Why I'm launching a pop-up relational monastery

The Nectary is home to a many-headed teacher, offering a networked teaching and stumbling towards an economy of love

Today I want to introduce you to a project I’ve been stewarding, in collaboration with some close friends, for the past ten months. It’s called The Nectary: part pop-up monastery, part think tank, part folk school, and part dinner party. It’s happening in Victoria, British Columbia next month.

I’m grateful to be sharing this with the community of innovators here on Substack — many of whom intuitively understand the need for 10,000 wisdom schools.

But I’m still going to start by answering the hypothetical question:

Why did my friends and I create The Nectary?

We created The Nectary because we know there is a crisis on our planet. This crisis places intense demands on us, asking us to rethink everything about how we live: our livelihoods, our neighborhoods, our politics, our child-rearing, our relationship with the Earth.

Meeting this crisis requires the creation of new kinds of gathering places. We need places where we can enter deep community, remember our true nature, and develop in wisdom and love. We need places where we can walk each other towards the maturity that will help us steward a more beautiful culture – even as we confront ever-greater chaos, suffering, and confusion.

Why does the word ‘monastery’ come into this?

It’s not, strictly speaking, the right word. But it’s an important nod to the rigorous, communal, and radical ways of living that many of us are inspired by.

As some of you know, I had the privilege of training for two years at the Monastic Academy, or MAPLE. For many, MAPLE has been a shining example of a 21st-century wisdom institution – and for good reason. What I learned there forever changed my sense of what is good, what is true, what is beautiful, and what is possible.

When I was no longer aligned with MAPLE’s mission and way of functioning, I left – but I knew that I wanted to continue the work. After all, my teacher Soryu’s vision included a forest of 500 monasteries engaged in friendly competition with each other. In collaboration with the amazing friends I’d met, I wanted to eventually plant a tree in that forest.

“If you ever do start up that collectivist monastery,” one friend said as I was leaving, “let us know.”

From the solitary sage to a network of spiritual friends

In the two years since I left MAPLE, I’ve been engaged in slow, deep, behind-the-scenes relational work with friends – tending what we call the sacred network or the intimate web. Here are some of the ingredients that are distinct about how we work, which help nourish The Nectary’s tender roots:

• We see spiritual friendship as a primary path towards waking up and growing up.

• We practice leadership not in solitude, but in intimate crews. Mutual shadow work, radical honesty, and real-world accountability help us see the risks that come with power.

• We understand ourselves as a many-headed teacher, offering a networked teaching into a wisdom commons. We swim against the stream of commodified spirituality and wellness, knowing that we can never ‘own’ or trademark what we learn together.

• At the same time, we practice the sovereign art of sourcekeeping – honoring the fact that each of us must take full responsibility for our distinct path and vow.

• We aspire to create an ‘economy of love’ and true interdependence, entangling ourselves in what Miki Kashtan calls shared risk.

We want to offer the sweetness of what we’ve learned

The Nectary is a monthlong research and teaching gathering, during which we will offer workshops and teachings that emerge from our years of behind-the-scenes work.

Catalyzed by the generous support of our friend James Baker at Intentional Society, The Nectary will support 10 teacher-practitioners across the monthlong period – offering them free room and board and dedicated time for research and experimentation.

The Nectary is not a great forest tree. It’s more like a flower – blooming for its season, dying back when it is time. But I believe its nutrients are feeding the roots of a great tree. And I’m excited to see what kind of shade, what kind of fruit, what kind of leaf-rustling breezes this tree might offer in the coming months and years.

We would really love your help

If you’d like to see more wisdom institutions in the world – especially ones that foreground relationship – I invite you to make a gift to The Nectary. Your gift will help cover the expenses of our gathering (food, travel, shelter) and support Nectary teacher-practitioners in devoting more of our time and energy to our entangled work beyond this gathering. I have a goal of raising $10,000 for the project over the coming month.

Smaller gifts can come to us via PayPal. If you are interested in making a tax-deductible gift of over $250, that option is available via a U.S. 501c3 fiscal sponsor. To do this, please email us.

We would be so grateful to receive your nurturing. Thank you for your friendship, and for walking along this path with me.

Images by Ogawa Kazumasa.