Hello my friends,

I have had such a heavy heart lately and from the messages I've gotten recently, so many of you are feeling the same way. In the midst of this heaviness, it can be so hard to keep moving forward in hope, to be present with ourselves and others, let alone constructively address the issues that are causing this heaviness in the first place.

So, today I want to ponder this heaviness together, name a few things it does to us, and then process a way forward together. I hope it brings you encouragement and determination.

Recommended Resources:

​-The 3.5% Protest Rule Erica Chenoweth is one of my favorite researchers who has studied nonviolent civil resistance movements over the last 100 years. She is interviewed on this podcast and shares a lot about what she has discovered in her findings and shares how they apply to our world today. I highly recommend listening.

​-Good Trouble Lives On On July 17th, the 5th anniversary of civil rights leader John Lewis' passing, there are demonstrations taking place all over the country to oppose the most aggressive roll back of civil rights we have seen in generations. Lewis coined the phrase "Good Trouble" and it is the action of coming together to take peaceful, non-violent action to challenge injustice and create meaningful change. If you want to take part, simply click the link above to see the map and find events near you.

​-The Passion Pill This episode from Hidden Brain is a conversation with behavioral scientist Jon Jachimowicz who looks at how to keep our passions alive. I found it so relevant for personally, but also collectively for our moment in time in our work to keep our passion alive. I think you will find it meaningful.

​-Clarifying Our Moment Part 2: Capitalism and Authoritarianism. Last week, I received quite a few questions regarding how economic practices are related to competitive authoritarianism. So, I wrote a follow up to last week's newsletter to give a brief history and current context to how capitalism and authoritarianism can play off of one another. I hope you find it helpful.

-New 30 Day Devotional. I've been getting a lot of positive feedback from those of you who have been reading through "Following Jesus In A World Obsessed With Empires." My hope was that it would be both a source of encouragement and inspiration for people. So, I'm thankful to hear that has been your experience so far. For anyone else who would like to find out more about this devotional, you can tap the link below.

$20.00 Following Jesus In A World Obsessed With Empires: 30 Days of reclaiming the hope, compassion, and justice of Jesus. Today, our world can often feel overwhelmed by darkness, division, and despair. I created this 30-day devotional to... Read more Get it now!

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Caring Without Crashing.

There is a weariness that settles in deeper than physical exhaustion. A kind of soul-weariness that comes from caring so much, for so long, with too little rest, and too little hope. This is the quiet ache of what some might call compassion fatigue. It is the heartbreak of wanting to see suffering cease, only to see it continue and even intensify. It is the longing to make things right constantly colliding with our helplessness in the face of all that is going wrong.

In our hyperconnected age, we are bombarded by suffering. Headline after headline of war, cruelty, injustice, and ecological collapse. Our online time becomes a never-ending vigil at the altar of pain and catastrophe. The worst news rises to the top of every feed, every algorithm, every social media platform, not because it is the most important, but because it keeps us scrolling. And soon, it begins to feel like the only thing happening in the world is that everything is falling apart.

When Empathy Collides with the Abyss

As someone who cares deeply about justice, mercy, and truth, I often feel like my heart is breaking faster than it can mend. I see the weaponizing of my faith for political power, disinformation define reality, the suffering in Gaza, in prisons, at the border, in the streets of my own country, and so much more. I don’t want to look away. Yet the more I look, the more I carry, and the more I carry, the harder it becomes to carry myself.

Sometimes, I find myself believing that if I look away, even to rest, it means I don't care. I find myself pushing beyond the brink of exhaustion, rationalizing it because the voiceless who are suffering don't have the luxury of resting from their suffering. I then begin to catastrophize, convinced that the worst-case scenario is the only possible scenario. Panic attacks become more frequent. I can’t sleep. I can’t be present with myself, or my family. I can’t think clearly or work effectively. Compassion becomes pain and pain becomes paralysis.

This is not an accident. This is how authoritarianism thrives.

Despair is a political strategy of our time. If we are overwhelmed, numb, or cynical. If we come to believe that nothing we do matters, then we stop showing up. We stop organizing. We stop resisting. And most dangerously, we stop hoping.

So the question becomes: How do we care without crashing? How do we open our hearts to the suffering of the world without being swallowed whole by it?

The answer is not indifference and it is not denial. The answer lies in rootedness. In rhythms of renewal. In the practice of fierce, hopeful endurance.

This does not mean we stop grieving. It means we learn how to grieve well. It means we learn how to grieve with companions, not alone; with moments of sabbath, not endless scrolling; with grounding in the Body of Christ, not drowning in the body politic.

