On Conflict and Repair

WHAT IS CREATIVE DEVOTION?

Creative Devotion is a conversation series about the parts of the creative process that rarely get witnessed.

It is a series about honoring the subtle, daily acts of devotion that actually build vision. It’s about honoring the daily surrenders, the descents into the inner world, the quiet and sometimes reluctant returns to the work, and the trust that something beautiful is forming even when you can't see it yet.

This series makes space for the risk and vulnerability it takes to keep showing up in awkward seasons. The grief that cracks us open and, somehow / sometimes, spawns a visionary or creative process.

It is about the spiritual elements of creative life that we often keep private because they're hard to explain, but are inseparable from what gets created.

If you've ever wondered whether your creative process is "too slow", "too strange", or “too spiritual” or “mythic”; if you've felt the inexplicable depth of calling up beauty from your inner void spaces or if you know that grief and vision are more intertwined than most people want to admit, this space is for you.

JOIN US HERE :: JANUARY 15TH

WINTER INQUIRY • 2026

Grief often marks the very beginning of visionary work.

It can show up as an unmet need, a rupture, or a loss of someone, something, or some part of ourselves.

Grief opens a space in us that can often fill with longing, creative impulse, and with a quiet desire to build, say, or tend to something that hasn't been tended or created yet.

Note → This isn’t always the case. Not all grief is stirring. Not all grief leads us to desires. Sometimes grief teaches us how to do nothing, how to pause, and how to melt into the Earth.

And, yet, sometimes grief also teaches us how to craft, how to be audacious, and how to boldly pursue what wants to be created.

Sometimes, what we call vision is simply the creative answer to a question our grief is asking.

A response to a prayer we didn’t know we (or others) were praying.

In this season of Creative Devotion, we’ll explore how grief and vision are intertwined. How the work of making culture, crafting living stories, and generating tangible possibilities can come directly from our aches and losses.

Creative Devotion is a space for honest conversation, creative reflection, and shared presence. You don’t need to come with answers. Just your lived experience, your curiosities, and your care.

HERE YOU ARE, IN THE CYCLE BETWEEN THE PAST AND THE FUTURE, CHOOSING TO SPEND YOUR MIRACULOUS TIME IN THE EXPLORATION OF HOW HUMANS CAN LEARN FROM THE WORLD AROUND US HOW TO BEST COLLABORATE, HOW TO SHAPE CHANGE.

Adrienne Maree Brown

We’ll be gathering at Deep Waters

FROM 6:00 P.M. - 9:00 P.M.

2710 N INTERSTATE AVE
PORTLAND, OR 97227

Click Here to Register

Winter Panelists

  • Jenny is the founder of Temple of Belonging Gathering, a joyful and down-to-earth integrative coach, breathwork facilitator, ceremonial space holder, muse of the mystery who specializes in creating brave spaces for connection, where deep healing and life changing wisdom bloom with ease and trust.

    She offers the permission you've been looking for to be exactly what you are - whole and worthy of the connection your heart most longs for.

    She is committed to unveiling all that stands in the way of your ability to return to nourishing and honest connection with life.

  • Simon is an internationally experienced psychedelic therapist, educator, and author of Psychedelics and the Soul: A Mythic Guide to Psychedelic Healing, Depth Psychology, and Cultural Repair (North Atlantic Books, 2024).

    With a master's in depth counseling psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, he has taught for a variety of psychedelic training programs, including CIIS, Naropa University, and Inner Trek, a pioneering legal psilocybin facilitator training program in Oregon. His work integrates Jungian psychology, mythology, and Internal Family Systems therapy, focusing on psychedelic integration, masculinity, and depth psychology.

    Simon's journey began with anthropological research in an Aboriginal Australian community at the age of twenty. Today, his approach to healing is informed by these diverse experiences traveling and learning from Indigenous cultures, including the Shipibo ayahuasca tradition and the Native American Church. He served as a retreat leader and therapist at MycoMeditations, a leading psilocybin therapy retreat center in Jamaica, for a year and a half. Before becoming a therapist, Simon worked as an experiential educator and guide, leading study-abroad programs across ten countries.

  • Onry is an award-winning singer, dancer, actor, and pianist based in Portland, Oregon. 

    He studied music in Ukraine and Moldova and has performed throughout the US and Europe. He's toured with Lyle Lovett, been a soloist with The Maui Chamber Orchestra and Oregon Symphony, and performed with American Repertory Theater and Portland Opera Company.

