As we look at the world around us, it’s easy to feel like we’re standing in the middle of a storm.

It’s not a storm of wind and rain. It’s something deeper: a storm of outrage, disconnection, fear, and confusion. It’s a storm within our institutions, our relationships, and even ourselves.

The metaphor of a great flood is one of humanity’s most ancient ways of describing a moment of profound disruption and reckoning. It endures across cultures—from Noah to Gilgamesh to Manu—because it speaks to a deep truth: the most dangerous floods are often moral, ethical, and spiritual.

Naming the True Storm: The Poison of Contempt

As a team dedicated to civic renewal, we’ve struggled with how to honestly name the turbulence of our time. The most corrosive element we face is not simple disagreement or polarization. It is contempt.

Contempt is the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.

In my work as a psychiatrist, I recognize this toxin immediately. Contempt is the number one predictor of divorce. It is a relational acid that “eliminates empathy and shared value.” You see it in the sneer, the sarcasm, the eye-roll. It is the moment we stop seeing people we disagree with as people and start seeing them as worthless.

Anger, by contrast, is a form of engagement. Contempt is a dismissal—a dehumanization.

When this poison is “nationalized,” the entire civic body begins to break down. We are not just in a fight; we are in a doomed relationship, spiraling toward a “civic divorce.”

This reframes our entire problem. You cannot debate contempt away. You cannot “win” an argument against it.

You must treat it.

Our Response: Arks for Resilience, Bridges for Connection

This is why we are launching Building Arks, Weaving Bridges.

This series is a practical and spiritual roadmap for navigating our turbulent times. It is an invitation to respond to this storm not with despair, but with courage, clarity, and commitment.

The journey requires two distinct, essential practices:

1. Building ARKS: An “Ark” is a vessel of intentional design. It’s our practice of Resilience. This is the vital inner work of protecting what is essential, creating a sanctuary for our minds, and staying grounded in our values when the world is in chaos. It’s how we survive the storm with our integrity intact.

2. Weaving BRIDGES: An Ark alone is a bunker. It’s self-preservation, not renewal. Noah, in the ancient story, saved himself but failed to save his world. Our crisis of contempt won’t be solved by better bunkers; it will be solved by Bridges. Bridges are our practice of Connection and Citizen Engagement. This is the difficult outer work of crossing divides, engaging in difficult conversations, building community, and actively participating in the hard, hopeful work of self-government.

This series is our guide to doing both.

The Journey Begins Now

Our journey begins not with a lecture, but with a practice. The most powerful antidote to contempt is gratitude.

We are launching this series with our first civic ritual, designed for your Thanksgiving table:

🕯️ A Civic Ritual for Thanksgiving: Gratitude in the Age of Contempt

This is a new tradition. It’s a shared table and a call to citizenship. It provides a simple, structured way to reclaim gratitude as a revolutionary tool for healing—a way to stop seeing each other as enemies and start seeing each other as fellow citizens.

The Plan for the Coming Year

This Thanksgiving ritual is the first step on a year-long journey. Building Arks, Weaving Bridges is a 7-part series that will guide us through a process of inner grounding (Arks) and outer engagement (Bridges).

Here is the path we will walk together:

1. Naming the Storm (Courageous awareness)

2. Building the Ark (Inner resilience)

3. Choosing Responsibility (The pivot to public integrity)

4. Gathering the Animals (Integrating our “shadow” selves)

5. Planting After the Flood (Taking initiative in an age of cynicism)

6. Becoming the Rainbow (Holding difference with dignity)

7. Renewing the Covenant (From survival to sacred, civic commitment)

Each step will offer reflections, practices for building your Ark, and concrete actions for weaving Bridges in your community.

An Invitation to Build

This series is the heart of Moonshot Press and Project 2026. It is our “moonshot” to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence by preparing ourselves, relationally and spiritually, for the hard work of democracy.

We’re not just commemorating the past. We’re preparing for the next 250 years—and inviting you to help shape them.

• 👉 Join the movement by hosting or attending the Civic Ritual for Thanksgiving this holiday.

• 👉 Follow this series as we introduce new rituals, practices, and reflections throughout the year.

