Living the Way, Together.
A little school of the Way in Maine
ScrollYou scroll through dinner. You don’t return the call. The days are fine, and they’re going by, and underneath it you know you’re not really living.
You want life. Real life. You can feel it — somewhere over there.
The Machine keeps you behind glass, by yourself — scrolling, self-improving, always looking for the next thing.
No good life was ever built alone.
What this is
We’re not a church, a class, or an app. We meet to study — and to practice together — the things that make a life worth living.
We start with basic human work, and, in my experience, it’s the hardest part, especially today: getting honest, turning from what deforms us, learning to pay attention, learning to be with people.
Some would call this the early stages of sanctification — putting off the old self and putting on the new. Some Catholics call it the purgative way, the first stage in spiritual life. In Zen, you might call it keeping the precepts.
It’s the ground a real life grows in.
We draw on two traditions that have carried people for thousands of years: Christianity and Zen. They are not the same. They point in different directions and have different maps of what a human being is. But down where we start, at the foundation, they’re doing one thing: clearing the ground. We can’t go deep if we’re stuck in destructive patterns.
Here is the key thing: we work together to stop trying to fix ourselves and instead learn to love.
You
The point is not to polish your “best self.” The point is to learn to care for the person right beside you. Perhaps more important than anything else is simply not turning away.
Christians call that charity. In Zen, it’s the bodhisattva vow. Different stories, same direction: toward each other, and toward a world that abandons far too many.
Somewhere we learned to be afraid of each other. We screen the call. We cross the street. We keep our distance from the hungry, the sick, the lonely, the poor, the strange, the ones who make us uncomfortable. (And, if we’re used to the screen, most people now make us uncomfortable.) People become problems, not persons to be met.
Both traditions refuse this, completely.
Christians have always known the face you turn from is Christ’s own — whatever you did to the least of these. For Zen, the stranger is already buddha, and the wall between you was never real. The one you shut out is often the one you were looking for.
So we don’t care what label the world has put on you — smart one, screwup, success, failure, drunk, loner, liberal, conservative, jerk, none of the above — because you are far more than that. Without exception.
For Whom
Everyone.
Our first concern is the person next to us, not whether they share our views. We are not trying to fill a room with people who think the same thing. It’s not meant to be comfortable, yet it is meant to be satisfying, even fun.
If you are serious about one path — Christian, Zen, or another — this is meant to support that, not pull you off it. No converting, no pitching, no proselytizing.
What’s said here, stays here. You don’t have to believe anything to start. Just show up — and keep showing up.
How it works
Our focus is practicing and doing together, because more knowledge never really changed anyone. Readings will be short.
This September, we begin with Practicing the Way by John Mark Comer. It’s a simple, practical doorway — no seminary or special background required. He teaches from an Anabaptist Protestant perspective, but you don’t need to share that view, or have faith whatsoever. We’ll read it straight, say where we disagree, and let it help us shape a rule of life we actually keep together.
From there, the road widens: the desert fathers and mothers, Benedictine and Ignatian practice, Zen teachers and texts. No one tradition owns the Way.
About
I started Come & See because most people are not going to go to church, don’t have a clear path to walk, and aren’t going to a monastery any time soon.
And we all have big questions: What is this life? How do I not waste it? And how do I become a good, whole human being in a world designed to keep us anxious, busy, hungry, distracted, and alone?
The market and technology — which try to swallow everything, including relationships and religion — answer by telling us to do more and more. “Produce and achieve,” they say, “or we’ll throw you away. You’re on your own.”
But the Christian tradition and years of Zen practice, on the other hand, both told me that those questions were the wrong questions. Technology will always swallow those questions. Stop trying to fix yourself, they said in their various ways, and learn to love. And you can’t love by yourself.
I live in Freeport with my wife and dog, Monk. I lived for several years in Zen monasteries, attended years of AA meetings, and am a member of the Parish of the Holy Eucharist here in the Portland area. I started my life as an atheist and even now live in doubt and questions.
I’m not here as an expert with a method to hand down. I’m here doing the same work as everyone else in the room. My simple belief is that there’s a better way to go about this, and we can figure it out together.
I’ve just started writing a bit about all this and about my life. You can read more in the writing here, or follow along on Instagram.
Come and see.
Yours,
Jonas Leddington
Join the waitlist. We’ll be in touch before we start in September.
Start with the person next to you.