SHF Podcast, Season 2, Episode 3- Liberation Through Service with Joanie Lamb

In this inspiring podcast episode, Joanie Lamb, Director of the Center for Inspired Education, deeply explores The Love Project, a grassroots community initiative dedicated to cultivating heart-centered service and connection. She shares powerful stories of divine synchronicity—like a toy drive that unfolded miraculously after a hurricane—and emphasizes the transformational impact of operating from love rather than guilt or shame. Joanie describes how The Love Project supports individuals in envisioning and launching their own service projects through a six-week course, small group cohorts, and intimate coaching, all rooted in a culture of coherence, storytelling, and mutual uplift. With a strong focus on embodiment, family mission, and practical spiritual service, this conversation is a heartfelt call to live with purpose, love, and community support at the center of it all.

Find more about the Love Project here:

website: https://www.centerforinspirededucation.com/loveproject/ 

email: operations@centerforinspirededucation.org

Transcript

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Welcome to the Sovereign Heart Frequency Podcast. I'm Katherine Finley with Sovereign Heart Coaching and I'm here with my co host Miriah Feehery of Whole Being Counseling. We recognize that we're living through an intense time on our planet. There seems to be more polarization and division and less connected communication than ever before. We are here to change that. We intention to hold conversations in a container of love and authenticity. We believe that when humans come together from a heart centered place, we can not only understand one another, but we can get creative together, solving problems we couldn't solve alone. It's time to reimagine and rebirth a new world in which everyone's authentic voice is included in the harmonic orchestra of human voices, to create a world that works for all of us. Thank you for being part of this conversation, we're excited to have you. Hi everyone. We are so happy to be back with you here today on the Sovereign Heart Frequency Podcast. I'm Katherine Finley and I'm here with my co-host Miriah Feehery. And we are with a wonderful friend, Joanie Lamb. And Joanie Lamb is the director of the Center for Inspired Education here in Asheville, North Carolina. She's also an executive functioning skills coach, and Joanie holds a master's in special education. K through 12 and undergraduate degrees in elementary education, special education and philosophy from Boston College with decades of experience. She has taught and supported students with diverse learning needs, including dyslexia, A DHD, autism and other learning differences in both public and private schools, such as the Lab School of Washington, dc and the key school in Asheville, North Carolina, where she also launched the Enduring Rites of Passage program, a trained Orton-Gillingham educator, teacher, trainer, and educational diagnostician. Joanie is also a presence based life coach, integrating somatic and mindfulness practices into her work. Her transformative year in Costa Rica taught her the importance of sustainable service, rooted in divine connection, an insight that became the foundation for the center of inspired education. And I met Joanie through a dear mutual friend of ours and got involved in something called The Love Project, which Joanie founded, which is a program nestled within the Center for Inspired Education and the Love's Project's mission is to support families and individuals to have a more consistent, joyful, and community centered service life. And Joanie has a beautiful quote on her website that says, we are the hands, feet, mouths of God, goddess, great spirit. We have the privilege in this lifetime to be source energy and love pulsating through us. May we make the most of this sacred, joyful opportunity. So Joanie, welcome. We're so excited to have you. I know that the Center for Inspired Education does a lot, but I thought maybe we'd jump in with. The Love project since that's how I met you and came to know about the beautiful work you do in the world. So I'd love for you to explain to our audience if that's okay. Like what is the Love project and what was the inspiration for it for you? Hmm. Well, it's so wonderful to be with both of you and I appreciate your podcast and putting out high vibrational consciousness raising material, this is a time where we need as much of that as possible. So thank you. And the Love Project is a movement, not to sound too grandiose of remembering why we are here. And so we have families, elders. It truly is intergenerational made up of people who want to be in community around service so that we get to love together. And it's, it really meets quite a few different needs. So one is that, you know, for many years I would hear people say, oh, I wish I did more service. I really care about some, some issue or social challenge. But, uh, it just always gets pushed down to the bottom of my list to do something about that. And then, a third that I would often hear is, I want my children to be doing service and we just don't do it. So on a pragmatic level, the love project is wonderful because we are offering weekly service opportunities to members and, and anyone can be a member. And we're also offering support for people to have their own love projects, which are often entailing service. And then we are also gathering almost