Purpose is in short supply. Belief not so much. When you match purpose with belief, you often times get magic. And yet, when you confuse the two, you often find tragedy.
Purpose is something that fulfills you. It is a kind of accomplishment in and of itself. Because that fulfillment is often with your hands and with your heart. If you are for yourself, for the love of it, for what it can bring. Careful woodwork or well prepared sushi. A well understood instrument that is caressed into song.
But, marry that purpose. The kind that stretches fingers and makes motion. Marry it with belief, the kind that is so strident that all else falls away in the face of it. There you will find life changing magic that fells trees and moves people across continents.
Ann Lee had that kind of marriage. At least according to her testimony as told through the lens of 2026 film. Her shaker belief met the purpose of salvation and every single house and family and chair and floorboard she touched showed that purpose and the belief behind it.
But, what I saw... the transcendent nature of quaking in the face of god. I saw in her conviction, the humanity that it requires to believe together. To love together. To dance together.
Sometimes when you do a thing with enough purpose and belief, it opens you up to an awakening. To a rebirth. To something that cannot be reproduced or manufactured. It is only available to those who witness it. It is a spiritual encounter. An ability to notice and name the divine.
I do not want to be a conduit for the almighty. But, I do miss the community that makes the almighty possible. It is only in those meeting rooms that the divine exists. It is only when people are there to give voice to it that it has power. I miss those people, the purpose, and the belief.