• 🌐 Learn more, access the Thanksgiving ritual, and share your story at moonshot.press.

You are not alone in this storm. Let’s get to work.

The Founding Principles: Rituals for Modern Citizens component of Project 2026 is a multi-year effort to address this crisis not through legislation, but through culture. It is an initiative built on the premise that what we need is not just better policy, but a better national story and shared, non-political rituals to tell it.

Drawing inspiration from enduring religious and cultural practices—like the Passover Seder or community gatherings—this initiative seeks to crowdsource and implement a framework of civic rituals that can create a “safe container” for communication, promote empathy, and affirm a shared American identity. This is a call to move beyond merely celebrating our differences to actively building upon the core principles that bind us.

We are proposing concrete, actionable activities—from the public reading and discussion of George Washington’s Farewell Address as a guide for avoiding factionalism, to the creation of A Civic Ritual for Thanksgiving that reaffirms our common identity. This is more than just history; it is a treatment plan for disunion, a strategic effort to reclaim the promise of our founders by giving modern citizens the tools and traditions necessary to truly participate in, and sustain, our constitutional republic. Join us as we explore how intentional, shared practices can cultivate the Americanism required to bridge our many differences and secure a unified future.

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Additional Content:

Rituals for Modern Citizens: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ “Treatment Plan” for Our Challenging Times

Before his untimely death in September 2020, Rabbi Sacks articulated a plan to address the challenges facing citizens in democratic governments worldwide, and the U.S. in particular. Appearing on the Tim Ferriss Podcast to promote his book Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, he proposed a visionary remedy: building national cohesion through a shared national story, meaningful national rituals, and the empowerment of young people.

The Civic Ritual for Thanksgiving: Gratitude in the Age of Contempt

This is The Civic Ritual for Thanksgiving. It is designed not to dwell on the darkness, but to harness gratitude as a powerful antidote. I believe that by actively reflecting on the positive aspects of the American experience, we can crowd out the contempt that threatens our connections.

Think of this as civic infrastructure disguised as dinner: a therapeutic container designed to hold us while we do the real work of citizenship. It utilizes a shared story and symbolic acts to transform the table from a place of potential conflict into a space for profound connection. It asks us to lean into what we cherish, using our shared thanks as the foundation to face our challenges together.

As Thanksgiving 2025 approaches, Americans face a profound crisis of connection.

We’re besieged by fragmentation, polarization, and the persistent sting of social strife. The anxiety is pervasive. Our nation is embroiled in a fundamental struggle—one that has accompanied us since our founding—over our shared identity, core values, and future prospects. For many, a hopeful path forward remains elusive.

It is precisely against this gloomy backdrop that we must seek new ideas for reunion.

We found a powerful light in the reflections of the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Before his untimely death in September 2020, Rabbi Sacks articulated a plan to address the challenges facing citizens in democratic governments worldwide, and the U.S. in particular. Appearing on the Tim Ferriss Podcast to promote his book Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, he proposed a visionary remedy: building national cohesion through a shared national story, meaningful national rituals, and the empowerment of young people.

This article provides background on Project 2026’s Founding Principles: Rituals for Modern Citizens initiative. A Civic Ritual for Thanksgiving: Gratitude in the Age of Contempt takes Rabbi Sacks’s wisdom as its foundation, offering a concrete plan to implement these ideas and begin the necessary work of healing the American soul.

Explanatory Video generated with assistance of NotebookLM

As Thanksgiving 2025 approaches, many Americans are not gathering with a sense of unqualified gratitude, but with a deep-seated anxiety. Our political environment is characterized by fragmentation, social strife, and an increasingly polarized discourse that often seems to promote division over unity. We are currently embroiled in a fundamental struggle—one that has accompanied the nation since its founding—over our shared identity, core values, and future prospects. It is against this gloomy backdrop of national uncertainty that we must seek a way forward.

We believe that the path to reunion lies not just in policy, but in culture—specifically, in the creation of meaningful, shared civic practices.