    Some of his notable performances include the Black Clown, Madame Butterfly, Sanctuaries, African American requiem, Show Boat, Carmen, Faust, The Big Night, La Traviata, Pirates of Penzance, and Hairspray.

    Onry is on the board of directors for non-profit queer artist collective Future Prairie as well as the African American Requiem at Oregon Symphony. He is a music consultant for Kings School in Seattle, Washington and Active Space, a creative studio for people of color in Portland, Oregon.

    Outside of music, Onry enjoys tea, anti-racist activism, philosophy, linguistics, traveling, collecting vinyl records, and spending quality time connecting with family and friends.

  • Jocelyn is the founder of Deep Waters, a painter, a seeker, a mother, a teacher and someone who has deeply investigated and applied the Dharma to all aspects of her life.

    Jocelyn has a masters degree is transformative arts which allowed her to deeply investigate the intersection points between her greatest passions in life: creativity, community and consciousness. She has taught art extensively with kids, teens and adults and has merged her background in Buddhism, mindfulness and creativity to offer a unique approach to exploring the Dharma and the depths of Self through the harmonization of inner stillness and outer expression

WHAT IS CREATIVE DEVOTION NOT?

Not a podcast. Not another stuffy art talk. Not a lecture. Not a zoom call. Not another livestream or a recorded event.

This is a living, breathing conversation. You have to be there in-person. Flesh and bone. Shoes off. Buttcheeks on the floor. Heart open and present.

Creative Devotion is a modern council for nurturing a vision of soft, earthen futures.

It’s not a typical panel discussion where the audience passively receives top-down, lecture-style wisdom from artists or founders. Instead, it’s an invitation into a multi-perspective space where we gather to share experiences, ask questions, dissolve the boundaries between “speaker” and “audience”, and listen across difference.

Each gathering centers a guiding question pulled from something alive in the culture and in us. We’re not asking for finished, polished answers. We’re asking for presence, curiosity, and the willingness to be in shared inquiry about how we live, how we grieve, how we repair, and how we cultivate the futures we long to inhabit together.

We’re calling in creators, culturemakers, and keepers of innate wisdom who have used their creativity and devotion as a way to meet challenge, cultivate new possibilities, and nurture a sense of belonging within their community.

If that’s you, welcome home. Join us.

Past Sessions

  • Nico Goldenwolf, Ray, Sachprakash

    Creative work is creative risk. We risk being seen. We risk being known. We risk sunken costs. We risk our hearts, and failure, and longing, and love.

    Each and everytime we extend ourselves into the creative unknown, we must ask, “Is it worth it? Is it worth it? Is it worth it?”

    And perhaps for the sake of our future cultures, it might be.

  • Kristin Anchors, Todd Joseph, Alison Dale

    To take even one step toward bringing a vision to life can require a great deal of vulnerability. Because what if all fails? Or falls flat? Or doesn’t take? What if everyone leaves? Or hates it? Or hates me? We all ask some version of these very same questions. Some people say that all you need to pursue a vision is a plan. But, deep down, we all know that the creative process calls for so much more than that. There is so much risk tied up in trying to bring a vision to life. In this session of our series, we’ll explore how we negotiate Risk and Belonging in the creative process.

  • Grief often marks the very beginning of visionary work.

    It can show up as an unmet need, a rupture, or a loss of someone, something, or some part of ourselves.

    Grief opens a space in us that can often fill with longing, creative impulse, and with a quiet desire to build, say, or tend to something that hasn't been tended or created yet.

    Note → This isn’t always the case. Not all grief is stirring. Not all grief leads us to desires. Sometimes grief teaches us how to do nothing, how to pause, and how to melt into the Earth.

    And, yet, sometimes grief also teaches us how to craft, how to be audacious, and how to boldly pursue what wants to be created.

    Sometimes, what we call vision is simply the creative answer to a question our grief is asking.

    A response to a prayer we didn’t know we (or others) were praying.

    In this season of Creative Devotion, we’ll explore how grief and vision are intertwined. How the work of making culture, crafting living stories, and generating tangible possibilities can come directly from our aches and losses.

    Creative Devotion is a space for honest conversation, creative reflection, and shared presence. You don’t need to come with answers. Just your lived experience, your curiosities, and your care.

Past Contributors