On the Edge of the Possible
A new chapter is starting—and the future is still uncertain.
In just a few weeks, I’m getting married.
It’s a joy I never thought I’d get to experience in this way—in my truth, in my skin, with someone who sees me whole. We’re not having a lavish wedding, but it will be beautiful and real and full of love (and yes, we will have karaoke at the reception).
And beneath that joy, there’s a growing fear. Not just the low-level anxiety I’ve grown used to living with—but a deeper kind of precarity.
Unless something shifts soon, I might be unemployed by July.
The Center for Prophetic Imagination—the nonprofit I founded and have poured myself into for years—only has enough funding to get through spring. After that, we need new support: Substack subscribers, YouTube growth, book sales, donors, speaking gigs—some combination that allows this work to continue.
I’ve been doing a lot—writing essays and creating videos, co-hosting The Lies That Bind, and releasing The Inaction Planner. I’m deep in the process of finishing my dissertation (which will be published as a book titled When Breath Finds Bone). I’m also querying agents for my fantasy novel Shimmertwig, which I hope will be the first in a series. And I’m working on other projects that bridge imagination, justice, identity, and spirit.
This is the work I love. The work I believe in.
But even with all this, I’m in a financially precarious position. Not because I’ve been idle. Not because I lack vision or capacity. But because the path I’m walking—queer, trans, post-theistic, and outside traditional institutions—is hard to fund. Especially now.
We are living through a time of rising authoritarianism, where fascist rhetoric is gaining ground, where leaders posture toward territorial conquest, and where entire communities—immigrants, trans people, the unhoused—are being targeted and scapegoated. The work I do sits in tension with all of that. It’s deliberately subversive. It refuses neat categories, easy answers, or allegiance to empire.
And that makes it harder to sustain.
Since coming out and continuing my transition, CPI has lost donors. Some quietly left. Some gave reasons. Either way, the support shrank. And while I’ve been clear-eyed about that possibility, it still stings.
I also stepped back from doing spiritual direction work—not because I stopped caring, but because I needed space to figure out how to offer that kind of accompaniment with integrity, outside the frameworks I was trained in.
And while I’m proud of the work I’ve done—through CPI, the Mennonite Worker, and Jesus Radicals—it doesn’t translate easily into conventional job history. I’ve spent decades building community, doing activism, and speaking into spiritual and cultural spaces in ways that don’t always show up on paper.
I don’t think I’m above getting a regular gig. But the reality is: between neurodivergence, ongoing medical debt from transitioning, caregiving responsibilities for my disabled son, and the deep call I still feel to this work—I need something sustainable. Something flexible. Something that honors the life I’ve built and the skills I carry.
But this isn’t a crisis appeal. It’s an invitation.
If you’ve found something meaningful in my work—my writing, my teaching, my presence—this is the moment to help it continue. Support doesn’t have to be huge to matter.
Here are some ways to help:
Subscribe to this Substack (free or paid)
Share and subscribe to CPI’s YouTube channel
Invite us to speak, teach, or collaborate
Support CPI directly with a donation
Hire me to consult—especially if your community or organization is looking for support around group discernment, ethical reflection, or process design
Or just share this post and let people know the work matters
I’m not giving up. But I am on the edge. And maybe that’s not the worst place to be—because the edge is where new things can still be born. Where the possible still opens up, if we face it together.
Thanks for being here. Thanks for walking with me.
In Solidarity,
Maki Ashe