monthly in more of a social community way. And so that might be having some sort of, open space, which is a technique, a particular technique to hold multiple conversations around issues we care about. It might be that it's a potluck with music. And,, you know, it's a fundraiser for someone's love project. It might be that we're gathering to meet around loving the earth. And so we're spending the day blessing a river. And so just to review,'cause I just said a lot we have service opportunities where we can come and serve together in community Number two, we support people in having their love projects. And number three, everyone who's a part of it makes a commitment to love more radically than they ever have before. And I can get into that later. How the love project was inspired was not through the mind and not through reasoning, like, oh, it's something we need. It actually was something that was. Uh, the, was the consequence of a dark night of the soul. I, I know typically when we say dark night of the soul, it's a period in one's life. And I was having that and I literally had a dark night of the soul. So my marriage ended, I had three little kids and, you know, my goal at that time in life was to have like this amazing family and to live in a spiritual community. And so when that busted wide open, you know, I felt tossed and turned against the cliffs. And, this one night, the pain was at a level that I had never experienced before. I've been, I. Very blessed in my life to have kind of even, like kind of moderate, emotional body. And I mean, not that I can't feel great joy or great sadness, but this was highly unusual for me to have this kind of experience where during the night I was in so much existential pain that it felt as if my skin was, was removed. And I had heard that before of like people who were getting off meth or something, and that like, literally it was, it was so physically painful and I thought, I don't know if I'm gonna make it through the night. I don't know if I can survive this kind of pain. Not that I was gonna, you know, end my life, but just, it was a query and. I woke up. Not only did I not think I'd make it through the night, I certainly did not think that I would fall asleep because I had so much cortisol pulsing through my body. But I must have,'cause I woke up the next morning. It was light and it was the only time in my life where involuntarily, I had no thoughts. Now I've had plenty of times of meditation where I can create that state, but involuntarily no thoughts. It was only pure presence. Pure experience. So my head does a 180 around the room. No thought. No thought. Just observation. When I'm done with the 180, this voice, this internal voice says, you'll dedicate your life to the love project. I'd never heard that before. I'd heard that voice before. And know that it's a, it's a different voice versus my internal, you know, daily voice. My daily narrator. This, this voice is like, oh, I'm listening, when I hear it. And so that was it. And then it, over the next few weeks, I was given more bits of information as to what that means and what that would be. And then, and I got very excited. At that time I was teaching at a school. Um, I got very excited about having this, this. Purpose, this dharma. And then I got, and it'll be about 15 years before you do it. I was like, what? I mean, I went from like, okay, I'm ready to throw myself in to 15 years. And so just about a year and a half ago was the 15 year anniversary. And so, I had done an earlier version of it years ago and it was kind of a test run with good friends and family. And then we've been in like full force, larger community for about a year. Wow. What a story. I did not know that, that history. So divinely instructed maybe more than you were just internally inspired, but it sounds like you felt very inspired by that divine instruction, like it was a match for you and who you are. Yes. Thank God. Right. That really sucked. I want you to be a civil engineer, build bridges the rest of your life. So how did you go from hearing this, this divine voice in your head of you will dedicate your life to the love project, to then knowing what that even means, like what is the love project and, and unfolding that? Yeah. I really let that be supernatural. And just, you know, not forcing a bud to be a flower, but just letting it unfold one petal at a time. And that's. Yeah, I just, I didn't want to taint it with any of my own ego or manipulations. And so yeah, it was really over the years and I think that the Divine was getting me ready by me being in situation after situation, after situation of needing to be surrendered and wanting nothing more in life than to be a conduit. And so that this is truly the, the love project is a co-creation, and I try to have every piece and part be that. Mm-hmm. And to give our listeners a little bit more, details about the Love project, like what are some examples of people's love project in, in your community? Sure. So. One is, Jessica Chilton's Love Project, and that is, she has this genius ability in the realm of improv and has created something called, spirited improv, where it's also being divinely guided in the improv. And it's, it's really phenomenal to experience. And because that's really where she wants to spend her time and that's how she wants to live, is in that state. Then she and I had been going to Stone Creek Nursing Home for a while and visiting I. Elders who live there. And so now she has a, a team of