Some things are hard to find in ordinary life — a place where your inner life is taken seriously. Where showing up honestly is not only welcome but expected.

Most of us are surrounded by people who mean well and don't quite understand us. We manage that distance. We get good at it. But it costs something over time.

The Institute for Creative Living exists because that cost is too high, and because the antidote is simpler than most people expect: other people. Regular gathering. The slow accumulation of being known.

We meet online — without agenda, without performance, without the pressure to have it all figured out. We read books, mend things, cook, share what we're making, and remind each other that this — the fully inhabited life — is worth the effort it takes.

Our community life is organized around four regular gatherings, all held on Zoom:

Monthly Gathering with Jacob — Teaching, reflection, and open sharing. A place to be reminded of what matters.

Book Club — Member-hosted and community-chosen, facilitated by Joanne Sprott and other members. We read together in cycles, at our own pace.

Mending Circle — Bring something to mend, something to make, or just your hands and your voice, facilitated by Susan Trial Wolfe.

Cooking Circle — Periodic gatherings for making food, sharing recipes, and feeding each other, facilitated by Emily Nordby.

Show & Tell — Periodic gatherings for sharing what you've been making, creating, and working on, facilitated by Meredith "Mere" Morckel.

These gatherings are member-shaped and community-sustained. Jacob leads the monthly gathering, occasional workshops, and special events. The rest belongs to the people who show up.

I built this community because I needed it — and because I kept noticing that other people need it too.

For years, I produced and facilitated workshops and events. People would travel from across the country, sometimes across the world, to attend. Something real happened in those rooms: breakthroughs, reconnections, a sense of being seen that many hadn't felt in years.

And then they went home.

Back to lives that didn't quite understand what had shifted in them. The nourishment didn't last because there was nowhere to plant and grow it. What I kept seeing, year after year, was that peak experiences — however powerful — need a place to call home. People to integrate with over time.

That's what this is. Not a workshop or a course, but a place to keep coming back to. People who understand that staying fully alive is both necessary and — right now — quietly countercultural. It takes more than good intentions. It takes somewhere to belong.

That's why this exists.