an emerging community of changemakers engaging arts and spirit for integration and liberation
Original Mind Residency is a place to dive-deep into creative, transformative practice.
Whether it’s painting, writing, music, social innovation, or something formless and emergent, OMR is a place where creative and diverse people come together for sparks of co-creation in service to beautiful, meaningful work.
Located on Mt. Teneriffe, less than 40 miles from Seattle, OMR is a place of solitude and retreat, and of engagement and conversation with the beautiful second-growth forest surrounding it. A cedar-clad house on six acres of Cascade foothills, OMR has a small footprint and an expansive view of McClellan Butte.
Sacred Reciprocity - a gift economy
Through a gift economy, we operate on a basis of mutual generosity, gratitude, and responsibility. We trust we can sustain each other if we give of our gifts, if we give meaningfully in reciprocity, in whatever form or forms this takes. And so we offer this house and forest so that you may love them as we do, and care for them in your own particular ways. For us, there is a kind of sacredness to this exchange.
‘Beautiful Trouble’ - Systemic Transformation
Just as our oppressions are interlocking, so too are our freedoms. Our prayer is that OMR can be a home for, and a participant in, the work of deep justice our world so desperately needs. We endeavor to be a vessel for catalyzing beautiful, radical transformation, both inside and out, for the benefit of All. In this way, we foment a kind of ‘quiet rebellion’ that ripples out in ways seen and unseen.
What is ‘Original Mind’?
Our work, our world, our ethics, our angels - they demand much of us. What calls us to our most meaningful work? It’s mysterious: the generative force that moves us to write, to heal, to play, to pray.
Original Mind is beyond any concept, and yet manifests through everything. In the midst of unfathomable birth and death, how do we engage? In a world exquisite in both its beauty and its carnage, how does our soul feel most called to serve?
What worlds are we weaving in our relationships, in our brush strokes? How can our spiritual sense of what is Original shape the tangible actions in our lives?
Themes Emerging at OMR
Resting in Formlessness
Engaging in Multi-Modal Practices
Prototyping New Structures for Creative Work
Immersion in Place and Connection
Residencies and Retreats
We are looking for independent, creative individuals for both short and long term residences, as well as workshops and retreats.
With gratitude, we give thanks to those who came before us,
to our ancestors, to our guides, our teachers.
OMR resides on land stewarded by the Snoqualmie and Tulalip peoples. Knowing the injustice and genocide committed by White and European settlers, we also acknowledge the ongoing oppressions perpetuated by dominant cultures - by a culture of domination. We hope to build respectful, generative relationship with Coast Salish indigenous peoples, to make offering, and to continue learning how to be in right relationship with land and all of Creation.
With humility and courage, may we serve our deepest longings, for the benefit of All.