In this video, Canon Wright reflects on a simple message from a retreat he attended as a teenager, and how it can guide us in the moment we face now. (Time 3:40.)
Video Transcript
Greetings. When I was a teenager, I went on a weekend retreat built around a simple phrase: Follow the Way. It was an invitation to live out our faith, not just as belief, but as practice – to intentionally choose healing over harm, justice over convenience, and offering love that is sacrificial, self-giving.
That phrase also echoes how Jesus names himself in John’s Gospel: the Way, the Truth and the Life. To follow the Way, then, is not simply to hold Christian values, but to let our lives be shaped by Christ himself. Over time, justice and compassion, truth telling and self-giving are no longer simply ideals that we admire, but they describe the kind of people that we are becoming.
That matters profoundly at a moment like this one. We are living in a time when fear is being cultivated for political gain, when lies are rewarded, and the humanity of immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, people who are poor or disabled – all these lives are being treated as negotiable. These are not abstract moral debates. They’re questions about whose lives are protected, whose suffering is ignored, and whose dignity is expendable.
To follow the way of Jesus in this moment is not neutral. It pulls us towards solidarity with those who are targeted and towards resistance when cruelty is normalized and when hate is weaponized. Christian faith that avoids this is just that kind of “comforting the comfortable.” Christian faith that follows Jesus sometimes is a disruption of systems, especially when they thrive on exclusion and fear.
How we respond, though, how we live that out, can vary quite a bit. Some are called to public protest, to policy advocacy, to organizing and speaking out. Some are called to offer sanctuary, provide food, housing, legal support, or trauma-informed care. Some are called to teach, to tell the truth, to keep memory alive when others would erase it, to document and bear witness. And all of us are called to pray – not as a retreat from the world, as a form of wishful thinking, but as a discipline that really keeps our hearts aligned with God’s longing for justice and mercy.
Prayer is not just a kind of open optimism. It really shapes and forms us as God’s people, resulting in tangible steps. Prayer without action is incomplete. Whenever we pray, we should always ask what it is that we are being called to do in that moment, to respond to that prayer. Prayer enacted can form us into people who can actually bear the weight of love in a broken world.
That retreat slogan to Follow the Way was more than youthful idealism. It really was an invitation to change the world, as much as a call to a deeper spiritual life. And ultimately, those are the same thing. As we deepen our spiritual life that transforms us, those around us, and it transforms the world. It’s a call to decide again and again whether we will let our lives be shaped by the logic of fear or by the self-giving love of Jesus, and in this moment, that choice could not be more real.
Thank you all. God bless.
