You Deserve Something Better

There are times when I feel an ache in my chest—a kind of quiet sorrow—and with it, a sense that I owe the next generation an apology.

To those emerging into adulthood today, trying to make sense of a world filled with contradiction, beauty, injustice, and mystery, I want to say: You deserve something better than the religion many of us inherited. You deserve a spiritual path that is wise, courageous, and tender—a path rooted not in fear or control, but in wonder, love, and liberation.

You deserve a spiritual path that reveres the earth as holy, sees the body as a blessing, and trusts the quiet wisdom that lives within each of us.  A faith that embraces mysticism, celebrates embodiment, and calls forth radical compassion. A way of being that doesn't shrink from the hard work of justice but sees it as sacred. You deserve a spiritual community that knows how to gather for ritual, for joy, for lament, for silence, and for celebration—without needing to be certain of all the answers.

You deserve a religion that is both simpler and more expansive—stripped of dogma, yet spacious enough to receive wisdom from many wells: Christian, Buddhist, Indigenous, Sufi, Jewish, Hindu, Taoist, Earth-centered, and beyond. Our very survival as a species, I believe, depends on recovering this kind of spiritual depth—what the mystics have always known. Practices of stillness. Reverence for mystery. Attunement to the pulse of the planet. Love made visible through action.

The next generation of spiritual leaders—whether they gather in churches or forests, online circles or kitchen tables—will need to carry this embodied wisdom. They'll need practices that ground them in the sacredness of the earth, in the ever-present Divinity that flows through all things. They'll need to be rooted in compassion, in creative ritual, in the contemplative arts, in justice-making, in mindfulness, and in holy silence.

I was raised in a tradition that began the human story with the idea of "original sin”—that we are, at our core, flawed and fallen. But I've come to believe that this was a tragic misreading of our beginnings. Jesus did not teach that. Nor did the Buddha, who gently reminds us that we are fundamentally good—luminous by nature—but we forget. Through trauma, through conditioning, through generations of suffering and disconnection, we fall asleep to our true nature.

But this truth still pulses beneath the surface: We were loved from the beginning. We were born, not in shame or sin, but in Infinite Love. And this love—this innate, luminous goodness—includes the whole of creation. The soil, the oceans, the bees, the forests, the sky. All born of the same sacred breath.

What if we started each day from that place? What if our spiritual communities, our teachings, our gatherings—all began not with a problem to solve or a doctrine to defend, but with a deep remembering of this love?

I still believe in religion—not as an institution to be defended, but as a living, breathing practice of presence, connection, and transformation. And I believe the next generation has what it takes to reimagine it—to recover its soul.

And so, to those who come after us: Forgive us where we’ve failed. Bless us where we’ve tried. And please, lead us forward—into something truer, kinder, and more alive.

Let love be the first word on your lips each morning. It is, after all, where we began.