What Matters
2024-2025
Chart Your Own Path to What Matters
Join us for a season of community, spiritual learning, self-reflection and joy.
WHAT IS WHAT MATTERS?
In 28 weeks of What Matters, you’ll meet weekly with a tight-knit cohort of 24 students. You'll read in community, learn from spiritual leaders and artists, and build clarity and intention around your values.
The program is divided into three units, each focused on a different text, and the curriculum is designed to give you the support and resources to chart your own path to what matters.
“I now know a community of people who believe thinking about what matters is a valuable endeavor and who practice doing that. I feel less lonely.”
THE BASICS
28 classes hosted over Zoom
Beginning August 21st, 2024 through March 12th, 2025
Wednesday evenings, 8-10 pm EST
Additional 1-on-1 sessions with Faculty
A book bundle of all three texts we’re studying
Tuition: $4,200
Scholarships: We have six scholarship spots available for this cohort that reduce tuition to $2,800. Register here and indicate your interest in a scholarship application!
Payment plans are available for both full price tuition and scholarship recipients.
HOW IT WORKS
We will kick off What Matters with three weeks of storytelling with Micaela Blei. Together, we’ll share stories with one another to map our identities and find what matters to us right now.
We will then dedicate six sessions to each of our books: three sessions led by Vanessa Zoltan and three by Mauricio Bruce. This is our opportunity to collectively pull out themes that resonate from the texts, along with meaning that rises to the surface as we think about our own lives.
We’ll conclude What Matters with a lively month of storytelling in community with Micaela Blei, to reflect on and communicate about our values and our lives.
Over the course of 28 weeks, participants are also invited to sign up for three individual chaplaincy sessions with Mauricio, and one 1-on-1 storytelling session with Micaela.
WHO IS WHAT MATTERS FOR?
This course is for you if:
You wish you had a guide in your spiritual journey
You’re looking for a sense of caring community
You want to grow in your activism
You are going through a transition
You are a bookworm who misses school
“It has transformed my understanding of the arc of my life. I am more centered and lighter. This has been a gift I have given myself.”
“I am more confident and connected. I understand myself better and have more friends! I think what impacted me the most is knowing that this was possible—meeting with people who showed up every week and were open to listening and learning more. What else is possible now because What Matters was?”
The Classes
With each book we read, we'll examine a different theme or approach to the question "What Matters?" We'll use the novels as texts through which to examine our own lives. You'll work with Vanessa and Mauricio to explore the texts, ultimately concluding your What Matters journey with four sessions dedicated to storytelling, using the discoveries you've made.
TYPES OF CLASSES
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We read the novels slowly together and pull out sparklets to treat as sacred. We excavate the book for meaning as a class in order to make it a spiritual resource for ourselves. Learn more about Vanessa here.
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After reading each novel we reflect back on what it made us think and feel. Then we try to explore what that says about us, about our perspectives, about our beliefs, and about the way we show up in the world. Do we want to stay that way? Do we want to change any of it? How do we want to understand the way the novels are impacting and teaching us? This is the space in the class where we use the novels as mirrors for who we are and the way we view the world. Learn more about Mauricio here.
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After close reading the three texts with Vanessa, and exploring personal themes with Mauricio, you'll meet with award-winning storyteller and educator Micaela Blei, PhD, to make meaning through storytelling and memoir. You'll brainstorm and craft stories from your life, integrating themes that arise through our reading, into new interpretations of personal experience. You'll leave with new skills of communication and expression, and new ways of both telling and listening to the stories in your life. Learn more about Micaela here.
The Texts
Over our twenty-eight weeks together, we will dive deep into three modern classics using sacred reading, innovative personal reflective work, and storytelling. Whatever your degree of familiarity with the texts, whether you’re revisiting a favorite for new perspective or it’s been on your “to-be-read” list for a while, you can still take and enjoy this class.
Book One
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
by Gabrielle Zevin
We begin with this book because it is at once about deep friendships, the limits of intimacy, the workplace, health and ambition. It also touches on difficult themes while being a page-turner you don't want to put down.
Book Two
The Signature of All Things
by Elizabeth Gilbert
We then dive into Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things because it is about a woman treating something secular, like botany, as sacred. It is also about relationships with family, class, adventure and what it means to live a full life in the face of disappointments.
Book Three
Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Our final book gets to the heart of the question: what does it mean to be human? This book is about the boundaries of romantic and platonic love and feelings of isolation as told through a story about an alternate universe.