This realization is illuminated by the wisdom of the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who, in his work on restoring the common good, articulated a powerful diagnosis for divided times. He suggested that democratic societies need three components to enhance cohesion and a shared identity:

1. A National Story

2. A meaningful National Ritual

3. The Empowerment of Young People to make the world better.

The Crisis of Civic Cohesion

As a clinical psychiatrist, I’ve been intrigued by this formula as a “treatment plan” for our body politic’s pathology. We have national holidays, of course, designed to celebrate the institutions and ideals we hold sacred, but they have largely become times for recreation and commerce, largely devoid of the unifying civic content they were meant to transmit.

In keeping with Rabbi Sacks’s suggestions, our Founding Principles: Rituals for Modern Citizens initiative is building a national ritual, reflecting the American creed, that aims to include a shared narrative, structured rituals, and concrete activities to bridge the many divides that separate us.

We are launching the A Ritual of Thanksgiving as a “prototype” into the national conversation, inviting fellow citizens to build on their own personal experiences and co-create this essential framework.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his study. Credit: The Rabbi Sacks Legacy.

The Framework: Story, Reflection, and Action

Our ritual is deliberately structured, drawing heavily from the form and function of the Jewish holiday of Passover, the Seder. The Seder is a timeless model of how a shared meal and story can be transmitted from generation to generation across millennia. This structure provides a safe, modular framework for telling the national story of “We the People,” reconnecting us to the principles of our democratic experiment and individual freedom.

1. The National Story: From Subjects to Citizens

The American story is a complex and contested tale, one of revolutionary enlightenment and unimaginable brutality, of pilgrims and slaves, of settlers, immigrants, and marginalized persons. It is a continuous, troubled journey driven by the motto: “E Pluribus Unum” (Out of Many, One).

The central text of the Civic Ritual of Thanksgiving is the Declaration of Independence’s soaring vision: “We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The ritual provides a framework to personalize this evolving narrative, allowing participants to integrate their individual, familial, and community identity into the greater tapestry of “We the People.” This creates a “safe container” for difficult communication, promoting empathy, knowledge, and dialogue over difference.

2. The National Ritual: A Time to Imagine

Similar to the Seder’s intention for participants to feel as though they were slaves freed from Egypt, the Thanksgiving ritual invites participants to imagine being part of the British King’s subjects and to actively participate in the ratification of the Constitution. This act of imagination transforms passive reflection into active ownership.

The ritual is an invitation to exploration and reflection, ensuring all voices are heard. It includes:

• Establishing an intention for presence and focus.

• Questions for exploration.

• Themes of gratitude and recognition.

• Identifying the “current plagues” confronting us (e.g., systemic polarization, climate change, inequality) and recognizing the narrow places we currently inhabit in American history.

• Empowering the youngest participants to lead the continuing journey toward freedom and justice.

3. Empowerment of Young People: Keeping the Republic

Collective narratives and shared rituals serve as a vital adhesive, but they are not enough. We must translate them into action.

The Civic Ritual of Thanksgiving explicitly empowers the next generation to be active citizens. Building on the constitutional framework, citizens across the nation can join together to discuss strategies to solve national problems and unite across regions, religions, and ideologies.

This is a mandate for active citizenship—to educate ourselves to counter factionalism, hold political parties accountable, and jointly confront the plagues that threaten our future, from systemic injustice to existential environmental challenges.

Conclusion: A Republic, If We Can Keep It

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” Thomas Paine wrote at the height of the Revolution. The same can be said of our present moment.

This Thanksgiving 2025 offers a tremendous opportunity. We invite our fellow Americans to engage in co-creating a national story and a ritual that reflects the cultural richness and diverse tapestry of “We the People.” It is a chance to reclaim our role as citizens and commit to the ongoing work of self-governance.

At the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked what the founders had given the people. “A republic, if you can keep it,” he replied. The Constitution did not come with a user guide for the citizen. This Thanksgiving, by engaging in the Civic Ritual of Thanksgiving, we can all commit to co-authoring that guide and moving our nation toward its full potential: “a more perfect union.”

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A Civic Ritual for Thanksgiving: A Citizen Guide

A Civic Ritual for Thanksgiving : Leader’s Guide

Building Arks Weaving Bridges in a Time of Storm