Way Collective

A contemplative community for love and liberation. // Connection • Curiosity • Creativity • Collaboration • Consciousness • Compassionate Action

This is a community for people looking to unite for the common good in an increasingly divisive world. We are a community both rooted in and improvising upon the Christian wisdom tradition by focusing on communal practices, values, and wisdom rather than beliefs. Whereas too many forms of religion are contributing to the fragmentation of our world, we come together to practice connection, curiosit

y, collaboration, creativity, consciousness, and compassion...all for the common good. Our gatherings emphasize building friendships, transformative experiences, and having deep conversations about relevant topics that inform and inspire us all to live with more beauty, wholeness, depth, and urgency. All are welcome regardless of background, belief, orientation, or conviction. Come hang with us and join this movement for love and liberation in Santa Barbara and beyond!

06/03/2026

Hey Way Collective,

We’re excited to gather this evening for our monthly Community Night Dinner & Dialogue and potluck, as we take some time to reflect together on the mystery series we’ve been exploring over the past six weeks.

Over the course of these conversations, we’ve wandered through some big questions — the mystery of existence itself, the mystery of the present moment, the mystery within ourselves and others, and the contemplative path of unknowing. Along the way, many of us have found new language, new questions, and perhaps a few new ways of relating to life that continue to linger long after Wednesday night has ended.

Tonight, we’ll create space to revisit those reflections together. What are you still carrying from the series? What resonated most deeply? Where do you find yourself uncertain, curious, or wanting to explore further? Please come with any questions you might be carrying, and I’ll offer a brief introduction, and then we’ll move into a larger community conversation before gathering around our tables for dialogue. Rather than introducing a new theme, this will be an opportunity to listen, wonder, and learn from one another as we look back on the journey we've shared.

If you've been wanting to revisit a question, share an insight, or simply hear how these conversations have landed for others, this will be a rich evening to come to the table and continue exploring together.

Dinner and potluck begin at 5:15, and Dialogue will follow at 6:15.

See y’all soon!

Peace,

-Tim

05/27/2026

Hey Way Collective,

We’re looking forward to gathering this evening for week six of our conversations on Mystery, as we reflect on how mystery relates to the path of unknowing.

Over these past weeks, we’ve been exploring mystery not as a problem to solve, but as a different way of relating to reality — one that softens certainty and opens us to presence, wonder, and humility. But tonight, we’ll move a little deeper into what happens internally when that posture begins to take root within us.

Tonight, we’ll reflect on how mystery can open an inner space of unknowing — a quiet awareness that we do not have to grip life so tightly all the time. Not because the practical world disappears. We still have bills to pay, errands to run, people to care for, meals to make, and responsibilities to carry. But when that deeper awareness of mystery opens within us, something shifts. We begin to realize that beneath all the noise, conclusions, and pressures of daily life, there is another place we can return to — a more spacious and grounded posture that reminds us we do not have to control or explain everything in order to be fully alive.

If you’ve been feeling exhausted by the pressure to constantly figure things out — if you’re longing for a deeper inner steadiness in the middle of ordinary life — this will be a meaningful night to come to the table and continue the journey together.

Dinner is at 5:15 and Dialogue is at 6:15.

See y’all this evening!

Peace,

-Tim

05/20/2026

Hey Way Collective,

We’re looking forward to gathering this evening for week five of our conversations around Mystery, as we turn our attention toward the mystery of the present moment.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve explored the vastness of the big mystery, the practice of relating from mystery, and the invitation to encounter mystery within ourselves and others. But all of those reflections ultimately lead us back to the same place: the mystery of this moment. The present. The living edge of reality where everything is always unfolding, changing, and becoming something new.

Tonight, we’ll reflect on how the present moment is not just a passing slice of time to endure or rush through, but the very place where life is continually emerging. In many ways, the contemplative life is simply learning how to become available to that reality. To notice that beneath our distractions, anxieties, and constant anticipation of what’s next, there is something quietly sacred about being here at all. Not in a sentimental or escapist way, but in the recognition that every moment carries depth, value, and the possibility of transformation.

