Ongoing Hope for Better Days – Part II
Last year at this time, I shared how Shalem’s Vision – Our Ongoing Hope – helps me live with abiding hope for better days to come. I won’t repeat myself. Suffice it to say, at the time I wrote that piece I had no idea what we would face – what I would face – in 2025. And so, as this year winds down, I have even deeper appreciation for the role of deep, true hope in the face of so much turbulence and uncertainty.
In the Washington, DC area where I live and work, and where Shalem is based, we have experienced some very difficult challenges in 2025. Tens of thousands of federal workers have been laid off. Many people in our community – including legal citizens – live in fear of deportation. National guard members patrol our streets, often with rifles strapped to their backs, despite the city having historically low crime rates. And we experienced the longest government shutdown in history. I could go on. It has been an exhausting year, and it’s unclear what is on the horizon.
At Shalem, we’re living through an organizational transition as Margaret Benefiel prepares to retire on December 31 after ten and a half years at the helm, a tenure as Executive Director exceeded only by Founder Tilden Edwards’ 27 years. This marks a significant change in the life of Shalem. I offer a deep bow of gratitude to Margaret for her remarkable service (please come to the party on Zoom tomorrow if you can) and for the trust and opportunities she has provided to me for the past 5+ years. There are big organizational questions the Board is wrestling with as it prepares to conduct a search for her successor in the spring, and at the moment we’re living in the tension of not knowing exactly what comes next.
Still, I think there have been some clear signs of hope this year both at Shalem and in our broader context. Here are a few that stand out to me:
- Solar and wind energy production exceeded coal for the first time in history.[1]
- Maria Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting democratic rights and opportunity in Venezuela.[2]
- Pope Leo XIV and Bishop Mariann Budde have shown how to use their positions of influence within their institutions and the broader culture to focus on compassion and justice for marginalized communities.
- Shalem met and exceeded its FY25 Annual Fund goal of $550,000. The generosity of our community gives me hope and inspires me.
- At Shalem, we’re rolling out a new Learning Management System (LMS) across our long-term program and pilgrimage offerings, beginning with the Spiritual Guidance Program’s Class of 2026.
- Our second Walking the Ramparts pilgrimage to Avila and Toledo, Spain was a blessed and soul-filled time, a spiritually rich and nourishing experience for the 20 pilgrims who attended.
- The second Transforming Community Program cohort under the new format instituted by Director Lorie Conway has shown how to experience and live by the transformative practices the program offers its participants.
These high points of the year remind me of another lesson I learned in 2025. Over the summer, a group of four men rowed on a small boat from New York City to the Isles of Scilly, England. Yes, you read that correctly. They rowed in a boat across the Atlantic Ocean nonstop for 56 days and one of the men, Adam Radcliffe, posted about his journey each day on Instagram.
I’m not a big user of social media, but these posts captivated me, and I couldn’t help but track their progress daily. At the end of the journey, Adam was asked about what he learned and his response has stayed with me. He said that whenever there was a particularly hard day, a really rough day, he remembered that there would be another good day coming. As bad as things got out on the ocean – and I tell you, there were some pretty rough days out there – there was always another good day coming around the corner.
This year I was confronted with perhaps the most challenging journey of my life. I was involved in a difficult legal dispute over the custody of my son. It was exhausting and heartbreaking in so many ways, and I’m so grateful to those – including so many at Shalem – who helped buoy me through uncertain and fraught waters. As hard as it got – and I tell you, it got pretty hard – it was also connected to the deepest sense of joy and hope I have known, being the father to my son.
In 2024 I got a tattoo of a palm tree on the bottom of my right calf. The palm tree symbolizes resilience and living in tension. Palm trees may make us think of peaceful island paradise, but we also have seen them hold up when a hurricane crashes ashore. They see tough days, and they see calm ones. They remind me that as storms come through, there are still better days on the horizon.
One more foot in front of the other, one more row of the oar, one more outstretched hand to help pull one another through, one more prayer to fuel our ongoing hope. We can’t know what the future holds, but may we at Shalem be a place where we support one another as we individually and collective journey towards the better days to come.
[1] https://weather.com/news/climate/news/2025-10-17-renewables-solar-wind-overtake-coal-for-first-time-ever-record?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[2] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2025/press-release/