Man and God... and the Millenial

If you watch the news these days, it’s not hard to see why atheists question faith. The world feels like it’s always trembling, always shifting, and religion often becomes the curtain that hides the chaos — or the spotlight that exposes it.

Our younger generations walk through a fog of uncertainty. The twenty‑somethings I meet carry an anxious hum beneath their words. Growing up in the long shadow of 9/11 has shaped their imaginations. They look at U.S. policy, at our place in the world, and they ask the questions many of us were too afraid to ask.

It feels like a quiet summons — a return to the neighborly heart of the Gospel, a tug on the conscience of a nation that has forgotten how to look its neighbor in the eye.

Greed and power have always pulled humanity back toward religion, and humanity, in turn, has always twisted religion into something smaller than it was meant to be. The story of the world is written again and again in the ink of ambition, and no religious institution has ever been immune to its stain.

So the young, the skeptical, the searching, ask a question that echoes through every age:

Where is this God of yours who allows homelessness, death, and destruction?

And maybe — just maybe — their unbelief is its own kind of prayer.

Many in their thirties now reach for certainty in the language of science, hoping its proofs can steady the ground beneath them. After watching institutions crumble, who could blame them for wanting something solid to stand on?

They question the beliefs handed to them because the very structures meant to protect them have, too often, failed them.

Yet our children — they are brilliant, imaginative, and wired differently. Their ways of speaking, of connecting, of seeing the world stretch beyond what we once thought possible. They push every institution to remember the human person, especially those who have lived too long on the margins of conditional love.

I’ve met some of these young souls — my nephew, my son, their friends — and they disarm me with their openness. Their friendships feel raw and honest, unlike the ones I knew at their age.

It’s different. Is it good? I’m not sure. But it is real, and it is theirs.

We call them Millennials, but maybe that name is more prophetic than descriptive. Maybe they really are the ones who will carry us into the next millennium. And maybe — just maybe — God will choose to reveal Himself through them.

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If you want it to sound even more lyrical, more spiritual, or more dramatic, I can shape it in that direction too.

Run, Walk or Hike

I’ve recently taken up running to lose weight, but the more I read the stories of great runners, the more I realize that running is rarely just about the body. In so many of these books, beneath the miles and medals, there is a deeper current — a spiritual migration. These athletes weren’t only running away from something or toward something; they were moving through their own inner wilderness.

Their struggles, though unique in detail, echo the same universal ache: the human condition. And in reading their stories, I’ve begun to see my own lifelong struggle reflected back at me — the one thread that has shaped who I am. It has followed me, fueled me, and in many ways, run my life.

As I move through these pages, I find myself nodding in recognition. Their battles — with addiction, with grief, with their own shadows — feel familiar. I understand them not because I share their exact stories, but because I share their humanity.

And slowly, I’m beginning to see that what we call “the human condition” isn’t a flaw or a sickness. It’s simply Life expressing itself through us. It isn’t a condition at all — it’s the baseline, the starting point, the terrain we’re given to cross.

Maybe the real spiritual work is learning how to stay awake, stay motivated, and soften the harm we cause ourselves along the way.

Isn’t that, in some way, the heart of religion? Every major tradition speaks of liberation — freedom from suffering, freedom from illusion, freedom from the weight we carry. But perhaps this longing for freedom is itself part of being human. Perhaps the path is not to escape the condition, but to walk through it with intention.

So I will keep running. Not just for the weight loss, but because running mirrors life so honestly. Some stretches are light and joyful; others are heavy and unforgiving. The terrain shifts, just like our days do.

The human condition reveals itself in every hill we climb and every valley we descend. And in the effort to reach the next ridge — or the next version of ourselves — we learn how to move through the world with a little more grace.

Running becomes a rehearsal for living. A prayer in motion. A reminder that the path is the point.

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If you want, I can make it more mystical, more poetic, or more grounded — just tell me which direction you want to run with it.