people who go there weekly and do some version of spirited improv. They go room to room and incorporated music. And so it is, it's breathtaking to experience. So I'll give an example. Go into a room and here's, you know, many of the people are bedridden, and if they're not, they're in their beds the majority of the time, just the way the nursing home is designed, to care for their clients or their residents. And, and so, you know, here's someone in bed and she or someone on her team will ask you know, how are you doing? And then. If there's something up for that person, well then they will create a poem, a song, a prayer that incorporates exactly what that person says. And it's, to me, it's like something that would take me a month to write. Like it's so, um, like this perfect mosaic of words and sounds. Anyway, so that's, that's a love project brings these people such great joy. Like what's our greatest, one of our greatest human needs is to be seen and to be heard. And they, they do it in such a deeply honoring way. I've experienced something similar to that in one of the weekend gatherings where, I mean, it sounds like what you're speaking to where, where Jessica was taking, a statement or a need and creating this, movement and dance. I mean, it was so powerful. So powerful. It's hard to explain, but,, just incredible. Mm-hmm. Yes, yes. And yeah. I'll just give like a couple quick examples, but I remember one time this woman, she was, yeah, she was missing her cats. You know, she can't have cats at the nursing home. And so the, the group of three were all making sounds and, and a song about cats. And the personalities of each of her cats were interwoven in the song and, oh, this woman's smile. Wow. Yeah, there's endless examples, but, so another love project is, um, we've got two because, you know, here in Asheville, some of the love projects have definitely been influenced by Hurricane Helene. And, um, you know, I'm sure you've talked about on your podcast, but I think we were all not only shocked that there could be a hurricane here, but shock that humanity could love so intensely is what we experienced. And, and many, many people had the experience of that happening in their micro community, of their streets or their neighborhoods, and. Now knowing each other's names now, you know, crossing over political parties to, have potlucks. I know we've, we've been doing that. We now have quarterly potlucks and we are a motley crew out here in the country. Mm-hmm. Um, with, yeah. So, anyway, we had two people from the Love Project who are creating these kits, which are for people who might be more hesitant to, to hold potlucks and have community conversations. And that is more not just being social, but having conversations that might be more challenging or less challenging. So for instance, a neighborhood, maybe they want to start a community garden or maybe a neighborhood has been, Having some challenges around noise and they wanna come together as a community and talk about that and maybe use compassionate communication to share frustrations, but also we wanna be able to get our needs met of playing music and having parties. And anyway, there, there are two people and they're creating these, these kits of how to, like, they have like invitations and how to decide what the topics are gonna be and how to hold these conversations. And so that's one love project. And then, in that same realm, someone has started community potlucks in her neighborhood in Swanno, and now they're taking turns and they're regularly gathering. Let me think. It's beautiful. Hmm. Yeah. So Joanie, can you walk us through a step by step process of how somebody might join the Love Project and share their vision and, and weave it into community with you? Sure. So We have a website and we have an email. Our email, well, I guess those will be in the. The notes. Yeah, we'll put those in the show notes for sure. Okay, great. So I think that's the best way is to email and then we'll get you on our newsletter and then you'll begin to get invited to our different gatherings and and different service projects. And as far as starting a love project, we are kicking off in September, maybe the end of August. But definitely by the beginning of September we'll be having, this will be new, but it's going to be when people want to join, we have a six week class that they can take and they can do it in person or on Zoom. We've decided that we really want people to have a foundation of what this is about, and it's so expansive for our members. And it's, it's free of charge, that basically it's going through. You know what constitutes a love project? I mean, basically it's anything where you're, you know, you're sharing love, and helping people because there's such a diversity of, of love projects that land in people's hearts. And so with the six week course, there are going to be cohorts, and so the cohorts are gonna support each other. We also have team members who are willing to help with coaching around love projects and. I want to really emphasize because I think that in our culture where oftentimes people are so busy, they hear, I need to have a love project and run the other way. I cannot add one more thing to my life. And a love project that sounds really big, a love project can be as simple as being the person in the neighborhood that puts out the water bowl for dogs and some snacks, and maybe has a little sign, you know, around loving each of you neighbors and neighbor