Professor Verveake, at the university of Toronto, has spent his career understanding wisdom cultivation. He coined the term “meaning crisis” in reference to growing rates of depression, anxiety, despair and suicide in North America, Europe and other first-world countries. The mental health crisis itself is intertwined with environmental crises, political unrest, educational upheaval, family fractures and medical mistrust. Additionally, we find ourselves in the so called ‘secular’ age and where religion was once a balm, increasingly we are uprooted and groundless. People are unmoored from relational anchors – isolated from family and community. With these ties often severed it is left to the individual – to little old ‘me’ – to try to make sense of a fractured and frenetic world – all on one’s own – an we are buckling under the weight of it all.

We need meaning-making systems and wisdom-seeking practices that can handle our meta-modern times. It cant be wishy-washy, faux happiness for the masses. It also can’t be promises of salvation for the elite, pure and perfect, chosen few. Make no mistake, the sacred itself must be updated, but not in ways that run counter to indigenous traditions and ancient wisdom.