Weekly Meditation – December 29, 2025

by The Rev. Dr. David K. Popham —

Transforming the Public Square

Thank you for inviting me to reflect with this community on how people of consciousness and compassion might show up in the public square. As I understand it, my task is to inspire us to go into 2026 ready to stand on the right side of history. I admit there is something exciting about crafting what may prove to be my version of the inspirational Shakespeare’s Henry V St. Crispin’s Day speech. In the play King Henry is encouraging his beaten-up and worn-out army to fight on toward a victory against the odds. Henry ends by reminding his troops how proudly they will be thought of for their courage and bravery: “And gentlemen in England now a-bed / Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, / And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks / That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”

No doubt a history whose arc bends toward justice will praise those who stand against cruel governmental attitudes and stand for those being swept up in our present political ranting. Yet, I think it’s wiser if we might go deeper than where a keep-up-the-good-fight reflection generally takes us.

I agree with others that our public square has been turned into a stage for a spectacle of the absurd, where the hunger for validation eclipses the need for shared vision. Many of us have witnessed the injuries and wounds received from the hands of this spectacle. Some of us have been personally hurt. It is the hurting place I wish to address, if I may.

I want you to know that the hurt you carry does signal an injustice, a wrong, a violation of who you are and how you are in the world. That pain is real and because it is real, it impacts how we go about being us. For unfortunately, hurting people hurts people. It is true of our national leaders, and it is true of ourselves as well. The problem with all this hurting is that it perpetuates the very cycle we want to overcome and stop.

Here’s the rub: in order to heal our national hurt, we must first heal our personal hurt. In order to heal our personal hurt, we must touch the pain that lies within it. I can only speak for myself, I do a lot of things to avoid my personal pain. I’ve got a hurting place in me that is saturated with pain. It stretches all the way back to my childhood and hearing my mother saying she wished I had not been born. And now that hurting place is being poked by a government saying it wishes people with my sense of what is just did not exist. And this pain causes me to blindly strike out. Hurting people hurt people.

The remedy for hurt is found in all the major world religions. I happen to speak the language of Christianity and so will use its vocabulary. When divine love touches our hurting place, mercy abounds. We experience this in the wounds of Christ abiding with him after the resurrection transformed into a testimony of perseverance.

We watch the political stage from the margins, weary of the noise, the nationalistic promises, the endless clash of voices, the neo-fascism. We feel the tremor within – the fear that the world is unraveling, that our voice is too small, that we are unseen in the storm.

Here is what we need to know: the outrage we carry is a restless wind. It lifts us for a moment, then leaves us to fall with a thump. Every argument we rehearse, every mask of certainty we wear, is a veil between us and the truth that alone can set us free. That the soul was not made for the fury of crowds but for the quiet work of healing.

We fear weakness, yet weakness is the door to wisdom. We fear stillness, yet stillness is the soil where healing grows. I say, lay down the burden of guarding your hurt with anger. For what is victory if it costs us our peace? What is justice if it leaves us restless?

Come away from the noise. Enter the inner chamber of your soul where no eye watches and no tongue flatters. There, in the secret place, you will find the One who knows you – and knows the pain you carry. In the Divine’s gaze, humility is not humiliation but liberation in mercy.

Then return. Return as one made whole, carrying the quiet strength that comes from resting in infinite love. Show up in the public square not as a mirror of the nation’s hurting but as its antidote. The world does not need more noise; it needs voices born of wholeness. It does not need more power; it needs hearts that have learned peace.

The call before us is not merely to resist the noise of a fractured world but to embody a deeper truth: that healing begins within. When we allow mercy to mend our wounds and love to quiet our outrage, we become more than participants in the public square—we become its transformation. Let us enter 2026 not as voices of anger but as bearers of peace, carrying the strength of wholeness into a world desperate for hope. This is how we stand on the right side of history: not by shouting louder, but by living the quiet revolution of compassion.

And yes, those people unable to heal and unable to be bearers of peace, shall hold their experience cheap while any speak of their work of transforming the public square from a place of fear to a place of hope.

Rev. Dr. David K. Popham

The Rev. Dr. David Popham grew up in Kentucky where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Knowledge from the University of the Cumberlands and his Master of Divinity from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was ordained as an American Baptist and granted Privilege of Call by the Eastern Association of the Southern California/Southern Nevada Conference, UCC in 1995. After serving a United Church of Christ in Utah, he became Associate Conference Minister with the Rocky Mountain Conference, and then for the Central Atlantic Conference, UCC. David received his Doctor of Ministry Degree from Lancaster Theological Seminary and was elected by the 2019 Hawaiʻi Conference Aha Paeʻaina as Conference Minister. He is married to Kerrie Shahan and they make their home in Kailua, on the island of Oʻahu in Hawaiʻi. They have two grown daughters.