dogs, something like that. Or a love project can be something bigger that you've been wanting to do and having accountability and support around it feels great, but no one should not come because they feel like they don't have, you know, a big enough love project. Because I'm gonna digress for a second. One of, the cornerstone stories of the Love project is something that happened before the Love Project's inception, but it was my brother going to India and he really wanted to meet Mother Teresa. And so he had such a great idea to go to the sister of Charity's home in San Francisco where he was living. And he said to them, I am going to, at that time it was called Calcutta and wanted to see if U-Haul have anything you need delivered to Mother Teresa. They're like, oh, that would be wonderful. That would be amazing. It's so expensive to send packages. Yes, yes, yes. Come back in two weeks. So he came back in two weeks and they had this package for him, and so he traveled for weeks and weeks before. Landing in Calcutta. He, you know, very carefully, held onto this package and he set up an appointment, was able to meet Mother Theresa. He was struck by how short she was. He had no idea how small she was and by how many wrinkles she had. Mm-hmm. He said he'd never seen a face that was so wrinkled. And given those things that, you know, stereotypically would, maybe, we would think someone would be less, what we would call beautiful. He felt like she was exquisitely beautiful. He just couldn't stop looking at her. And, and in their conversation, he said to her, you know, I've been in India for weeks now and my whole world is turned upside down. Because of the level of poverty and I don't understand my life anymore, like nothing seems meaningful besides helping the people here who are so desperate, like, how could I do anything else but help someone who is starving? And she held his hands and she looked into his eyes and said, it literally, literally doesn't matter what your work is, as long as you do it with love. It is the love that is the potency. And I feel like that is so true with a love project. It's not about big or small, it's about the intensity of love that can be put in it. And we're human and we have compassion for when we're not intense and we're just doing it, you know, like, um, so yeah, but that's a powerful reminder and straight out of the mouth of a saint, no wonder. Well, it all feels so buoyant to me because this is done with the Divines direction, so I don't have to figure things out, which to me is very exhausting. And it's done in community, and we are in the age of Aquarius, right? Like collaboration is the way. And so it's so fun. I'm also a seven on the Enneagram, so my motivation is fun. And, yeah, so I don't know about Saint, but there's a lot of, a lot of support. Hmm. Well, I wonder too, if your intention in the Love project to have folks really connect to what stirs their heart personally, if that then creates more sustainability and, and more juice and more joy and actually carrying out this love project throughout the year Yes. That's such a great point. One of the learning curves for me and for us was all the emotions that are connected to doing service. There's a lot of guilt and shame and past, like maybe even ancestral messaging. One time we led a workshop and surprisingly thought that the least interesting question would be, what's your history with service? And in fact, that ended up taking up a lot of the workshop'cause there were so many tiers shed around that. And so I think you are right on that. We want to help people get liberated through service and however they say it, if it's sacred reciprocity, sharing, you know, how, however people term it that feels best. And yeah, to have it be something that is so natural versus, oh, I should do this thing that I can't stand like. Go to the nursing home. Like a lot of people can't stand that. I love it. It gives me juice. But for other people, I mean, I, I do encourage people to try it out again. You know, if, if that's one of the service things they're interested in, but, but there's endless, right? There's just endless ways. I love that quote, and I won't quote it exactly, but like, basically don't try to figure out what the world needs. Figure out what's your joy.'cause what the world needs is more joy. And we do have this particular lens of let's bring joy to the people who often aren't getting it. Like in my socioeconomic bubble. There are so many, music gatherings, potlucks. Nature experiences, you know, it's just like, oh my God, how do you choose on a weekend? But how about all the people who've never been to a retreat? How about all the people who live in Asheville and cannot afford to go to a music experience? How can we weave what we love with needs that are in the community? And we know that medicine is medicinal, so how can we get music to the people? And I'll shout out to be loved that one of their answers these days when people say, what can I do? You know, they're like, if you have true building skills, you can help us build. If not, we would love tickets. We would love tickets to these different experiences to give to our brothers and sisters. