Our Story
Some years ago, a small group of friends recognized our need to slow down. Like many people, we felt overwhelmed by the speed of life and found little space for reflection. We tried to create a space where we could explore an important question we all shared: How are we going to be in the world? We found a rhythm for reading books, watching films, eating meals and taking walks together. We discovered stories, songs, poems, paintings and nature that helped us open our own personal stories with one another. Our shared encounters evolved into this movement we call Nexus.
Today Nexus is spread across more than fifteen countries in Europe, North America, The Middle East and Asia. On this site you will find articles inspired by encounters with books, films, music, poems and life events. Each article serves as a stimulus, either for a conversation with others or your own personal consideration. Some invite you to participate in a first-hand encounter with a specific creative work (watch a film, listen to a song, read a poem, study a flower, etc). We hope you find these resources helpful. Our contribution is to share generous ways of being together that people can practice with their friends.
We also provide coaching and resources to local groups such as book and film clubs that may or may not be formally related to the Nexus organisation and help people create local events in their own contexts. Please feel free to Contact Us, read more About Us and explore our online Resources.
Image by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
🇨🇳 中文简体
🇩🇪 Deutsch
🇪🇸 Español
🇫🇷 Français
🇮🇹 Italiano
🇭🇺 Magyarul
Podcast
We’re excited to invite you to our podcast Opening Life!
Follow us on Facebook & Instagram for updates and info. In 2024, our new Season 3 episodes will be dropping on the first weekend of each month, from March to December. This season we’ll be exploring what NYC-born and Spanish poets, feminist author bel hooks, favorite life-changing songs of Chinese friends, timeless children’s stories, and more, have to say to our lives.
All episodes can be streamed on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or check out the latest episode below:
Our Five Key Words
Space
Our lives are crowded, both inside ourselves and in the world. We all need space to listen, reflect and speak, without fear of judgement.
Story
Like a mirror, stories provide reflections of our human experience from different perspectives. Stories can be told not only with words, but also with sounds, images and movements.
Conversation
Life-opening conversations happen when each person is invited to show up as they truly are. Wisdom can emerge from listening to many voices, each one beautiful in its particularity.
Connection
Human beings long for connection, to our deepest selves, to one another and to the transcendent. We flourish when we stay connected to sources of life and love.
Beholding
To behold is to see with the heart, to look through your life experience towards meaning. Beholding takes us wider, higher and deeper into reality.
More on Key Words
Our Story
Some years ago, a small group of friends recognized our need to slow down. Like many people, we felt overwhelmed by the speed of life and found little space for reflection. We tried to create a space where we could explore an important question we all shared: How are we going to be in the world? We found a rhythm for reading books, watching films, eating meals and taking walks together. We discovered stories, songs, poems, paintings and nature that helped us open our own personal stories with one another. Our shared encounters evolved into this movement we call Nexus.
Today Nexus is spread across more than fifteen countries in Europe, North America, The Middle East and Asia. On this site you will find articles inspired by encounters with books, films, music, poems and life events. Each article serves as a stimulus, either for a conversation with others or your own personal consideration. Some invite you to participate in a first-hand encounter with a specific creative work (watch a film, listen to a song, read a poem, study a flower, etc). We hope you find these resources helpful. Our contribution is to share generous ways of being together that people can practice with their friends.
We also provide coaching and resources to local groups such as book and film clubs that may or may not be formally related to the Nexus organisation and help people create local events in their own contexts. Please feel free to Contact Us, read more About Us and explore our online Resources.
Image by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
🇨🇳 中文简体 🇩🇪 Deutsch 🇪🇸 Español 🇫🇷 Français 🇮🇹 Italiano 🇭🇺 Magyarul
Podcast
We’re excited to invite you to our podcast Opening Life!
Follow us on Facebook & Instagram for updates and info. In 2024, our new Season 3 episodes will be dropping on the first weekend of each month, from March to December. This season we’ll be exploring what NYC-born and Spanish poets, feminist author bel hooks, favorite life-changing songs of Chinese friends, timeless children’s stories, and more, have to say to our lives.
All episodes can be streamed on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or check out the latest episode below:
Our Five Key Words
Space
Our lives are crowded, both inside ourselves and in the world. We all need space to listen, reflect and speak, without fear of judgement.
Story
Like a mirror, stories provide reflections of human experience from different perspectives. Stories can be told not only with words, but also with sounds, images and movements.
Conversation
Life-opening conversations happen when each person is invited to show up as they truly are. Wisdom can emerge from listening to many voices, each one beautiful in its particularity.
Connection
Human beings long for connection, to our deepest selves, to one another, to the natural world and to the transcendent. We flourish when we stay connected to sources of life and love.
Beholding
To behold is to see with the heart, to look through your life experience towards meaning. Beholding takes us wider, higher and deeper into reality.
More on Key Words
Recent Posts
Hard Truths by Mike Leigh
When I started to become serious with my film watching after 2007, Mike Leigh was one of the directors who caught my early attention. The first one of Leigh’s films I watched was Secrets andLies (1996), soon followed by films like Naked (1993), Topsy-Turvy (1999), All or Nothing (2002) and Vera Drake (2004), as well as his earlier TV-work like Abigail’s Party (1977) and Meantime (1983). It opened the whole genre of British social realism for me. Since then, if only possible, I will not miss a new film by directors like Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Andrea Arnold, Lynn Ramsey and Clio Barnard.
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store By James McBride
James McBride once again brings to the reader an exquisite tale mixing raw reality with life-giving hope and love. Set in the 1920’s and 30’s in eastern United States, it is a time of Jewish immigration from Europe and the on-going black migration from the South toward the North. Music of Big Band Swing, Jazz, the Blues, and the Cuban-Afro touch is moving through dance theaters, Jim Crow laws are eagerly lived out, and those that consider themselves the “real Americans” are busily establishing their appropriate ancestral ties with the use of tall tales and imagination.
The Room Next Door by Pedro Almodovar
Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s English-language debut film, winner of the Venice Golden Lion 2024, is a heartfelt, meditative, crafty work of a filmmaker who keeps developing with age.The issues he brings up belong to his phase of life, which can make it hard to feel the depth of those emotions when you’re twenty years younger or so. Mortality, regret, memory, loss of curiosity and pleasure which comes with older age are the issues he tackles in this film.
Disappearing Ways of Life – The Films of Vittorio de Seta
De Seta’s films were often praised for their poetic and visual quality. They show the beauty and simplicity of everyday life in scenes of swordfish fishing, sulfur mining, mending of nets and boats, farming and shepherding. In his short 11 minute documentaries he shows the craft of manual labor, the beauty of the sea and countryside, the communal spirit and bonds, laying out the regional culture of the early Fifties in southern Italy. In a later interview he mentioned that he at the time was not aware that that way of life would disappear within a few years.