Living and Growing: Surfing into the future

Published 1:30 am Saturday, January 24, 2026

To begin, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that we are on the traditional territory of the Áakʼw Ḵwáan, the original inhabitants of Lingít Aaní . We pay respect to the Áakʼw Ḵwáan elders, both past and present, and honor the spiritual wisdom they bring to our society in this day.

Many religious traditions draw strength from the past. Sacred stories, laws, and examples anchor communities in hard-won wisdom and give continuity across generations. The Bahá’í Faith shares this reverence for what has come before—but it adds a distinctive emphasis: a belief that humanity’s spiritual story is still unfolding, and that the future itself is a sacred trust.

In the Bahá’í understanding, revelation is not simply a message delivered once and preserved unchanged. It is an ongoing process, guiding humanity as it grows in its capacity to live together. Spiritual principles remain constant—justice, compassion, unity, dignity—but the ways they are expressed must evolve as society matures. Faith, then, is not only about remembering; it is also about orientation. It asks us to face forward.

This forward-looking stance reshapes how hope is understood. The future is not imagined as a distant reward. It is something humanity grows into—through learning, cooperation, and the gradual development of social and moral capacity.

Yet living with this orientation is not always easy. We inhabit a world that is deeply interconnected, yet persistently divided. We possess extraordinary technological power, yet struggle to use it wisely.We speak of global responsibility, while our institutions and habits lag behind that reality. The future may feel inevitable in principle, but incomplete in practice.

This is what it means to live in an unfinished world.

From within such a moment, progress can be difficult to recognize. Much of the work that prepares society for change—education, community building, moral conversation, learning how to consult and cooperate—does not announce itself as “progress” while it is happening. It looks ordinary. It can even feel fragile. The scale of humanity’s challenges often dwarfs the visible results of individual or community effort. One way to make sense of this experience is to imagine the future not as a destination, but as a powerful movement already forming beneath the surface of history—like a wave gathering far offshore. It arises from deep forces already in motion, long before its crest becomes visible.

In this image, our role is not to command the wave, nor to decide when it should break. It is closer to surfing. A surfer does not control the ocean, but neither is surfing passive. It requires attention, balance, humility, and constant adjustment. The work is not about force, but about attunement—learning to read the currents, respond to shifting conditions, and stay upright within a motion that is larger than oneself.

Seen this way, the turbulence of our time need not be understood as failures. It may be the unsettled water that accompanies formation. From within the wave, movement can feel erratic and direction unclear. Yet the energy is real.

If this metaphor holds, then our task is not to produce the future on demand, but to prepare ourselves and our communities to ride the swell. This means building capacities that rarely draw attention: trust across difference, moral courage, habits of consultation, and institutions capable of learning rather than rigid control.

Hope, in this frame, is not optimism about destination. It is trust in direction. It is the decision to align one’s life with what is emerging, even when the shore remains out of sight.

The Bahá’í vision of an ever-advancing civilization does not promise that we will see the world completed in our lifetime. It offers something quieter, and perhaps more demanding: an invitation to live as participants in a sacred process still underway—to attune ourselves to the currents of our time, and to ride with balance toward a future that belongs not to us alone, but to generations yet to come.

Adam Bauer is the secretary for the Juneau Bahá’í Local Spiritual Assembly. “Living and Growing” is a weekly column written by different authors and submitted by local clergy and spiritual leaders. It appears every Saturday on the Juneau Empire’s Faith page.