The Table Collective Community

The Table Collective emerged from a question, asked together in a living room in Pasadena in summer of 2023: if we could do anything, create any kind of community that we want, what would it look like?

This began a process of deeply listening to our own hearts, desires, and possibilities for a vibrant, integrated creative and spiritual life.

We knew we wanted to create spaces where people could share their creative work and be embraced for who they are– where they could be seen and known and have a sense of belonging. We also wanted to create new avenues for people to thrive spiritually, drawing from the depths of contemplative wisdom found in multiple religious heritages, and moving beyond the tired patterns of religious dogmatism, judgmentalism, and self-righteousness that ignored the beautiful riches of the world’s spiritual traditions.

Soon after, to take some first concrete steps, in another living room in the same neighborhood, we began to share our art and creativity with each other. We experienced moments of real connection, compassionately seeing and celebrating one another. So then we invited others.

Meanwhile we were talking to more friends from around the world who saw something in what we were creating, and they wanted to be part of it. We began to experiment in Asia with some new ways of sharing art and creativity online.

We began to see how creative expression and spiritual practices each provide common grounds for us to share our humanity as creative, spiritual, and relational beings. This means that people from many different backgrounds can all receive from one another, practicing a generous mutuality as we share our creative and spiritual insights, experiences, and ways of seeing the world. And when we do that, there’s a beautiful resonance of compassionate, creative, interconnection that emerges as a shared experience, whatever our spirituality. 

We created a course, “Wisdom for Artists from Ancient Wells: Resources for Creativity from the Great Religious Heritages” as one practical way to begin bridging between spiritual wisdom and the creative life. Then we began hosting themed art shares monthly, offering creative prompts and also an online community to share work with others around the world. Next Kevin Caldwell started a podcast of his own in which he explored the nature of humanity and the cosmos and the divine drawing from religious heritages, quantum physics, philosophy and the arts.

However, Table Collective is also a creative offering in itself. It’s a community and an organization, but our creation of TC is in many ways just like any creative process, in that an artist does not always know where a song, a poem, a painting, or a book is going when you start. So we frequently paused and asked “it”, personifying Table Collective, “What do you want to become?”

Our sense? That at the end of the day, our motivation is for people to experience a deeper sense of compassionate and creative connection, with themselves, with others, with nature, and with Reality, however they understand that. In essence, to know that they are loved and not alone. 

And that meant we needed more touchpoints, more and deeper ways of engaging in community and forming relationships, and some rhythms to more intentionally engage in spiritual practice together, receiving from many traditions and integrating that with our creative processes. 

Our story began when we asked “if we could create any kind of community that we want, what would it look like?” And the path has led us to form the Table Collective as a creative interspiritual community.