What Makes You Come Alive?

Aaron Austin | October 13, 2025

Jamie Wallace and I were talking in the foyer on Sunday morning before worship.  Our conversation wandered from current events to the struggle of how to offer help in the midst of such overwhelming need.  There are so many needs on so many fronts right now that it's hard to know where to start.   Personally, I feel like I've reached burnout a couple of times since Inauguration Day.  It's hard to know how to help and how to set a sustainable pace. 

As we were talking, a quote attributed to Howard Thurman came to mind: "Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."  As a civil rights leader, pastor, author, and educator, Thurman was keenly aware of what the world needs.  His life and work show a person deeply invested in making this world a more just and loving place.  And yet, here he is inviting us to tend to our hearts and to be attentive to the life force within us.

The deep wisdom of this question, at least as I see it, lives in what these words call out of us.  This wise mystic of civil rights invites our truest selves to step forth.  And when we step out into the light something amazing happens — we see that we are all connected.  There is no separation. We are all adrift in this same sea of love. Our deep need and the needs of the world are one and the same.  When we begin to see this and accept our connectedness and interdependency with all souls, we align ourselves with Love's currents.  

As Jamie and I were talking, we listed so many people and places that need help right now.  It was heartbreaking to hold all this need, but I didn't feel hopeless because I wasn't alone.  I was sharing space with a friend who sees that deep connection with humanity and wants to cultivate love and justice.  But how do we choose where to begin?

This lovely question from Howard Thurman bypasses all the intellectual turmoil of deciding what is best and most effective.   It drops through the capitalist models that view people in terms of profit and output.  Instead, this wise mystic knows that if we come alive, we're going to discover that deep connection, and we're going to generate more love and peace and justice.  If we find work that is energizing and life-giving, we're going to be able to stick it out.  We also may discover that it's not up to us alone.  

Here's a interesting quote by Thomas Merton, another mystic, who bemoans the inherent violence of modern life:

"There is a pervasive form of modern violence to which the idealist…most easily succumbs: activism and over-work....To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes [their] work… It destroys the fruitfulness of [their]…work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful."

Thurman and Merton both voice a deep trust in God and in humanity that we need today.  This trust lies not only in those that we consider friends, but also our so-called enemies.  We are all made of the same stuff.  There are no outsiders.  Underneath even the most hateful and vengeful egos is a soul that is part of the same sea of love from which we all emerge.  

As we work and study and speak out and stand up and pray and fall down and resist and rest, may we not lose sight of what makes us come alive.  We really, really need folks who are awake and alive right now.