A writer admits that secularism still hasn’t found an alternative to belief in God. Lauren Jackson writes, “I knew the potency of believing, really believing, that I had a certain place in the cosmos. That I was eternally loved. That life made sense. Or that it would, one day, for sure. I had that, and I left it all.

I spent my 20s worshiping at the altar of work and, in my free time, testing secular ideas for how to live well. I built a community. I volunteered. I cared for my nieces and nephews. I pursued wellness. I paid for workout classes on Sunday mornings, practiced mindfulness, went to therapy, visited saunas and subscribed to meditation apps. I tried book clubs and running clubs. I cobbled together moral instruction from books on philosophy and whatever happened to move me on Instagram. Nothing has felt quite like [the religion of my childhood].

Jackson concludes:

But I don’t feel I can go back… I’ve been steeped in secularism for a decade, and I can no longer access the uncritical belief I once felt… [But] my spiritual longing persists — and it hasn’t been sated by secularism. I want a god… I still want it all to be true: miracles, souls, some sort of cosmic alchemy that makes sense of the chaos.

For years, I haven’t been able to say that publicly. But it feels like something is changing. That maybe the culture is shifting. That maybe we’re starting to recognize that it’s possible to be both believing and discerning after all.