Scrolling isn’t soulful.
A friend said that to me recently, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it.
We were talking about whether to invest more in growing a social media following for the nonprofit of which I’m executive director. He stopped me mid-sentence and asked: “What’s really at the heart of that for you? Is it about reaching more people or about proving your worth somehow?”
That question sat with me for a while.
I thought about a time recently when I led a soulful gathering circle with a beautiful group of people. Candles lit the space. Some folks sat on the floor. Over a dinner of soup, we had deep, honest conversation about what it means to be human.
And in the middle of someone sharing a profound truth, I caught myself thinking: “I should video this for our social media.”
I felt a real ick.
Rumi, Attar of Nishapur, Jesus — the mystics who first drew me to divinity school and to this work as a healer and chaplain — weren’t thinking about documenting or marketing the sacred as they were inside it. Yet here I was, thinking exactly that.
While I share this example with some embarrassment, I imagine it resonates with other practitioners in the field. When I talk to seminary classmates about this pressure to document and post, they feel it too.
I work hard not to view my life as content. Not to view the work of healing as content. In a world saturated with social media, we have to actively strive to be embodied. To be here, really here. People feel the presence of the camera. The energy changes. The intimacy closes.
These platforms are designed to keep us away from ourselves. Just as Netflix’s cofounder said the company’s biggest competition is sleep, social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram are designed to be addictive (media companies are being sued over it). They draw our time and attention, thereby competing against our presence and soulfulness. Capitalism needs our attention fragmented, our worth measured in metrics, our wisdom packaged into content.
Of course social media is not all bad; it can be a powerful source of connection. One of my dearest colleagues and friends, a queer, nonbinary, Black leader who was excluded from the church and never given a pulpit, told me that social media gave them a platform, a community, and a way to share their wisdom with people who need it. I celebrate that. Digital spaces of connection are real.
But we also should have an honest reckoning with what social media is doing to us. How we compare our worth to our following. How grant applications, keynote invitations and other opportunities increasingly seem contingent on digital presence. As an emerging leader in spiritual innovation, I find myself falling into that trap. I think it’s worth naming.
How soulful does scrolling feel? How often do you close the app feeling closer to yourself? To your spirit? To whatever you call sacred?
My organization, Our Own Deep Wells, which is focused on soul care for young adults and social change leaders, recently turned three. We have 250 Instagram followers and about 200 people on our email list.
When I look at other organizations doing similar work, many have thousands of followers and post daily videos. I’ve asked myself more than once whether I’m failing as a leader because our organization doesn’t have this robust presence.
But here’s what I keep coming back to: My team and I know almost all of those 250 people.
Many have come to our retreats. Some are vendors we’ve worked with. Some are friends of ours who cheer us on from a distance. We don’t boost posts or pay a social media professional. Most of what you find on our page is made by our team in Canva (which can somehow make anyone feel like a graphic designer). Even though it’s not polished, I think it’s pretty good!
In a world that tells us to grow, scale and make it shiny, our work is proudly messy and made in community. It’s honest, or at least it tries to be. Because that’s what we believe healing looks like.
When I think about the relationships at the heart of this work, the retreat spaces we’ve gathered in, the people who’ve traveled across the country to sit in circle with us, the friends who believe in what we’re building — none of them came from an algorithm. These connections are co-created and relational.
They happened through phone calls, popping by to say hello, and “Hey, can we grab coffee?” or “What do you need?” Sometimes it moves slowly and other times it moves fast, but it always moves at the speed of trust (a principle championed by author and activist adrienne maree brown).
We’re not perfect, but we aim to be integral and relational. And we’ve made an intentional decision to let that be enough. This means you won’t always see recaps of our retreats or our soulful gatherings in a reel or on your feed, and we feel OK about that. The work of healing has historically pollinated — and will continue to pollinate — through human connection that does not rely on screens or followers.
So this is our declaration, especially to others in the field of soul care and spiritual formation, many of us underfunded, many of us doing profound and quiet work in small rooms:
It’s OK to move slowly.
It’s OK — necessary, in fact — to refuse to see your community, your congregants, your collective, your calling, as content.
So much of healing justice work is about accessing our own embodiment and tapping into wisdom from ancestors and thousands of years of human experience. Part of the search for healing is to be able to slow down enough to find it. To look up from a screen and find quiet awe in nature and in breath, without hitting a record button.
As the rise of AI washes yet another technological wave over all of us, we healers must learn how to adapt while keeping our core principles at the center of the work. I invite people to remember their own wisdom, their own capacity, and their own belonging to something larger than themselves.
It might not be viral. Instead, I hope, it will be slow, embodied and sacred.
