IH North Wall 9.16.jpg

The constant progress of Culture is to a more interior life, to a deeper Home.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Home”

 
 
 

To live content with small means. To seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion. To be worthy not respectable, and wealthy not rich. To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars, birds, babes, and sages with open heart, to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.

William Henry Channing

 
 
 

Rightly viewed, the whole soul of man is a sort of picture gallery, a grand panorama, in which all the great facts of the universe, tracing things of time and things of eternity, are painted.
Frederick Douglass, “Pictures and Progress”

Featured
HOME: HERE
HOME: HERE

To live content with small means. To seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion. To be worthy not respectable, and wealthy not rich. To study hard, think quietly. . .

FRIENDS: A CULTURE OF CONVERSATION
FRIENDS: A CULTURE OF CONVERSATION

The truth we seek is a conversation. Our conversation begins with those generous individuals who voluntarily give their time, counsel, resources and example to the vision. . .

NATURE: THE MYTHIC LANDSCAPE
NATURE: THE MYTHIC LANDSCAPE

We believe that the soundest foundations rest on bedrock, and that the bedrock of American wisdom lies in the mythic depths of the landscape itself. To the larger world. . .

ART: ARCHETYPES OF CRAFT
ART: ARCHETYPES OF CRAFT

Innermost House cultivates fine craft in the manner of American beginnings, where Wilderness and Enlightenment met as equals, and the art of less was truly more. . .

SOLITUDE: THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL
SOLITUDE: THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL

At the foundations of modern life lies the transcendental idea of Individualism: the individual human soul as one, indivisible, and whole. We mark the beginning of our new world. . .

THOUGHT: IDEALS OF THE MIND
THOUGHT: IDEALS OF THE MIND

We believe in the ideal of the "American Scholar," in whom a knowledge of books is balanced by experience of nature and practical activity in the world. Innermost House provides a way. . .

SPIRIT: THE INFINITE BEAUTY
SPIRIT: THE INFINITE BEAUTY

Our final conversation is with humanity’s explorations of the spirit. We believe that the innermost essence of our being lies in the unseen world of first and final causes. . .

SOCIETY: CONNECTIONS OF MEANING
SOCIETY: CONNECTIONS OF MEANING

We are a living conversation of individuals, each one a sanctuary of solitude unto themselves, and we are an instrument of connection between persons, peoples, traditions. . .

FAITH IN A SEED
FAITH IN A SEED

Building a world begins with planting a single seed in the one art that precedes and unites and justifies all other arts and sciences: the art of living deeply at home. . .


Innermost House is a Past, a Present and a Future. In the immediate past, from 2004 to 2012, it was an actual house hidden at the heart of the woods, twelve-by-twelve feet in size, in a world lit only by fire. During the seven years of its secret existence, it served as a private meeting place of forest nature, fine traditional craft, and fundamental thought culture, conceived to realize the "dream too wild" of a woodland life based entirely on transcendental values of truth, beauty, goodness, and unity.

In the present everywhere and always, Innermost House is a condition of mind. It is a dimension of the inner life of every individual, occupying a landscape of Myth, Archetype and Ideal, of first and last things, of the still small voice and the inner light. The path to that inward place is a transformative journey which ultimately only the individual can travel. Innermost House exists to serve as an example and a guide through the dark wood of life to the peace that awaits us within.

In the unfolding future, Innermost House is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation that exists to carry that private experience forward on a public basis. We pursue our mission through a simultaneous program of inreach and outreach, reaching inward toward curated experiences of a transcendental culture at home in the woods, and outward toward communicating those experiences through the various means of traditional and digital publication. We exist to cast the seed and cultivate the soil of a deeper humanity.


We are pioneers in search of a deeper home for human nature.

Read More→

Support our educational outreach