In pursuit of human wholeness.

The Raft Project is a multimedia space for generation, interaction, and reflection: where ideas, stories, and imaginations can come together and co-create inspired visions for meaningful connections with daily life and future possibilities.

At the core of this work is an effort to discover and nurture our natural capacity for wholeness: living in sincere ways that sustain our deepest human needs and empower both personal and communal fulfillment.

Grounded in the experience of modern challenges, the Raft Project acts as a laboratory for considering how we live now, and what is possible for creating a more connected, enriched experience of reality.

Why a raft?

Human life is full of uncertainty: a constant searching for who we are, where we’re going, and how to live a life that is meaningful and expressive of our best qualities. Exploring these things can be difficult, asking us to experience the authentic change of growth and embracing the difficult aspects of life that touch every human being. Despite such difficulty, it’s a journey that is whole and leads to wholeness: in other words, a life that includes all of us, in connection to all things.

The raft represents taking this journey and what can support us on it: as something essential, what we bring with us is important and worth examining closely. As we encounter mystery on the adventure of self-discovery, the raft provides a center of stability from which we draw support. There is vulnerability, as well as courage. What lies ahead is unknown, but in the unknown is the hope of authenticity, a way of being that widens our life and fills it with possibility.

A Way Across

It is not easy to seek and live out what matters most to us in life, and the world we live in today can often restrain or dishearten us from pursuing our deepest hopes. Nevertheless, we all deserve to find a path that is whole and nourishing. This is a path that cannot be bought or given: we learn to walk it ourselves, drawing from the learning and wonder that is inherent in life itself.

The Raft Project is a way of approaching this journey, along with the challenges that come with it, with curiosity. The paths to wholeness are many, and our imaginations are enriched through encountering this diversity. In doing so, we learn what is useful in supporting us as we grow with life, and how we can do this right where we are.

With this in mind, we set out to encounter the rafts and the raft builders of humanity. How are examples of wholeness being lived in this very moment, embodied by individuals and communities? What does this look like? What emerges from these examples?

Making the Journey

There is no questioning the complexity and unique difficulties of our time: we’re all familiar with them in one way or another. Confronted by these challenges, it can be easy to withdraw or despair, to shrink our sense of self and world out of fear and protectiveness. The urge to cling to what’s familiar is a natural one, but it fails to move us forward: as things change, we are called to be in relationship with that movement. Our resistance to change only prolongs our discomfort: transformation, and the freedom that comes with it, is inherent in embracing life’s journey and discovering the value present in all of us.

A journey is not an answer, but a question lived deeply, courageously, and openly. It exists in a between-space that is full of unknowns, but its very presence in the margins is the ground of all possibility. A journey sets forth into spaces unrevealed, willing to lean into mystery for the sake of becoming something more than what it was at the beginning.

The Raft Project places itself within that space of unknowing, without answers but certain of possibilities. It seeks not to make claims, but to encourage discoveries through asking important questions. Its goal is not to see a task finished, but to empower the work of human wholeness which is always ongoing. Engaging the uncertainty of our current reality is part of that work, and it can be challenging to do so without the comfort of answers. Nevertheless, meeting uncertainty as a natural force nurtures curiosity. From curiosity, true discovery can emerge.

This project seeks to gather inspiration from all walks of life, in acknowledging that life itself is diverse, inherently creative potential. There are no limits to what can move us towards a more enlivened encounter with reality, and it is this intimacy that empowers a more harmonized way of being in the world. Discovering who we are does not happen in isolation: it comes from sustained, nourished connection with life itself.

Towards Life, Inspired

Inspiration is more than temporary excitement, or the flashing of an idea. It is the source of our best selves, the generative conduit of all we hope to be to ourselves and to the world. To live an inspired life is not merely sentimental or naively positive: it is the endeavor to see things clearly, and to live in harmony with life because of that clarity. Life in inspiration is life embraced: with nothing left out, each element folded into experience and nourished as wisdom.

It is the hope that you find places here where the mind and heart can engage that inspiration: centers of connection, meaning, and self-inquiry. This inspiration can and will come in many forms, from many identities, backgrounds, and life experiences. At the center of these offerings and conversations is a demonstration: of life-giving, life-affirming examples that can motivate us towards enlivened ways of being.

On Offer

  • This section contains a collection of entries on human life, important questions and choices that face us today, and the pathways to wholeness amidst these circumstances. While current entries are developed by myself, I hope to include offerings from future contributors and collaborators!

  • Continuing the conversation: here you can explore the everyday, lived examples of human aspiration and the possibilities they inspire.

  • The Raft Project is (and likely always will be) in a state of gradual growth: curious, observant, and responsive to the moment. My priority is to develop quality resources that feel relevant and sustaining for the long-term. I hope this commitment will allow for a focused, evergreen emergence of content that can nurture both an enlivened present and visions for transformative futures.