Register Today
Register Today
The Faculty
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Vanessa Zoltan
READING & DISCUSSION SEMINAR
Vanessa is the CEO and co-founder of Not Sorry Productions. She is trained as an atheist chaplain and has her MDiv from Harvard Divinity School. She also got her Masters in Nonprofit Management from the University of Pennsylvania and graduated with a BA in English from Washington University in St. Louis. She worked in the education sector for 10 years. She is the author of Praying with Jane Eyre; Reflections on Reading as a Sacred Practice (Penguin, 2021) and has been published in The Paris Review, Salon and other publications. Her work has been covered on CNN and in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe and many other sources.
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Micaela Blei
STORYTELLING & MEANING-MAKING
Micaela Blei, PhD, is a storyteller, story editor and educator who lives in Portland, Maine. As a two-time Moth GrandSLAM champion storyteller and the former (founding) Director of Education at The Moth, she has over a decade of experience working with individuals, organizations and communities to shape and share the important stories of their lives. Her acclaimed workshops are invitations to reflection, spaces for discovery, and most of all— fun. Her own stories have appeared on The Moth Radio Hour, WGBH’s Stories from the Stage and live on sold-out storytelling stages nationwide. Her audio memoir, "You Will Not Recognize Your Life," is forthcoming from Audible Originals in Summer 2024. She has a BA in Literature from Yale University and a PhD in Education from New York University. You can see her stories and learn more about Micaela at micaelablei.com.
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Mauricio Bruce
CHAPLAINCY
Born and raised in San José, Costa Rica, Mauricio is a transpersonal therapist and coach who believes in personal development and health through spiritual development. After a portentous dream and a long search Mauricio traveled to the Andes where he studied medicine and spirituality with the Q’ero people of Perú. He has directed Umbral de la Montaña, a self-development and spirituality school in San José, Costa Rica, for the last twelve years, and he is an international teacher at Asersentido International, a life coaching school based in Santiago, Chile. He teaches with them in Chile, Perú, and the United States. He graduated with a BA in English and Film Studies from Washington University in St. Louis and he is currently working on his Masters in Divinity at Harvard Divinity School.
Tuition
The intimacy and depth of this program is reflected in the tuition. In an effort to make this program more accessible to our community, we offer payment plans that break the tuition into three parts. We also have six scholarship spots that reduce tuition.
TUITION & PAYMENT PLANS
Tuition for What Matters is $4,200 USD. You can pay full price upfront, request a payment plan, or apply for reduced tuition.
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If you would like to register today and pay up front, you can fill out this registration form. Within 48 hours you’ll receive confirmation that your spot has been reserved, along with an invitation to make your payment.
Click here to register for What Matters 2024-2025.
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If you would like to break up your tuition into three parts, you can fill out this registration form and request a payment plan. Within 48 hours you’ll receive confirmation that your spot has been reserved, along with an invitation to make your deposit for the trip.
Your tuition will be paid as follows:
$2,200 - Deposit Upon Registration
$1,000 - August 1, 2024 Automatic Withdrawal
$1,000 - November 1, 2024 Automatic Withdrawal
Click here to register for What Matters 2024-2025.
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We’re thrilled to offer six scholarship spots that reduce the cost of tuition to $2,800.
When you register for the class, you can request to be considered for one of these six spots. You’ll then be sent an application form to fill out from our Programs team.
Please note: You can apply for a scholarship and request a payment plan for your reduced tuition.
Click here to register for What Matters 2024-2025.
“Because of what matters, I have been able to determine what is important to me in my life; just being present, feeling my emotions as they are as to experience the human existence, and to love deeply and connect whenever possible.”
FAQs
What if I can only make half the sessions?
Then unfortunately, this program isn’t for you. We recommend only coming if you think you can make 90% or more of our sessions.
I’m not religious, is this program for me?
Yes! Anyone who is interested in living intentionally, developing community, growing in their activism, or deepening their values is welcome in What Matters!
I already paid, but now I cannot attend. Can I get a refund?
Unfortunately no. because it’s such a small cohort and a carefully crafted experience, we won’t be able to find new students part way through the program.
Can I do this program more than once?
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Is there homework?
Yes, but all assignments are optional. That said, we believe the more you put into this program, the more you get out of it.
What if I’m an auditory learner?
We’re happy to send you audiobooks instead of paperbacks!
Can you tell me about the cost?
We pay all of our faculty and staff competitive rates. We also pay all of our guests. This course has curriculum design, administrative support, and a lot of class time. The cost of the program is $4,200, however, we also offer payment plans to break the payment into three parts. We’re also offering 6 scholarship spots that reduce to the cost of tuition to $2,800.