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm also aware of the community piece you bring that, you know, growing up when I did community service of any kind with my family, it was through our church. Mm-hmm. And churches really give that community around service. But if you're not a member of a church, which I'm not now, you can kind of feel on your own finding service work to do. And, and the Love project is bringing that community to everyone,, which is an important piece. I think it, it builds the joy when we're in community doing service work. Yes, yes, yes. It is so different, right? When you clean the kitchen at 11 o'clock at night by yourself, or you have friends over and everyone's cleaning up after dinner, it is a totally different experience. And yeah, so the other thing that we have kicking off in September is the family component. We now have someone who's gonna be leading just that component and she has young children, and that we're gonna be putting the calendar for families out six months in advance because we know how busy, you know, families are. And, so people can actually put these things in their calendar and commit to doing at least some of the gatherings. But there's gonna be, before each of the service opportunities, there is going to be like a, a Dharma talk and, and because that is something that we've had. So many families talk about is, you know, they've tried to find a church or a synagogue or a temple that works for them and, and haven't, and of course many do. But they want that, you know, they don't want all the teaching to be coming from the parents, you know, okay, we need you to clean up your room, we need you to drink your water, and now we're gonna talk to you about empathy. Of course we do that as parents, I mean, mostly by modeling, but to be able to hear it from the village, aunties and uncles. And I just heard a new, it's like tts, I think that's a new word so we're not genderizing those village people. I could be wrong about the exact name, but anyway, and so. We're really excited about that. And, you know, having it be like it was in Sunday school where it's very kid led, you know, and we're asking questions and, obviously it's a hundred percent age appropriate to whatever kids we have on that particular day, if it's younger kids or older kids. And diving into the different commitments that we make or invitation that we're given to the radical loving and what does that mean to a kid. Mm-hmm. And so it's radically loving of ourselves and radically loving of the other. And of course, we have lots of. Others, you know, partners or children or, you know, moms, dads friends, et cetera. Radically loving our neighbors, radically loving our community, radically loving the planet, and radically loving the divine great spirit. And if someone doesn't resonate with that, you know, whatever it is for them, if it's the, the greater energy or unity consciousness or what have you that we, during that six week introductory course, we let people dive into and we ask for beginner's mind. You know, people can be like, oh, I already know how to love myself or love my neighbor. All right, let's go even deeper. Because our belief is that anywhere where there's resistance. So imagine when I'm saying this, like maybe a part of ourselves or a neighbor or a community organization where that we might resist anywhere, where we have fear, anywhere, where we have judgment that that blocks the light of God. Hmm, God. Those are our portals of liberation, we believe. And so we want, we wanna get in there and support each other in digging even deeper and or surrendering more gracefully. Does that mean we don't have preferences? No. Does that mean we don't have boundaries? No. But we wanna have heart coherence with everything. Everything. Even if we have boundaries and even if we have preferences. And so just to finish that where I was about the kids, is we wanna bring that to their level and we wanna learn from the kids.'cause the kids are so much closer to that truth than many of us adults are. Absolutely. That feels very aligned with the mission of our podcast. How do we, have our own preferences and beliefs and truths and boundaries while remaining, loving and openhearted to, you know, those around us, those we're in conversation with. And, it's Not easy, right? But I'm just so aware with the love project of when you're building community around that, with that same mission, then there's a field. That's created by the community. And I think that then makes it easier to tap into our own hearts and to see, different ways of being and communicating with each other. Exactly. Exactly. And when you're talking about the greater field, it's like, what are we marinating in? What are our families marinating in? So we want to have more marinate. That is talking about love, talking about service and the exchange of ideas. You know, we're story bound, right? Like we way more remember stories than any kind of self-help book. And so for families or individuals to share stories of, I mean the, the, the number of synchronicities and mystical experiences. Is just incredible when we are coming together in coherence around love. So I have so many stories, but I'll just share one right now. We had a toy giveaway this December, so, you know, just months after the hurricane. And the reason we had a toy giveaway was because a group in Wilmington, North Carolina, who'd been having, these events for seven years, wanted to, and of course this is for families who it's super challenging to buy Christmas and Hanukkah presents or Kwanza presents, you know, to make it so that they can come and get the presents. And they wanted this year to, instead of doing it in their own community, they were gonna bring those thousand gifts to Asheville. And so of course