Who am I?

Nothing written here will answer the above question, but at least it will give you some reading material.

My name is Christopher. I’m not a guru, not enlightened, not a step ahead of you. I’ve just been digging in the soil long enough to know that something is deeply off about the world we’ve built, and something ancient, good, and utterly human is trying to return.

I’ve traveled widely. I’ve seen parts of the planet that most wouldn’t bother looking at. I’ve been a fly on the wall, and guest in the house of people who are living overflowing and beautiful lives, surround by abundance, yet electricity and indoor plumbing were non-existent, or a recently acquired luxury, and to them a novelty. Yet the look in their eyes and fullness in their hearts showed all. (see my photograph page). They had something that I found only faint echoes of in the many I encountered in my homeland. It’s like we all have a seed of something but in the culture I was born into, it’s rarely watered. I’ve seen communities where this aspect of humanity has been valued and grown into a grove of giants, interconnecting roots and branches, forming a canopy, under which peace, joy, and contentment reign, and children play.

I’ve mucked about in the alternative lifestyle space for many years. I’ve worked a wide variety of side hustles, started business, and picked up a laundry list of skills. I’ve raised livestock, grown crops, tended gardens, kept bees, planted trees, hosted events, built structures, and all the rest. I have the full toolkit for a homesteader, entrepreneur, and teacher, though I don’t call myself any of those things. One label I am willing to accept is that of a father. What I’m most proud of, is my daughter who “gets it.” At the core of everything I do, there is this ideal that I’ve alluded to above. I’m trying to give water to that part of our shared humanity that has been with us all along but neglected somehow in modernity. That has given rise to something tangible on the land I love and tend. My daughter feels it and I watch it nourish her being. When she is away from it, I sense her flowers start to wilt a little.

I’m no stranger to the mainstream. I grew up in it, and even been in it recently working and living. Doing so has opened my eyes to how many people are in need of the gifts and perspective I’ve been given in this life. I don’t reject modernity, or technology, or any of it. I see the industrial period as a phase of humanity’s adolescence. An awkward and destructive growth phase. I mourn what has been lost and damaged, but I don’t advocate for more loss and damage. Instead, I choose to foster a re-awakening of the best parts of our nature, now empowered with the tools to free us from the cycles of abuse.

I’ve been part of intentional communities in many forms, I've joined them, helped to initiate and build them, welcomed others into them, and supported them from the outside. I’ve seen dysfunction and I’ve lived it. I’ve made mistakes, plenty of them, and I offer what perspective I’ve earned so that you might avoid repeating the same ones. I’m still learning, and there are plenty of mistakes I haven’t had the pleasure to make yet. That’s why we gather. That’s why we share. We each bring our experience to the table.

I’ve searched the world religions, thoroughly. I’ve delved deeply into sacred text of modern and ancient systems of understanding the ineffable. I’ve tried on the garb of modern materialism, secular humanism, atheism, and the like. I’ve practiced and been disciplined while exploring those lineages of spiritual tradition that require it. I do not reject any of these disparate paths. Nor do I contend anything can be gained by any of them. If you forced me to identify with something that ended in “ism,” first I would resent the process, but eventually land on Mysticism. Only because I believe there is value in the transformation that takes place when one attempts to know the unknowable. That value loosely translates as beauty. Like a tree that becomes beautiful in its fullness as it reaches closer to the Sun, a destination it will never achieve, nor would it survive the journey if it ever got close.

The real question isn’t who am I,

but rather who am I to YOU?

Let’s discover that together, with intention and presence.

Schedule a 1-on-1 in the only moment you have agency, Right Now!