Meeting the Future in the Moment - 2025

The text below is taken from a12/2024 post by Otto Scharmer of the Presencing Institute (U-lab) that several Maryknollers would be familiar with. The language used is not classically faith or pious language. However, in so many ways, they confirm a contemplative, reflective (deeply faithful) perspective.

What actually, in this moment, is our planet’s most important superpower? It’s not the United States. Not China. Nor is it Big Money or Artificial Intelligence. It is our unique human capacity to align attention, intention, and agency.  

This alignment is evident in the U process that, much simplified, can be summarized by these two shifts: 

• Attention, when truly deepened, gives rise to intention—a sense and presence of purpose, of why we’re here 

• Intention, when really clarified, catalyzes agency—the capacity to bring our deepest purpose to life.

Aligning attention, intention and agency allows us to co-create and to bring our highest future potential into reality both individually and collectively.

As we move into 2025, we know that there will be more chaos, more breakdowns, and less courage. So, what is the smallest unit of an island of coherence? It starts with my, with your, and with our alignment of mind and heart—by deeply attending to our experience of the moment, and to the possibilities arising from it. It starts with creating generative holding in situations where they are called for.

At the Presencing Institute, we believe that now is the moment to support, expand, and connect these manifold islands of coherence. They may be small but nevertheless powerful as they offer a foundation for resilience and renewal. Together, they form a network of possibility, weaving a fabric of hope & transformation in a time of great uncertainty.