we said, yes, we'll help support that. Now, if we were doing our own fundraiser, we would've raised money and just given money to families and then they can go out and get exactly what they want. But that wasn't, that wasn't the situation. The situation was, here's a thousand toys, will you help us by organizing this? And so we said yes. So I wanna clarify them. So anyway, we worked with a couple different organizations. One. From Charlotte and then a church here, that it was right by the epicenter, but they just happened to be on a hill. And so it just, it, it felt like the perfect place to have it. And so, oh my gosh, I felt lots of responsibility. We had a thousand toys. We had three food trucks. We had heard that the weekend before there was a huge toy drive and barely anyone showed up. I was like, oh my God. Oh my God, my God. So I just kept asking for guidance around this, asking for guidance. I called Swanno Elementary School. I don't think that's the exact name, but it's the elementary school in Swanno, and I said. What we were doing. Oh, nope. We can't send him flyers about stuff like that. Oh gosh. Okay. So I'm just like taking flyers to like random places and, and then it's two days before this is gonna happen, and I got so clearly you are to go by the Swano Elementary School, but they already said, no, you are to go by there. So I went by, I spent$150, no,$220 on flyers for the whole school. You know, I'm just walking on faith. I'm just walking on water here. I go to the school and I say to the office manager, I said, I called. She goes, yeah, I remember you calling. I said, I just, you know, I have flyers here. I don't wanna push. She's like, alright, let me go ask the principal. So she takes a flyer in, and she comes back out and she said, all right. The principal said to put one of these in every single child's binder. Our toys were gone that weekend before we even started. People lined up 45 minutes beforehand, a thousand toys gone. Which was amazing. Amazing. And we had people show up who were expecting a toy. Oh my gosh. So our mutual friend, Kendall Williams, she said she wasn't gonna be able to come that day, but same kind of thing. She was prompted to come. No, I told, I told her she didn't need to come'cause we had plenty of people. She was prompted to get in her car and come. So she came and I, at this point, my energy was gone and she had tons of energy. So just that right there, the synchronicity of that. And I said, I've just started taking people's names who want toys and we don't have any more toys. She was like, yes. So she stood there for an hour and a half and took people's names and phone numbers and, and then, you know, the event is over. Every single person got fed. It was like the fish. I mean, I was like, how in the world are we gonna feed all these people? Every single person got fed. And so anyway, it started to dissipate and she and I we're the only people left. We have a notebook of names. Christmas is just like. 10 days away or something like that. I can't remember exactly how in the world are we gonna get all of these, because those thousand toys had been collected for months and we're about to get into our car and I'm feeling like, I thought this was gonna be the end. Like I was feeling exhausted. Instead, it was like the beginning of a new thing. So we're about to say goodbye and get into our own cars. The minister who we didn't know was there, who's like this really young, cool guy comes sprinting across the parking lot and he said, I just got this text message. I have no idea how this person got my phone number, but this is what the text message says. He had no idea what our conversation was. He wasn't a part of this. It was his church, but he wasn't a part of what we were doing. The message said, Hey, I googled and found your church, or someone gave me your number. The trucker person was like, I can't remember which, but basically I have a semi full of toys and I don't know where to take them. Oh my gosh. Whoa. He said, is this, is this helpful? Like, I was just thinking, since y'all just did this toy thing, you might be interested. So Kendall and I start crying our faces off and we said, is there any way that the toys can be dumped here? He goes, well, you can't use the church, but we have this tent here from a different thing. We never have a tent here, but the toys could be dumped under this tent, which is exactly what happened. And the next day, every family who, all those people were contacted and all of them got toys. That's amazing. That is true. Divine orchestration at its finest. Yes, that gives me chills. And I'm just thinking back to how you were talking about so many people are, you know, driven into service through shame and guilt and the love project is really, flipping that on its head and, you know, helping cultivate this community of coming from love. And when we are in that shared space, then, I mean, it's my belief that's how these synchronicities can happen. Like that gives room for God to come in and guide right. That energy. Yeah. So beautiful. Yes, yes, yes. Guiding in the midst of shame and fear and resistance and guilt, just doesn't work very well. I so Appreciate the energy that, the love project's holding this container you're holding for everyone in it. It's, it's really inspiring. Yeah. We feel like we are a beautiful marriage of the believing in the energetics of love and what happens, Metaphysically speaking, we just talked about like the synchronicities, the