The Future Needs the Franciscan Spirit by Rev. Cameron Trimble

This reflection originally appeared in the August 26, 2025, edition of Piloting Faith, the author’s Substack newsletter. We are grateful for permission to reprint it here. Readers may want to meditate on this in tandem with Patrick Carolan and Brian McLaren’s piece from January of this year, “Towards a Franciscan Renaissance“—Ed.

“What we are looking for is what is looking.” — St. Francis of Assisi

I’ve just spent two days in the company of extraordinary souls—nuns, friars and laity from Franciscan communities across the world—gathered not to preserve the past, but to imagine the future.

They weren’t strategizing how to keep institutions alive. They were asking a far more radical question: What kind of presence will the world need from us in the years to come?

As we dreamed together about the shape of the future—ecological collapse, social fragmentation, technological upheaval, spiritual longing—what emerged was more than a strategy. It was a kind of spiritual template, one that reflects the best of the Franciscan tradition but resonates far beyond it.

These contours felt like an invitation not just for friars and nuns—but for all of us.

We sense that in the future the Earth will bear more wounds than ever—burned forests, rising seas, displaced peoples, grieving species. The world will need healers of the Earth—those who see creation not as a resource to be exploited, but as sacred kin to be honored and protected.

We will need prophets of simplicity—people who live with open hands in a clenched-fist world, who embody the truth that joy is not in accumulation, but in deep connection.

We will need bridge-builders and peacemakers—those who know how to stay present across difference, who choose communion over control, who embody humility in a culture obsessed with being right.

We will need companions of the poor and marginalized—not as rescuers or heroes, but as fellow travelers. We will need people who understand that dignity doesn’t come from status or wealth but from our shared humanity and sacred worth.

And perhaps most of all, we will need teachers of joy and beauty—those who laugh freely, grieve deeply, and see God in the ordinary. They will know that delight is a form of resilience.

These aren’t just Franciscan callings. They are human ones. They are the contours of a spiritual life grounded in humility, joy, simplicity, and solidarity—qualities found in many traditions, but illuminated here with Franciscan light.

The old stories of control, domination, and separation are crumbling. In their place, we are being invited to remember a deeper truth: that we belong to one another, that the Earth is alive, and that love is still the most powerful force we’ve ever known.

The Franciscan charism offers a pattern, a melody line in a larger symphony of sacred living. It’s a witness we need—not necessarily to become Franciscans (although that is a good option), but to become more fully human.

Let us take up that call—not in robes or rules, but in reverence and relationship.

The future doesn’t just need new systems. It needs new souls.

We are in this together,

Cameron

Cameron Trimble is an author and ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, as well as a strategist, spiritual leader, and serial entrepreneur guiding individuals and institutions through times of profound change. Her website is available here.

Image: Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, Saint Francis Reading, 1747