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JOHN HEERS
Examining the old world and new in this crazy age.
This "Enlightened" New World utopia isn't turning out to be all it was cracked up to be. With an air of levity and a touch of humor, John Heers teaches how to examine the confusing New World by calling upon the mind and wisdom of oft-forgotten Old.
Contact
All media inquires should be addressed to Rich Somers or use the contact form below.
JOHN HEERS: TAMADA
Hospitality,
Levity,
Mshvidoba
It started in the Georgia Republic back in the 90's when I was volunteering as an aid worker to remote villages with food shortages. But what I found out was that I was the one being 'helped.' Men and women with barely any food would lay out feasts in my honor, giving everything to provide hospitality. A type of hospitality rarely seen today.
Experiencing this fundamentally changed my life.
Later I would eventually earn a masters in History from Columbia, spend eight years teaching in the Bronx, helping start a private school, and then eventually co-founding an international non-profit. You can learn more about First Things Foundation here.
But the important bit is that my Georgian experience never left me throughout my years. The traditional feast I was so innured in, Supra in Georgian, became an integral part of my life. I would slowly become a Tamada, or toastmaster, even to the point of teaching it to others. Check out our very badass, shvidoba inducing Art of the Tamada events we host periodically throughout the year if becoming a Tamada intrests you. And it should! We need more people to bring communities together and remind folks we are all humans. All of us trying to mediate heaven and earth. Trying to find our way in the crazy world.
And that's me, John Heers. I specialize in integrating the realities of things old with things new. Our podcast, Heavy Things Lightly, illumines ways in which the New World, the world of the enlightenment and scientific materialism, is bereft of key values found in the old.
So join me around the table, let's raise a glass and make a toast:
Let all of us discover the courage to bring truth into the world, and the humility to remain neighborly and paragons of hospitality.
(oh yeah, mshvidoba? It means something like a profound peace. May you find it in your life! Gagimarjos!)
What is
First Things
Foundation?
First Things is a non-profit that works on four continents serving local folks stuck in deep poverty. We take a bet that if you listen to local people, and you stay with them, eating local food and getting local diseases and learning the local language (not just the colonial language), well, if you do these things you will find amazing people who know what it takes to make their community flourish. We call these people impresarios. We consult with these people on their best ideas, build their capacity to grow and then connect them to resources. All kinds of resources.
We are missionaries but not the kind you think of right off the bat. We are service-minded, Old World-leaning, lovers of creativity and authentic development. We are practitioners of sacrifice. And the sacrifice? Our field workers leave their lives and spend two years far from home, living in mud huts and family abodes, imbibing the life of those we aim to serve (currently we are in the Republic of Georgia, Sierra Leone, Mozambique and Guatemala).
Follow Us (coming soon)
@heavythingslightly