From the Outer Edge to the Heart of America: Announcing Facets of the One and a New Year’s Revolution

The turning of a year is always artificial and always real.

Artificial, because January 1 is just another sunrise in an unbroken chain of dawns.

Real, because human beings need thresholds. We need moments when we say, “From here on, differently.”

This year that threshold is unusually sharp for me.

I am writing these lines from the far southwestern edge of the United States—from the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, near the southernmost point of the fifty states, and further west than almost anywhere else you can stand in this union. In my last Substack piece I reflected on what it has meant to live a life framed by Alaska (49) and Hawaiʻi (50), by hardship and Jubilee, by tents in the snow and feasts in the sun.

This trip has brought something else into crisp focus: it is time to stop circling, and start pointing more directly toward true North.

Not geographic north. Not partisan north. But the North that has guided the people of God, in all times and places, whenever they remembered to listen:

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.
You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your might.”
— Deuteronomy 6:4–5

And, before even that:

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”
— Genesis 1:3

God speaks. Light appears. Order comes out of chaos. Life takes shape. From that first word onward, creation’s harmony depends on heeding the Word of God.

This New Year’s, I am not making a resolution. I’m inviting you into a revolution—a turning back toward that Light.

A New Year’s Revolution: Turning from the Big Island toward True North

In the biblical imagination, East and West are not just compass points. They are directions of exile and return. Alaska and Hawaiʻi have always carried that kind of meaning for me—49 and 50, hardship and Jubilee, frozen tents and family restoration.

From this southwestern outpost, the Spirit has been quietly insistent:

You’ve wandered long enough at the edges. Turn. Point. Align.

So here is the turn:

Away from commentary about our crisis,
Toward constructive patterns that anyone, anywhere, can use to seek God together.
Away from a faith that lives mostly in the realm of ideas and institutions,
Toward small, concrete circles of people gathering around the Word as their true North.

The tool for that turn has been taking shape for years in the background. This New Year’s, I’m finally ready to name it publicly and invite you into it.

The project is called Facets of the One.

On the surface, it is a small devotional reader: nine gatherings worth of short readings and simple reflections.

But its underlying purpose is larger: to plant thousands of nascent communities of prayer and study across the country, all turning together toward the one Light.

At the heart of the book is a simple conviction that runs through the Bible and all sacred writings—and, I would argue, through the best of human spiritual experience:

God is one.
Humanity is one.
Whatever divine guidance humanity has received, in all lands and ages, comes from the same Source.

The Shema expresses that in Jewish language: YHWH is one.
Jesus places it at the center of His own teaching.
The Qur’án insists on the oneness of God (tawḥīd).
The Gītā speaks of surrendering all actions to the One.
Bahá’u’lláh affirms that all the Manifestations of God—Moses, Christ, Muhammad, the Báb, and others—are mirrors of a single Sun.

Different lamps. One Light.

Facets of the One takes that conviction and does something very simple with it:

For each of nine themes, it places short passages from the Bible side by side with brief quotes from the sacred writings of other faiths and a few indigenous traditions. No commentary. No argument. Just voices, in turn, bearing witness to:

God’s oneness,
God’s justice and mercy,
The call to obedience,
The path of sacrifice,
The meaning of community,
The light we are meant to reflect.

A verse from Genesis may sit next to a line from the Bhagavad Gītā; a word of Jesus may be followed by Rūmī, a saying from Guru Nanak, a prayer from the Báb, and finally a promise from Revelation.

The intent is not to flatten differences or pretend all doctrines are identical. It is to let us hear the same music in different keys, and to recover something we have almost forgotten how to practice in this country:

Sitting together, across belief and background,
in the presence of the Word of God,
listening more than defending,
worshiping more than winning.

If the Shema is true—if the Lord our God is One—then every genuine ray of light, in any tradition, is ultimately His.

A book by itself doesn’t change much. A pattern that people can actually use might.

So alongside Facets of the One I’ve been developing a simple, flexible 10‑week framework—lightweight enough for a living room, sturdy enough for a congregation or community group.

Here’s the basic outline:

Week 0: Prepare the Ground

Two or three people meet—around a kitchen table, after a service, in a coffee shop.

They:

Read a few anchoring texts:
- Genesis 1:1–5 (“Let there be light”),
- Deuteronomy 6:4–5 (the Shema),
- Psalm 1 and Psalm 133,
- 2 Chronicles 7:14.
Pray for guidance.
Ask: Who around us might be hungry for this kind of space—people who love God, are weary of culture war shouting, and long for depth, repentance, and unity?

