We’re not in the belief business.

When it comes to the big questions, we don’t think there are experts with an answer book. But we do know that our modern lives and to-do lists don’t leave us much time to think through the big stuff. And the question marks that wake us at night aren’t meant to be faced alone.

It’s our turn.

Mystics, artists, rabbis, philosophers, poets, leaders (all just regular humans like us) have been asking these big questions over thousands of years. Now it’s our time and our turn to join this conversation, because we’re the ones who are here right now.

Gather your
people this
September!

Adults need the space and the right folk to have big conversations together.

You know, the kind of conversations that you shouldn’t have with an expectation of reaching a simple answer. Or have at all, unless you’re willing to bring your whole, real self, not just the smarty pants.

How do we disagree?
How should I care for the people I love?
Where is home? How do I build the home I seek?
For whom am I responsible?
How do I face uncertainty?
How big is my story?
What do I do when the world is on fire?
What’s a good life?

Everyone’s welcome, everything’s on the table.

So if this piques your interest, you should check us out. Our facilitators are already curating dope, diverse, small groups of real humans like you. They know how to read a room and get people talking. We’ve woven together eclectic sources from everywhere these questions have reared their head to someone brave enough to puzzle through them. Think about it. You could make a new friend. Or you might even hang with that dear old friend you haven’t seen for so long named you.

Leonard Cohen, on “Anthem”
… Forget your
perfect offering.

This is not the place where you make things perfect, neither in your marriage, nor in your work, nor anything, nor your love of God, nor your love of family or country. The thing is imperfect. And worse, there is a crack in everything that you can put together, physical objects, mental objects, constructions of any kind. But that’s where the light gets in, and that’s where the resurrection is and that’s where the return, that’s where the repentance is. It is with the confrontation, with the brokenness of things.

Maria Raine Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Live the questions

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Vayikra Rabbah 4:6
This ship we're all on

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai taught the following parable: Some people were sitting in a ship when one of them took a drill and began to bore a hole under his seat. The other passengers protested saying, “Why are you doing that?” He said to them, “What does it matter to you? Am I not boring the hole under my own seat?” They answered him, “Because what you’re doing will sink the ship for all of us.”

Rabbi Simcha Bunem of Pershyscha, Hasidic Teaching 
Two pockets

Everyone should have two pockets, each containing a slip of paper. On one should be written: I am but dust and ashes, and on the other: The world was created for me. From time to time we must reach into one pocket, or the other. The secret of living comes from knowing when to reach into each.

Midrash Rabbah Numbers 1:1
Free like the desert

Anyone who does not make himself free and ownerless like the wilderness/desert will not be able to acquire the wisdom of the Torah.  That is why the verse emphasizes that the Torah was given in the desert.  

Midrash Tanhuma, Parshat Vayakhel
Our three names

Every time a person increases their good deeds, they earn themselves a new name. There are three names by which a person is called: one which their parents call them, one which people call them, and one which they earn for themselves. The last is the best one of all.

Leonard Cohen, on “Anthem”
… Forget your
perfect offering.

This is not the place where you make things perfect, neither in your marriage, nor in your work, nor anything, nor your love of God, nor your love of family or country. The thing is imperfect. And worse, there is a crack in everything that you can put together, physical objects, mental objects, constructions of any kind. But that’s where the light gets in, and that’s where the resurrection is and that’s where the return, that’s where the repentance is. It is with the confrontation, with the brokenness of things.

Rabbi Zusha, weeping, replied,

“When I get to Heaven,
I will not be asked ‘Why
weren’t you like Moses’,
or ‘Why weren’t you like
Abraham’. They will
ask, ‘Why weren’t you
like Zusha?’”