If you’ve been feeling scattered, pulled in a hundred directions, or disconnected from your own life as it’s actually unfolding… this will be a meaningful night to slow down, come to the table, and explore what it might mean to truly inhabit the present together.

Dinner is at 5:15 and Dialogue is at 6:15.

See y’all this evening!

Peace,

-Tim

05/13/2026

Hey Way Collective,

We’re looking forward to gathering this evening for week four of our series of conversations on Mystery, as we continue circling around what it means to live from a posture of contemplative unknowing.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve explored how mystery reshapes the way we relate to the world — softening certainty, opening space for wonder, and inviting us into a more participatory way of knowing. But tonight, we’ll bring that reflection a little closer to home by considering what it means to encounter the mystery within ourselves and within one another.

So much of life is spent reducing ourselves and others to fixed identities, conclusions, and roles. But contemplative wisdom reminds us that every person is more than we can fully explain. Each of us is unfolding, changing, becoming — carrying depths, contradictions, longings, and possibilities that cannot be neatly contained. When we begin to approach ourselves and others from that place of mystery, something shifts. We become a little more curious. A little less reactive. A little more capable of meeting one another with wonder instead of assumption.

If you’ve been longing for a deeper way of relating — one rooted less in judgment and more in presence, humility, and compassion — this will be a meaningful night to come to the table and continue the journey together.

Dinner is at 5:15 and Dialogue is at 6:15.

See y’all this evening!

Peace,

-Tim

05/06/2026

Hey Way Collective,

We’re excited to gather tomorrow evening for our monthly Community Night Dinner & Dialogue — and this month, we’re doing something a little different with a community open mic night of sharing.

One of the beautiful things about a community like this is that every person carries a story, a perspective, a creativity, or a voice that can become a gift to others when it’s shared. Tomorrow night will simply be an opportunity to make a little more room for that together.

Throughout the evening, Way Co folks are invited to share songs, poems, stories, reflections, readings, music, or whatever else feels meaningful to bring into the space. Nothing polished or perfect is required — just a willingness to show up and offer a little piece of yourself to the community. These kinds of nights always have a way of surprising us with connection, laughter, depth, and those small moments that remind us why gathering together matters. If you haven’t signed up, but woul dlike to share something, please sign up at the link HERE.

We’ll also be sharing a Mediterranean potluck together, so feel free to bring a favorite dish, side, dessert, or drink to contribute if you’d like. It should be a really special evening of food, presence, creativity, and community.

Dinner and potluck begin at 5:15, and our open mic gathering will follow at 6:15.

See y’all tomorrow!

Peace,

-Tim

04/30/2026

Announcing: You Don't Need a Calling Book Launch Event w/ Damon Garcia on 6/22! Join us for the official book launch celebration of Damon Garcia's You Don't Need a Calling: An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto for a Life of Purpose!

Hosted by , join us in the barrel room at Third Window Brewing Co. in Santa Barbara, CA for a special live and interactive talk from Damon about the themes of his new book, followed by a Q&R with the audience.

Get your tickets at Eventbrite.com! Link in bio!

Damon Garcia ()is a local author, public theologian, and longtime member of Way Collective. His new book challenges mainstream political and religious ideas about purpose that leave us feeling like failures. In You Don’t Need a Calling the kind of calling Damon rejects is one that says you must become a better version of yourself to make yourself loveable, valuable, and worthy of community. When we look at the root of our issues we discover that we've internalized capitalism's drive for growth and profit and tricked ourselves into believing that expansion is what life is all about. The truth is you already are valuable! And when we discover our innate value we learn that purpose isn't something we find, after all. Purpose finds us when we're present to the world in front of us.

