Infrastructure for the Soul
Restoring Public Rhythm in a Disconnecting World
I went to Church on Sunday...
A friend was excited to attend the Sunday sermon and excitement about a religious ritual was something I hadn’t seen in a long time. That piqued my curiosity.
Growing up Muslim in a Muslim-majority country, my experience with churches was limited to weddings and funerals. And mosques, for me, were mostly for funerals. Both felt serious and formal, never light-hearted or casual.
Some people avoid religious institutions entirely, carrying trauma from the oppression, exclusivity, and rigidity they’ve come to associate with them.
I’ve always been a spiritual explorer, especially when I see impact on shared culture. I’ve visited philosophy groups, meditations, church...even AA.
When someone suggests something new, I’m in.
A Religion Rewriting Itself
Religion, I was taught, was something you conform to, not something that meets you where you are.
What I saw at this Church was a religion attempting to update itself, to meet the needs of the present.
It embraced freedom of expression: the priest wore sweatpants, the crowd was diverse, people wore what they wanted and the choir felt like a concert by the audience. It was held in a High School auditorium. It was all just so accessible.
They had done away with hierarchy, difficult language, requirements of attendance, grandeur.
From formal to informal, serious to friendly, from fear & guilt to joy & gratitude.
Not to mention the sermon,
The pastor was inspiring, comedic, and relatable, while still drawing from the teachings. He acknowledged political events, joked about parts of L.A, and teased our generation for being so depressed and complacent. All with warmth.
“Jesus didn’t die on the cross for you to suffer. He died for you to thrive.”
That line changed everything for my friend. It was a massive shift in rhetoric. Less about feeling guilty for Christ’s sacrifice, but instead to feel freed by it to enjoy life.
Churches here are shifting. They’re becoming “limitless”, removing the limits you think exist between people and God. Winning back the youth by meeting them where they are.
“Come as you are...”
I felt a void in my life,
I miss that rhythm - a weekly return to something greater. A moment of presence, reflection, and quiet magic, shared with others who seek the same.
It reminded me of AA meeting format:
Gather weekly, read a spiritual text, reflect on the week, and set intentions for the next one.
Why isn’t this part of everyday society? A “Humans Anonymous” available for all who seek?
We live with darkness and light, angels and demons.
As we move through life, there are temptations to go dark: to lose trust, try to control, live in fear.
Advertisements sell lack. Credit cards extend false abundance. Insurance feeds on worst-case scenarios.
We live in a world built on systems that thrive on the belief that life can’t be trusted to unfold on its own. Those systems serve a purpose, but in their marketing instill a lack of trust in the unknown.
Some of us have our way of connecting to the light: prayer, meditation, gurus, books, nature. But it requires an individual proactive effort.
Some of us don’t do the work simply because we just don’t have the discipline, awareness or time.
The Greeks Knew This
They used ritual, storytelling, and public gathering as a way to hold society together, not through religion alone, but through civic design and shared reflection.
They treated theatre as a civic act: an offering, a mirror, a conversation.
It brought people together to explore fate, justice, and what it meant to live well.
They were containers for collective emotional processing.
Religions don’t just explain the divine. They help us process our humanity.
In Alain de Botton’s “Atheism 2.0”, he suggests that religions grasped our emotional architecture:
Repetition: to reinforce our attention & values
Pauses: for reflection & realignment
Gratitude: to focus on what’s working
Storytelling: to relay meaning in context
Rituals: to honor change, loss & growth
Religion holds deep, time-tested knowledge of what it means to be human:
grief, awe, forgiveness, longing, ego, love
These are not just spiritual themes, but essential emotional truths that shape how we live together.
They’re worth evolving and protecting - not because they tell us what to believe, but because they remind us: you too are part of this.
It’s not about being taught.
It’s about being invited to reflect on our inner world - and to share those insights with our community, like nutrients in the soil that nourish trust, compassion, and tolerance.
It’s often in hearing people’s confessions that we can grasp the full spectrum of being human.
The two times I’ve been to “limitless” churches, we were invited to reflect on:
Anxiety - Where are we not trusting?
Depression - What are we forgetting to be grateful for? What lessons are here for us?
Sessions like these plant communal seeds. They spark conversations and invite us to set deeper intentions. We’re held in quiet accountability by those who attend with us, until the next beat returns the following Sunday.
So what if the value isn’t in the answer, but in the pause around the question?
What could a new kind of sanctuary look like? One not built on shared belief, but on shared questions and a shared rhythm.
A speaker, a story, a reading, a moment of silence, music, a memory from your week, an invitation to realign.
Rumi, Alan Watts, Wayne Dyre, Mooji, Carl Jung..
BYOGuru. Remix as needed.
The only requirement: presence
So, how might we…
How might we reinvent this communal ritual of remembering to reach for the light?
How might we design a weekly ritual that isn’t about what or who you believe in, but simply about how you believe?
How might we create it within the spaces we already share: offices, schools, cafés, homes, sidewalks?
It’s simply about making space for our shared human need for safety, belonging, and meaning.
If we can begin our week rooted in our shared humanity, we stand a much better chance of building trust ...in our partnerships, our workplaces, maybe even our politics.
Thank you for reading. This one was hard to write but it felt important. If it resonated, please pass it on. It won’t fix the world, but it might spark something new.
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