Lakefront

I was at Emerge Lakefront this weekend, a new - well, what exactly is it?

It’s a huge building, a nature sanctuary, an ecosystem, a community, a venue, a headquarters with lots of quarters but no head, a playground for grown-ups, a liminal hostel, a womb for the laptop class, a refuge for burnout recovery, a metamodern monastery, a soon-to-be institute, maybe, a lovely place to take a dog for a walk, or even a cat for a walk (I saw it) and for many it’s simply home.

Lakefront is about 20 minutes south of central Stockholm and used to be a training centre for deacons; now it is being repurposed for spiritual training for social service, reimagined in a 21st-century context. The recently renovated place has abundant internal and external space, and the capacity to host around seventy people living there. This is a significant new resource for our network, which I hope will go from strength to strength. The lake, the sauna, the restaurant, the forest, the abiding peace… I am not a vibes mechanic, nor a vibes connoisseur, but the vibes are sweet.

I felt a little weary before I got there, but I emerged after three days renewed by all the serendipities that happen when you open yourself to new experiences and allow the pattern of your life to find you again.

Tomas Bjorkman - international man of mystery with a fondness for San Pellegrino sparkling water and round tables with a specified diameter - had invited a small cluster of organisations and initiatives in Sweden, Germany and the UK that he had some role in helping to create, including Perspectiva and The Inner Development Goals. We were there to reconnect, share our joys, sorrows, and burnout stories, reflect on the last decade and look forward to what’s next, through mutual aid and joint initiatives.

On Friday, the group and a few Lakefront residents began with an antidebate, which has matured as a process. The statement chosen by the group was suitably intense: Only a new religion will save the world.

I was strongly against the statement at first, mostly due