What happens after we die? There’s much speculation about the experience for the dead, but for those left behind, for the living, we know stories are what happens. We become stories–the stories we told, and the stories we lived. Last week, a popular Irish singer-songwriter, a community artist, [...]

Today is the fifth anniversary of the catastrophic Almeda Fire, which destroyed over 2500 residences and displaced thousands of people across Ashland, Talent, Phoenix, and Medford, Oregon where I live. One of the victims of that fire was Talent resident Isabella Ruikis. I first met Isabella when The Hearth [...]

The Hearth has been contracted by Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary to help develop and oversee training programs for 100 leaders from 50 strategic and diverse congregations and organizations as well as 25 independent Christian leaders in the art of community storytelling. In this grant-funded, experimental program each congregation or Christian [...]

In partnership with the Austin Story Project and Dandelion House, The Hearth is helping to facilitate The Fierce Nonviolence Pilgrimage. Led by Certificate in Community Storytelling Graduate Fumiaki Tosu, this immersion program for young adults will explore the spiritual roots and daily practices of nonviolent social change– where the inner [...]

We are searching for the boats we forgot to build. –Barry Lopez, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World “Why Boats? It has to do with the ritual of involving the community in building something that has part of them in it. All these planks somehow go together and make a boat. [...]