They pick:

A time & place (home, church room, neutral space),
A simple format,
A modest starting circle (you don’t need a crowd; three or four is enough).

Each week the group takes up one devotion.

The rhythm is always the same:

Opening
- A short passage from Scripture.
- A simple prayer: that God would speak, that His light would search our hearts, that we would learn to delight in His law and dwell together in unity.
Readings
- Participants take turns reading the selected passages from Facets of the One:
  - Bible first,
  - Then other traditions,
  - Often closing again in Revelation.
- No explanations yet. Just listening.
Silence
- Two or three minutes of quiet. Let a word, phrase, or image settle.
Shared reflection
- 2–3 questions, repeated each week:
  - What did you hear about who God is?
  - What did you hear about what God desires from us?
  - What, if anything, touches our own lives, families, neighborhoods, or nation?
- No debating. No arm‑twisting. Just honest, brief sharing. The Bible stays the anchor; the other texts are witnesses and provocations.
Prayer
- The group prays—out loud or in silence:
  - For personal repentance and alignment,
  - For healing in relationships,
  - For communities and cities,
  - For a nation that has forgotten how to hear, “Let there be light,” and obey.
- 2 Chronicles 7:14 becomes a refrain, not as a slogan, but as a posture.

Over nine weeks, the group traces a path something like this:

The oneness of God and His Messengers
The purposes of revelation
The cost of obedience
The communities that form around truth
Warnings against straying from the Word
Obedience and spiritual maturity
From first light to clear sight—creation and discernment
Reflecting the light—what it means to become luminous
How to let that light shine wisely in a divided world

Week 10: Listen for Next Steps

The tenth week is not a graduation. It’s a listening post.

The group looks back and asks:

What has God been saying to us?
Where have we been called to repent, to reconcile, to act?
Is there another circle we’re meant to help start?
Are we being drawn into deeper study—of Scripture, of our own tradition, of this question of the oneness of religion?

No one “owns” the process. There is no membership list to join. There are only people who have tasted something real and want more of God and more of each other, in truth.

Why This, and Why Now?

You don’t need me to tell you that the United States is being torn apart—not just by policy disputes, but by mutually incompatible visions of reality.

Underneath those visions lie different answers to basic questions:

Who is God?
What is a human being?
What is freedom for?
Are we accountable to anything higher than our own will?

We cannot legislate or litigate our way out of a crisis at that level. Laws matter. Institutions matter. But beneath them all is a relationship: between God and the human heart, between human beings and each other.

If there is any hope of healing and uniting this nation, it will not come from one side vanquishing the other. It will come, if it comes, from:

A critical mass of people who actually know how to sit before the Word of God,
With people who are not exactly like them,
And listen. Really listen.

Not to relativize truth, but to find it together, in humility.

The Bahá’í writings speak of a coming time when humanity will finally recognize the oneness of God and the essential oneness of religion—when the great Revelators of history are seen not as rival founders of competing clubs, but as chapters in one long story.

You don’t have to accept that theology wholesale to feel that a movement toward shared reverence is urgently needed: reverence for God, for conscience, for neighbor, for truth.

Facets of the One is my small contribution to that movement.

From this far southwestern edge of the Republic—from the Big Island where 50 whispers Jubilee—I am aiming my life a few degrees closer to that true North and inviting you to join me in an experiment:

Ten weeks.
Nine gatherings.
One God.
Many voices.
A seed of community in your living room, your church basement, your neighborhood.

An Invitation

In the weeks ahead I’ll be:

Sharing more about the themes of Facets of the One,
Releasing the 10‑week guide for both organizers and participants,
And inviting those who feel stirred by this to raise a hand and say, “Yes, I’ll host (or join) a circle where I am.”

If something in this stirs you—if you feel the tug of “Let there be light” in your own chaos, if you sense that your faith needs to become more communal, more cross‑boundary, more deeply rooted in the Word—consider this your New Year’s re‑volting against business‑as‑usual.

Not a resolution to try harder for a few weeks.

A revolution in the old sense of the word: a turning.

Away from the noise.

Toward the One.

“Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening.”

We’re ready to roll out the first of these groups in January. The goal is to launch between 9 and 19 of them in the first wave. If you’d like to be part of the first wave of circles using Facets of the One, you can email me at Wade@SOOPMedia.net - or reply in the comments, or simply stay tuned. In the next post I’ll lay out concrete next steps and offer a way to get the materials into your hands.

From the westernmost edge of this Great Republic of the West, may your New Year begin in light, and may we learn, together, to submit to it.