collapsing of time and space that happens in the realm of love and, you know, the buoyancy things that would, would take, you know, way more, more effort or would take money or would take this, or would take that in the realm of love. All of those factors are eliminated and, and it, it comes to be morely and more efficiently. We also, you know, we, we know what happens physiologically when we're in, in heart coherence. For people who don't really know what heart coherence is, that's when the, the brain and the heart are in, the same energetic field and they're working together. Mm-hmm. And, and truly the. The miracle of healing. I mean, that's no longer like, woo. I mean, there's so much research about what happens, you know, there's more and more doctors that say, pray, you know, please pray, before your surgery or have people pray for you. You know, the oxytocin, that that bonding hormone that, is, produced and the, you know, and that one promotes like trust and attachment, and then dopamine creates the feelings of pleasure and, and motivation. And then serotonin, which we know is like mood stabilizer and the endorphins that can like reduce pain in our bodies. I mean, there's so many benefits. Spiritually, emotionally, physically, to living more and more of our moments in the realm of, of love. I mean, just from the moment we wake up, loving our feet for hitting the ground and loving the fact that we have a, a floor, that when it rains, you know, we're not having to, to step in wet, and loving the fact that we have a toothbrush and don't have to use our finger and, and talking into our water, like sending it love, you know, the, the Dr. Emoto things from many years ago. There've been many studies since then, but molecularly things change with love. So imagine if water can do that. What happens to our children when we're sending them? Love? What happens to our own organs when we're sending them? Love What happens to the trees and. Mountains and the rivers when we're sitting at love. So we We're very pragmatic about the importance of dedicating our lives to love. So that balanced with the old school of it feels very balanced to us. Like the old school of Yeah, we care for our brothers and sisters, that's what we do. Mm-hmm. And we show up and, and you don't wanna have a tone of, shame. It's more that part of us, like that wise part of us. It's like, I know how to live. Living is not just about me and my family. It can't work that way. It has to go beyond me. It has go beyond me and my family. That's the only way this can work. And of course if we have little ones and our whole day is taken up with trying to get food and, and naps and, you know, we're, we're acting within reason. But we do still feel like it's important for children to grow up with a bigger picture of unity consciousness, even if we can't spend hours and hours and hours doing service as a family. So, Joanie, can I workshop with you like a hypothetical scenario that then you can walk us through so our audience can have a little better idea of the technical function of the love project and, and maybe even wanna model something after it in their own community? Sure. Okay, so I'll just go with what, what service my mom introduced me to when I was growing up. Mm-hmm. So, let's say I wanted to, create an AIDS ministry where there was a space, like a, a comfy, cozy kind of living room type space in a church or a home where people who had an AIDS diagnosis could come and have a support group and then share a meal with community members who offered love and support and nourishment. So I bring that to the Love project. I go through your, your six week intro course, and then how does the Love Project support me in manifesting that vision of service? Hmm. What an exquisite. And so your mom did that in your lifetime. She didn't create what was called common ground, but she was a part of it for over a decade, probably multiple decades. Wow. That is just incredible. So beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. I tucked that into my heart. Wow. So, yeah. You know, and as we are in our first year of, as I said at the beginning, you know, the earlier iteration was like my friends and family doing this. But now that we're a wider community, we're learning as we go, what this looks like as far as support, and that's why we're taking our time well, because summer is just so wild with people's plans and things. But, that we're doing this kickoff in September of having more support, and with having the, so the plan is, you know, the class where people can come back each week and discuss, and in that, I know I talked about the different levels of, or different arenas of love, but also in that six weeks is the visioning. Like the first two weeks is visioning of the love project and then, you know, the next piece and the next piece and the next piece. So that by the end someone is, they're in their love project by the end of the six weeks. And. Like I also mentioned that there will be the opportunities to be in a cohort and or receive coaching. So now someone can join. Now, they don't have to wait until September. And that's, through emailing us or through our website, you know, if they wanna go ahead and get supported. And that's more informal. Gotcha. So does The love project provide coaching for people on how to manifest a service project? Or is there actually like, kind of boots on the ground support, networking support. Tell me more about how someone would go from an idea