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It’s September 10th, 2025.
A few hours ago, I saw a news notification pop up on my phone. Charlie Kirk, an influential conservative activist, was shot in the chest while hosting an open-air debate at Utah Valley University.
My first thought was, “Oh my god, I hope he’s OK.”
While I tend to disagree with many of the positions he’s espoused in his YouTube videos, and sometimes even wondered if he’s a “paid shill” for powerful politicians, I’ve always respected his willingness to just go to campuses across the country, sit outside, and have respectful conversations and debates with students who disagreed with him.
I’d reached out to Charlie a few weeks ago, to see if he wanted to have a conversation/debate for this issue of Meditation Magazine, to see if we could find common ground and understand each other’s perspectives better.
Well, a few minutes ago, I saw a second notification on my phone. Charlie died.
He was 31.
I’m sitting here trying to finish up the designs for this Hope Issue, but all I can think about are Charlie’s three-year-old daughter and one-year-old son. As a father of young children myself, I feel fury rising, vibrating in my chest. Tears blur my vision as I write these words.
The political rhetoric in our country has become so heated, so hateful, that someone — probably someone who aligns more closely on my political perspectives than Charlie ever did — brought a gun to a campus, and shot and killed a young father, for speaking and debating about what he personally believed in.
This is obviously not the first incident of politically-motivated violence. There have been too many horrific incidents in the past few years to recount in this magazine. Presidential assassination attempts. Staffers and interns gunned down on the streets of DC. Innocent children killed at schools and churches. I’m sure you’ve heard about all of these horrible things from your friendly neighborhood “if it bleeds, it leads” media channel… that’s why we (usually) avoid repeating and re-publicizing these horrors of the world.
I don’t know why, but I had to write this piece about Charlie Kirk. It’s not what I’m scheduled to be doing right now, but I couldn’t stop myself.
Maybe this one hit harder for me because it was so close to home. I had just been in touch with Charlie about an interview. I’ve watched so many of his videos that I felt like I knew the guy. I disagreed with his positions, but I respected his dialogue-focused approach, and, perhaps I was fooled by an actor’s facade, but I truly felt like he was a good human being.
The first interview I did for this issue of Meditation Magazine was a conversation with Marianne Williamson, just after the 2024 presidential election. Marianne was worried about the rise of authoritarianism and fascism in the Trump administration. After that conversation, I was tempted to call this The Warrior Issue, The Democracy Issue, or even The Diversity Issue, to focus on standing up for what’s right.
But as I conducted more interviews and have more deep conversations with meditators from across the political spectrum, I began to realize the vast differences between what we all believe about the world around us. Not only do many of us have different views about what’s right and wrong, but we even have different views about the facts on the ground — what has actually happened in the past, and what is actually happening now.
We decided to focus this issue on conversations that bring people together, and were thinking of calling this The Conversation Issue, The Unity Issue, or The Balance Issue.
But even with this unifying focus, I began to realize that talking about and debating the nitty-gritty political issues was still triggering for a lot of our readers. Even these balanced, open-minded, unity-oriented conversations were alienating some of our readers — specifically, the ones who needed our message of peace, love, and meditation the most.
I decided to rewatch all of the interviews that I’d conducted over the past six months, to hopefully get some insights about what to do, and how to make this a truly beneficial issue of Meditation Magazine
As I was digging through the interview recordings for nuggets of wisdom, I came across a segment of my conversation with Reggie Hubbard, a meditation teacher and activist who works with congressmen and politicians in Washington DC.
We were talking about how political activism can sometimes invoke fear, anger and polarization… and how Reggie ultimately elevated his work by focusing his work in a more positive direction.
Reggie described his ideal form of political activism as “a creative process,” rather than a fight.
“How can I make my activism so different and sparkly and dope and irreverent that you can’t look away?”
Reggie’s positive attitude — acknowledging problems, but focusing on solutions — brought light and Hope into my mind and heart.
Immediately, I knew that that was the energy that I wanted for this issue of Meditation Magazine. And in the next moment, I knew that this would be called The Hope Issue.
The “normal” way to engage in politics in our country right now is to rant and rage against “the other side.”
We talk about how we shouldn’t “normalize” certain politicians’ actions… well, we shouldn’t normalize a politics of hatred, either.
In The Hope Issue of Meditation Magazine, I hope we can present a different paradigm: a politics of Hope.
When we approach politics with hatred, we add our attentional energy to the negative situations from which are trying to escape. But when we approach politics with Hope, we look forward toward the brighter future that we want to create.
When we approach politics with hate, we sow the seeds of anger, violence, and unimaginable suffering. This is what happened today, to Charlie Kirk and his family… and what is happening all around our country.
But when we approach politics with Hope, we don’t fight; we just move forward. When we approach politics with Hope, we talk, we listen, we work together, and we co-create a better world.