For anyone disillusioned by the idea of "God's plan" for your life or exhausted by the achievement treadmill, this book and this live event reframe the way you view your life, desires, gifts, work, success, and your relationship to the world.

Come early for a little pre-event social time and grab some food and drink.

Doors: 5:30 PM

Event: 6:00 PM w/Q&R with Damon to follow!

There is limited seating for this event in the barrel room, and TICKETS WILL SELL OUT, so grab em while you can!

For inquiries after the event is SOLD OUT, please e-mail: [email protected]

04/29/2026

Hey Way Collective,

We’re looking forward to gathering this evening for week three of our series on Mystery, as we continue circling this idea by exploring what it might mean to know from mystery.

So often, when we think about knowing, we imagine clarity, certainty, and being able to define things from a distance. But over these past weeks, we’ve been opening to a different possibility — that mystery doesn’t eliminate knowing, it transforms it.

Tonight, we’ll reflect on how this contemplative way of knowing begins to take shape. Not as something we grasp from the outside, but as something we participate in from within. Knowing through presence. Through awareness. Through relationship. Instead of standing apart and trying to explain everything, we begin to sense what it means to be inside of life itself — responding, attuning, and relating as we go. It’s a quieter kind of knowing, but often a deeper one.

If you’ve been noticing the limits of always needing clear answers… if you’re curious about what it might mean to trust a more relational, experiential way of engaging the world… this will be a meaningful night to come to the table and keep exploring together.

Dinner is at 5:15 and Dialogue is at 6:15.

See y’all soon!

Peace,

-Tim

04/23/2026

Hey Way Collective,

We’re looking forward to gathering this evening for week two of Circling the Mystery, as we begin to deepen a sense for what we might call “the big mystery.”

If last week invited us to loosen our grip on certainty, this week takes a step further. Because beneath all of our daily decisions, opinions, and plans…there is a deeper truth that’s easy to overlook: we don’t really know what’s going on here, do we? Not in any final or complete sense. And that quiet unknowing isn’t a failure — it’s the ground we’re already standing on.

Tonight, we’ll reflect on this larger frame by stepping back into the story of cosmic history — the unfolding of existence itself — and the sheer wonder that anything is here at all. From that vantage point, our lives begin to look a little different — a little more mysterious — a little more precious. We’ll explore how reconnecting with this “big mystery” can soften our assumptions, widen our awareness, and invite a deeper sense of humility and awe into how we live.

If you’ve been sensing that there’s more to reality than what we can name or control… if you’re curious about what it means to live from that place of wonder rather than certainty… this will be a rich night to come to the table and continue the journey together.

Dinner is at 5:15 and Dialogue is at 6:15.

See y’all soon!

Peace,

-Tim

04/15/2026

Hey Way Collective,

We’re excited to gather tomorrow evening as we begin a new series of conversations! Tomorrow, we’ll focus on “Circling the Mystery” — an invitation to explore a different way of relating to the world, and to our own lives within it.

We live in a time that rewards certainty. Quick takes. Strong opinions. The feeling that we’ve got things figured out. And yet, beneath all of that, many of us carry a quiet awareness that reality is far more complex than our conclusions can hold.

Tomorrow night, we’ll reflect on how mystery can become a kind of grounding — not something vague or evasive, but a posture that gently loosens our grip on needing to know everything. What happens when we begin to admit, even a little more honestly, “I don’t know”? Over the next couple of months, we’ll explore how this contemplative unknowing can soften our cynicism, open space within our assumptions, and invite a more spacious, attentive presence in a world that often feels overwhelming and fractured. Not as an escape from reality, but as a deeper way of being in it.

If you’ve been feeling the weight of needing to have answers… if you’re curious about what might open up when we let go of that pressure… this will be a meaningful night to come to the table and begin the journey together.

Dinner is at 5:15 and Dialogue is at 6:15.

See y’all tomorrow!

Peace,

-Tim

Address

2101 State St
Santa Barbara, CA
93105

Website

http://www.waycollective.org/

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