to, like you said, implementing it by the end of this six weeks. Right. So right now, basically I have people email and they'll say, Hey, this is my love project. Or they'll say, Hey, can you meet for tea? And then talk about love project. Right now it's super grassroots. Me or someone else meeting with people, they come to our gatherings and, you know, we get updated or help with networking. Like, oh, you wanna do this afterschool program? Okay, we know the principal at such and such school, it's, super intimate right now, but in the fall, yeah, I don't know what else to say except that it will be, you know, having groups of like three or four people. So it's like a, almost like a mastermind in that way of getting that kind of support. But then there's the larger group, which is really helpful for, for networking. Gotcha. And the larger group is like a, a regular weekly meetup and everyone comes and mingles and shares. Yeah. The larger group will be whoever is going through that six week program. And then there'll be cohorts within that program. And we have monthly meetings and every month is different. And the reason we do that is because different people have different needs. Different people are attracted to different types of events. And we're multi-passionate people, but they're all about increasing our capacity to love in one way or another. Beautiful. So it sounds like Joanie, someone. Could come with no idea yet to this beginning of the six weeks and the six week, sessions would help the person, you know, really develop the idea, see what feels really inspiring, or you could come with an idea. And then by being in community, then there's going to be like workshopping those ideas of if there's connections in the community that would be helpful. Or it sounds like you did a fundraiser for someone's love project, that things like that could be available. Right. It feels pretty organic. Like what does the this love project need and how can the community support? Is that right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And like we've said, there's often so many synchronicities in the support. Beautiful. I'm aware of the idea that we're the average of the five people we spend the most time with and how we would all benefit from spending a lot of time in your community. So it sounds like it's really cultivating this, this culture of living and surrendered service aligned with God or the divine or the heart. So yeah, I'm so appreciative you of you coming on and speaking about it. Anything else you wanna say before we close? Yeah, definitely feeling call to just mention as far as, for families and for individuals or couples, but the whole idea of mission and what that does for a family when it's, beyond meeting or. Basic needs and in our culture beyond, entertaining our kids. And I don't mean that in a put down way, of course we wanna celebrate and enjoy life, but what if, you know, in Couplehood or as an individual or with my friends, or instead of having girls Night, you know, at a club, which of course clubbing is awesome, but like, you know, that more and more of these gatherings were around, including other brothers and sisters or, okay. You know, instead of having book club. We're gonna have Bounty and Soul Club and we go get bounty and soul, and then we go to the brewery and yeah, like weaving it in and for families and, you know, and, and what happens to the human psyche when we feel like we are on this earth for a purpose? And I don't mean like, oh, I'm on a, oh God, what's my exact purpose? And I'm panicking'cause I don't know what my exact purpose is. I mean, like the purpose that we all know we're here for creating a new earth, creating heaven on earth, loving one another, and it's bliss., This can be a blissful experience, when we are in our mission. And so, and wanting to support families of having a, a mission, something that they're talking about with their kids. Having ourselves be clear about. Am I in mission today? Like, did I have every interaction to the best of my ability be like interacting with my child, you know, that level of love and endearment and looking into their eyes and really caring and stopping and and having so much love for ourselves when we're tired and we don't wanna do that, or we need to get home. But the mission was the last thing that I really got nudged to, to share is that, that word. And we really wanna support people in, in having that out. Thank you for saying that. Mm-hmm. That's really important. Mm-hmm. Well, I'm glad that people are marinating in your podcast and, and. Encourage them to come check us out too. And I love, there's probably a lot of overlap in our communities. I know there's a lot of overlap. We will, absolutely put all your contact information, your website and email in the show notes. And for local Asheville folks, I highly recommend checking this beautiful community out. And for those of you not in this community, let this be an inspiration for something you might be able to build in your community.'cause what if we had love projects in every community in this country or in the world? That would be world changing. So thanks for carrying the torch, Joanie, and, and keeping it really heart centered and love the highest mission there. Hmm. Yes. Thank you all for doing the same. We're doing it together. Yay. We're doing it together. All right, we'll Village, we'll see you all next time. Thanks everyone. Make sure you subscribe, like and share the video for more content!