We take care of our own.
Living the Way, Together · Start with the man next to you.
ScrollThe Mission
“Our own” is not a small circle. It means whoever is in front of us.
Men die alone in trucks and apartments here every week. Neighbors go through winter without company or reliable heat.
1st
Oldest state in the nation by median age
1 in 3
Older Mainers living with depression — the highest rate in New England
7,300+
Overdoses in Maine in 2025 — not deaths, overdoses
31%
Of Maine households are one person, living alone
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau (American Community Survey); Maine Drug Data Hub; 2025 Maine Healthy Aging Data Report.
The clinical system and the non-profits catch what they can. The churches, where they survive, are too narrow. Most people fall through the cracks.
Come & See is a small company of men in Greater Portland, Maine. Somebody has to sit with the dying, drive the man in withdrawal to detox, split the wood for the widow, shovel the walk, stand with the addicted and the imprisoned, visit the ones nobody visits, sit with the grieving through a first Christmas alone. That’s us.
This is unglamorous work. It’s physical. And it takes strength and heart — the nerve not to look away, and the care to be good company once you’re there. Both are trained.
The Machine has a thousand ways to improve you. Not one of them asks you to hold someone else’s suffering, or their joy.
What this is
We meet in person to practice the things a life needs to hold up under weight. Not a church, not a class, not an app.
It starts with the plain, hard stuff: getting honest, dropping what’s wrecking you, learning to pay attention, learning to be with people. That’s the groundwork. Everything else — the sitting, the labor, the staying with suffering — is built on it.
We lean on two traditions of spiritual discipline and presence — Christianity and Zen — both tested over thousands of years. They’re different, and we treat both with respect. Here’s what we actually do →
The heart of it: we help each other stop trying to fix ourselves, and learn to love — really love — instead.
The Long Training
The days are fine, and they’re going by, but underneath it we know we’re not really living.
We want life. Real life. We can feel it — somewhere over there.
The Machine keeps us behind glass, by ourselves — scrolling, self-improving, always looking for the next thing, never satisfied.
Nobody teaches us how to live anymore. Families are struggling, distracted, busy, broken. School didn’t. Work doesn’t. The phone sure doesn’t.
You can’t think your way into being the man who shows up for another man at 2am. You have to practice, with other people, over time. That’s what this is: an apprenticeship in how to live.
The character that takes is well known, and it’s the same for everyone.
For Whom
The containers that used to form and support men have collapsed. Men in this country are dying and suffering alone at rates that are hard to look at — and we’re hurting one another. Come & See is built to find a new path forward.
If you’re a man who wants to do this work, come.
If you’re serious about a path — Christian, Zen, or another — this is meant to support that, not pull you off it.
We keep what’s said here between us. No converting, no pitching, no proselytizing. 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, and not required.
The first months are the plain work: practices from the Christian and Zen traditions, held in a small group that keeps showing up. It builds a particular kind of character, slowly.
The giving starts in the room. Before anyone goes anywhere, we’re showing up for the man next to us — and a man who won’t do that here won’t do it out there either.
Later, we turn outward together. Some of us are already doing this work — hospice, recovery, jail visits, care of the elderly. Others begin. The formation continues; the work becomes the ground.
Beyond that, for those who want it, there’s a longer commitment — a rule of life, real obligation, real work. We’ll build that as we go. You don’t have to know now whether you want any of it.
Come once to see, any time. After that we start in cohorts — we begin together and walk together — with new cohorts a few times a year, so you won’t wait long. Show up, meet the men, see if it’s for you.
We’ll draw on whatever helps — Christian and Zen, old and living. No one tradition owns the Way.
About
I started Come & See because life has been hard and finding a formation path and people was a godsend. 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.
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’ve taken vows in the Japanese Soto Zen tradition and continue training with Joshin Byrnes of Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Community. I started my life as an atheist and even now live in doubt and questions.
I’ve done this work in prisons, with the dying, with the homeless, with those in addiction. I’m not offering a method. I’m offering a form, and I keep it with you.
What I want to build here is a small company of men who take on the ongoing work of bearing witness in this region — showing up, steadily, for the people nobody else is showing up for. Come & See is the door.
I live in Freeport with my wife and dog, Monk. You’ll find us on motorcycles, writing and reading, working on the property, and exploring Maine. I’m a novice hunter and could use some friends and guidance there — I’m a member at Scarborough Fish & Game.
I’ve just started writing about all this and about my life. 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 October.
Start with the man next to you.