Moe Lobeda’s, Building a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage (Fortress; the website with further action steps and resources is here), which is an extended call into this future-building, foretaste-creating work.
I’m creating an intergenerational Toolkit based on Building a Moral Economy ready for use Easter 2026. Keep an eye out for it!