Even Jesus, the one who bore the weight of the entire world, withdrew often to rest and pray (Luke 5:16). Even he had limits in his earthly life. He wept over Jerusalem. He got tired. He needed friends. And on the cross, he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). His compassion did not make him unbreakable. It made him human.
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Endurance Is Not Naïve

Scripture does not call us to endure because it’s easy or because we have all the answers. It calls us to endure because love is stubborn. Because hope is holy defiance.

Paul writes, “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9). He also says, “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us” (Romans 5:3–5). But notice: this is not uncritical optimism. It is a hope forged in suffering. The kind of suffering that comes from loving people so much that you hurt when they hurt. It is hope with calluses and bruises.

There are no guarantees that things will get easier, but one thing we are guaranteed is that love will never be wasted.

From his prison cell shortly after being arrested by the Nazis in 1943, German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “No one person is responsible for all the world’s injustice and suffering.” He continued, “…Still we must take part in Christ’s greatness of heart. In the responsible action that in freedom lays hold of the hour. What remains is the very narrow path, one that is often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as if it were our last, and yet living faithfully and responsibly as if there were yet again to be a great future.”

This is the kind of hope that doesn’t flinch in the dark. The kind that does not come from having power, but from being grounded in love. Bonhoeffer did not survive the prison, he was executed. But his hope survived. His courage survived. And it still strengthens those of us who believe a better world is possible.
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Keep Moving Forward: Practical Steps to Stay Rooted in Hope

Please remember, you don’t need to save the entire world. You only need to stay faithful to your part in it.

So here are a few ways to keep going:

1. Curate Your Inputs

• Limit doomscrolling. Follow accounts that share good news, resilience, and justice-in-action.

• Remember: what you see online is not everything that is happening. Hope rarely trends.

2. Maintain Rhythms of Rest

• Sabbath is resistance. Rest is rebellion. You are not a machine for justice, you are a beloved being.

• Take walks. Breathe deeply. Turn off the news. Turn off your phone. Make time to just be where your feet are.

3. Commit to a Specific Cause

• You don’t have to fight every battle. Pick one or two that you can root into deeply. Things like local and state voting rights, organizing, immigration support, community gardens, school boards are where change happens.

• Find others doing the work. Join them. Encouragement is found in shared action.

4. Look for and Share Good News

• Hope is not naive, it is a discipline. Search for signs of healing. Share them with others.

• Make it a daily or weekly practice: what is one good thing that is happening?

5. Care for the People in Front of You

• Show up for your kids. Your spouse. Your friends. Your community. Forging deep connections with those you love and who love you is so vital. And these consistent acts of love ripple far beyond what we can measure.

You Are Not Alone

If you’re overwhelmed, please remember it is not because you are not weak. It means that you are awake. But the call is not just to be awake, it’s to stay alive, stay healthy, stay joyful, stay hopeful, and to stay impactful. Spiritually, emotionally, and physically.

So when despair rises and threatens to dominate, remember this: You are not being asked to carry the whole world. Only your part of it. And even that, you are still not called to carry alone. Your neighbors carry it with you and God carries it with you too.

Let’s hold each other in hope. Let’s rest when we need to. Let’s resist when we must. Let’s love without losing ourselves.

And let’s never forget: As Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." So let's maintain habits for the long haul so we can help bend that arc together.

Now I'd like to hear from you! Did you find this helpful? What thoughts came to your mind as you read? Feel free to respond to this email and share your thoughts with me. I look forward to reading them. New 30 Day Devotional: I recently wrote a 30 day devotional in hopes to provide a companion for people seeking to follow Jesus in our world today. You can read more about it here: $20.00 Following Jesus In A World Obsessed With Empires: 30 Days of reclaiming the hope, compassion, and justice of Jesus. Today, our world can often feel overwhelmed by darkness, division, and despair. I created this 30-day devotional to... Read more Get it now! ​ Ways to support: If you'd like to support this project, you can do so through one-time-gift of any amount you feel is right. You can also subscribe through a $5/mo, $15/mo, or $25/mo. Several others have also asked for a recurring gift option that is different from the ones offered here, like this one. If you'd like me to set up a different option for you, please just send me an email with the word "support" in the subject line. As always, I really want to thank all of you for reading and for all the ways you support me and this project every single week. I'm thankful for the ways we are building this together and hope it creates a lasting, positive change in our world along the way! I sincerely appreciate you all, Ben Remember, you can now view this and all previous newsletters as well as invite friends to join through this link: https://benjamin-cremer.ck.page/profile.

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