About our work
The need
Where do you turn …
If you want a quiet place away from home to light a candle for a friend you’ve lost?
If you want to talk through an important life decision with someone whose values you share, but with some distance from your friend group?
If you simply want a moment to celebrate your past month with the support of people you trust?
We call moments like these “honoring our human journey.” We believe it’s one of the most important things for us to do as human beings: Owing to our inherent human dignity, our experiences of joy, sorrow, and transition intrinsically deserve moments of care and respect.
Yet in our social fabric, we’re missing space for honoring our experiences — at least one that’s accessible and authentic to many of us.
The invitation
What if we created the spaces we deserve for honoring our human journey in San Francisco?
Our purpose
The San Francisco Contemplarium is a neighborhood institution for honoring our human journey, where you can engage with contemplative events & programs, installations, and community.
We approach our work with the following intentions:
Affirming the equal and inherent dignity of every person, we lift up the humanity in ourselves and in our neighbors, within a container of trust created through mutual agreements.
As a public cultural institution belonging to us all, we serve neighbors from all walks of life, backgrounds, beliefs, and affiliations.
Representing the richness and robustness of our communities, our work is people-powered by local neighborhoods, and enriched through collaboration with honoring professionals.
For a deeper dive into our purpose, read our short manifesto, A San Francisco That Honors, and a longer manifesto by Founding Director Seanan Fong, A People Who Honor. See our One-Year Anniversary Reflection newsletter for a recent reflection on our mission.
What we do
Public Events
Our public events create a consistent, intentional setting for people in the community to honor their human journey alongside their neighbors.
Our flagship Reflection Jams, on the first Sundays of every month, offer guided journaling and sharing to chill lo-fi rhythms. Participants describe it as a “lovely, beautiful time to be, to pause, to let all of those unfelt things be felt, unnamed moments to be spoken.”
We also host Seasonal Ingatherings throughout the year to honor our seasonal themes: Flourishing (realizing our fullest selves), Encounter (with existential limits), Origins (what makes us who we are), and Becoming (the kind of person we want to become). Read more about our thematic calendar.
Installations
Our installations in parks and other public spaces provide self-guided rituals that allow folks to honor their own and neighbors’ experiences.
When the weather is right, we create pop-up Reflection Stands in San Francisco parks, where people can give voice to their own experiences by writing and posting, and honor the experiences of their neighbors by infusing a pebble with a good intention and dropping it into a vessel of water. Passersby call it “a moment of pause … just what I needed today … should be on every corner.”
Community
As a people-powered institution, community is the Contemplarium’s energetic engine. This community realizes the mission of the Contemplarium by helping create and hold the spaces for our neighbors to honor their human journeys, and by supporting each other in living out the values of the Contemplarium in their own lives.
… and more
As we build the Contemplarium, we are constantly experimenting and testing new ways we can help our city honor our human journeys.
Who is behind this work
Seanan Fong, Founding Director
As Founding Director, Seanan brings the SF Contemplarium to life. A minister turned designer, Seanan combines a grounded empathy and a builder’s imagination to reweave our missing moral infrastructure.
Neighborhood Flamekeepers
The Neighborhood Flamekeepers are a community of neighbors who power the work of the SF Contemplarium while supporting each other and growing together.
Supporters
The Contemplarium is a fiscal sponsee of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Beloved. The Contemplarium’s work would not be possible without support from the Mira Fellowship, Build IRL, and the Hinckley Fund, and from generous supporters like you who give to the SF Contemplarium. Thank you.
The SF Contemplarium turns one 🎂🎉
For an overall update on where we are, please read our reflections upon the one-year anniversary of the SF Contemplarium — we revisit our mission, review our year of experimentation and learnings, and announce our Neighborhood Flamekeepers initiative.
— Seanan Fong, Founding Director
September 14, 2025
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