ascent

so after two years of travels, work and explorations in different parts of the world, i find myself landing gently into the snowy breath of Montreal. renewed, inspired, humbled, i come home enriched with friendships, ideas and practices to bring back into the fold of my life and community here in Canada.

i'm grounding again. bringing this all home now, to practice it here in a new way. as part of that, i've taken on new project here in Montreal with ascent magazine and timeless books with whom i have been connected for years as a writer and through building community and young people's leadership (santropol roulant chefs became managing editors and vise versa!). they have invited me to help lead them into the next stage of their lifecycle as an award-winning not-for-profit Canadian magazine, book and web publishing group, and community of practitioners..... it is an amazing proposition with an incredible amount of trust and spaciousness to create...

i'm really excited about creating a new kind of space, a conscious space that invites, integrates, inspires and incites the worlds and stories of social action, sustainability, creativity and engaged spirituality through a physical & urban space; a print & media space; an organizational space of vitality and learning, a space that hosts and holds the work we've been doing and imagining locally and trans-locally...

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to tap into my thoughts on and the emergence of the conscious kitchen experiment this November in Greece at Axladitsa during the olive harvest,

click on my Venus' Kitchen blog.

here is an exerpt:

we learned about how to integrate the conscious kitchen not only as a programme, but into the whole operating system of how axladitsa hosts all its gatherings. beyond cooking together and hosting each other through food, is collectively being conscious of where the food is from, what choices we made and make everyday to plant, pick, buy, and compost our food and be conscious of where we create waste. so we have ideas for how to further integrate this into further gatherings with the vision of axladitsa becoming self-sufficient.

our larger purpose for being together at Axladitsa was to deepen our understanding and practice of hosting, or of holding space for emergence to occur.

the thing that really came up was about the evolution of hosting spaces for meaningful conversations into this realization that the people who gathered are developing a next level of this practice through hosting meaningful spaces. this means living this practice by integrating it into our daily lives.

i feel this is what has been emerging for me these last few years, this deeper integration and consciousness around the personal, collective and natural.

and so it is important for me to be part of an emerging collective, a group and network of people who are living and working this way, who are constantly working to be aware of the emergence of new patterns for organizing their lives, their work, and our collective work in the world. i have been feeling - and now i am witnessing - something happening that has to do with a paradigm shift around how we live, work, relate, communicate, convene, reflect, be still, and move into purposeful and wise action.