Finding Our Place in an Unraveling World
Seeking rooted faith as urban mystics in a restless age
It’s hard to stay grounded when the world feels like it’s unraveling. In Southeast Asia, renewed tensions between Thailand and Cambodia reveal the fragility of peace. In Ukraine, war continues with no clear end in sight, and in Gaza, civilians suffer under deepening humanitarian crisis. Closer to home, many Americans face rising costs, mounting debt, and a growing sense of fatigue and disconnection. Polarization leaves people uncertain about the future, and concerns about how narratives are shaped—through media, education, or historical memory—run deep. In this climate, people of faith are left wondering how to hold onto trust, truth, and a lived expression of the Gospel.
When deception feels more organized than truth, and power speaks louder than compassion, urban mystics are called to stay rooted—refusing numbness, reclaiming sacred rhythms, and living a faith that looks like Jesus, not empire.
1. Start Where You Are: The Inner Monastery
When Benedict of Nursia fled a crumbling empire, he didn’t try to rebuild Rome. He went inward. He established communities of rhythm, prayer, and work, creating spaces where the sacred could be preserved not by escaping the world, but by sanctifying ordinary life within it.
We don’t need to leave the city or join a monastery, but we do need an inner Benedict Option:
Establish rhythms that re-center our souls, such as prayer, journaling, and stillness
Create small circles of trust, with people who help you live truthfully and resist spiritual apathy
Honor your space as sacred, whether it’s your studio apartment, a shared porch, or a subway ride
2. Live the Franciscan Rebellion: Joyful Resistance
Francis of Assisi responded to a church allied with violence and wealth by walking barefoot among the poor and blessing lepers. He disarmed the systems of his time not with counter-violence, but with vulnerability and joy.
Urban mystics can take up this posture:
Refuse to be numbed by the barrage of injustice, and let your heart stay soft
Practice proximity by spending time where pain lives—refugee shelters, eviction courts, detention centers, or local schools in disrepair
Rebel with beauty by singing, cooking, painting, dancing, and celebrating where despair would rather silence us
Joy is not naïve. It is prophetic defiance.
3. Discern the False Narratives: Truth in the Fog
As narratives are bought and sold, we’re tempted to either disengage entirely or weaponize our faith for political ends. Neither path leads to transformation.
Draw from the contemplative tradition:
Slow down to examine your thoughts, beliefs, and reactions
Practice the examen and ask, “Where was I drawn toward love today? Where did I resist it?”
Be wary of borrowed convictions. Ask whether your outrage is God’s invitation or your ego’s addiction to being right
We must become people of discernment, able to recognize God’s whisper amid the noise.
4. Stay with the Disillusioned: Church Beyond the Walls
Many around us are walking away from the church, not because they have rejected Christ, but because they cannot reconcile His teachings with the church’s silence or complicity.
Instead of shaming those who leave, sit with them.
Ask questions
Grieve together
Be honest about your own doubts
Be the kind of community that doesn’t need walls, platforms, or branding. Let your kitchen table, walking route, or group chat become a place where faith is reimagined with integrity and tenderness.
5. Keep Your Hands Dirty and Your Heart Open
Jesus didn’t offer detachment from the world. He offered incarnation, God with us in flesh and blood.
If we want to live out His way:
We must advocate for the deported and detained
We must name injustice in housing policy, educational neglect, and unjust war
We must model a way of being Christian that looks like Christ, not empire
We do this not to win in a worldly sense, but because love requires it. And love, as we see in the Gospels, is often crucified before it resurrects.
Invitation:
Urban mystics, this is our invitation:
To be both contemplative and courageous.
To guard the flame of God’s presence within us, even as the world darkens.
To choose integrity over influence, truth over comfort, and tenderness over control.
Our cities are groaning. So is the Spirit.
Let us be the ones who listen, live faithfully, and stay rooted in a kingdom not built by fear or manipulation, but by love, mercy, and holy presence.
