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LIVING LIFE IN THE BIG RING

Every July I return to Lake Champlain with my bicycle. The roads are familiar, the fields still need mowing, and the Strava segments still challenge me.

But this is not really a story about speed. It is about a lifetime on two wheels—from a red Raleigh Colt carrying a trombone to school, to a celeste Bianchi, to the carbon Specialized I ride today. It is about family rides, grandchildren discovering bicycles, and the quiet determination to keep chasing fifteen seconds.

Aging changes the body. It does not have to diminish the joy.

Please read this on my free Substack Page:

https://open.substack.com/pub/craigphillips/p/living-life-in-the-big-ring?r=2jqz90&utm_medium=ios

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PATIENCE: THE ANCHOR OF THE SOUL

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This morning, my dog Rosie fell asleep in my lap on the back deck and wouldn’t let me get up. The foxglove were lit up in the early light, my coffee went cold, and I found myself thinking about what a 17th-century book had to say about patience, storms, and the hammer that shapes gold.

You can read it here:

https://craigphillips.substack.com/p/patience-the-anchor-of-the-soul

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THE FIRST CALL I MADE WHEN I RETIRED

The first call I made when I retired and moved to New Hampshire was to the local Rotary Club. I had no idea what I was getting into.

Fifty people. Every Wednesday. Friendships I never expected – and causes worth working for.

Make the call to a community service organization in your own town.

Follow the link to my free Substack page:

https://substack.com/home/post/p-194116588

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45 YEARS AND STILL SERVING

Today marks the 45th anniversary of my Ordination to the Priesthood in the Episcopal Church. It is a milestone I find myself approaching with deep gratitude and no small amount of wonder. My journey to this point began even earlier, with my graduation from seminary 47 years ago, followed by a brief season of other work as a hospital chaplain and as deacon before I was ordained to the priesthood on this day at St. Lawrence Episcopal Church, in Muskogee, Oklahoma.

While I have stepped back from full-time parish ministry in retirement, the call to serve hasn’t quieted. I am already scheduled to supply at a local church three Sundays this month.  I wouldn’t have it any other way 

On a day like this, I am full of gratitude. I am profoundly thankful for my wife, whose steadfast love and support have made everything possible, and for my family and friends who have walked this road with me. I am equally grateful for the countless parishioners, colleagues, and fellow travelers I have been privileged to minister to and work alongside over these past 45 years. You have shaped me far more than you know.

Here’s to the journey head wherever it leads.

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF WONDER

In October 2021 I harvested ten pounds of grapes from a single vine on my back fence. I left them on as long as I could. Let them ripen before the frost came.


That turned out to be a good description of flourishing. Not a feeling you wait for. Something you practice, daily, with what you have.


Seven years of writing on this site. One year on my free Substack page. A new retrospective essay on that first year on Substack is up there now.

What are you paying attention to these days?

https://craigphillips.substack.com/p/the-architecture-of-wonder

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THE MEANTIME: NINE WEEKS READING THE EXPANSE

Five thousand pages. Nine novels. Nine weeks. What I found in James S. A. Corey’s The Expanse wasn’t just great science fiction — it was a meditation on decency, mortality, and what we do with the time we have. Because the meantime, it turns out, is the only time there is.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-194116678

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WHAT THE CITY KEEPS: A NEW YORK CITY MEMOIR OF LOVE AND LOSS

Check out this new post on my free Substack Page.

A month in New York City keeps turning into an encounter with the past. My father’s midtown commute, my wife’s mother and grandmother lunching at the Grand Central Oyster Bar, the invisible lines running through a city where lives pass within feet of each other for decades without ever meeting. I keep wishing I could compare notes with the people who were here before me.

https://open.substack.com/pub/craigphillips/p/what-the-city-keeps?r=2jqz90&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

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INVITATION TO MY FREE PUBLIC LECTURE IN NEW YORK CITY—3/18/26

If you are in the NYC area you are welcome to attend my free public lecture on “The Earliest Mapping of the Religions of the World.” Signup on Eventbrite is encouraged.

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MATCHA MADE IN MANHATTAN

My Scottish babysitter called me an “old English tea wife” when I was eight. She wasn’t wrong. It took me sixty some years and a Chinese coffee chain to prove it. Read the full story on my Free Substack page, https://craigphillips.substack.com

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“SNOWBOUND” — THEN AND NOW

Snowbound! Check out this post on my free Substack page.

A Nor’easter is tracking up the Eastern Seaboard this morning, and the snow-covered birch trees outside my window in New Hampshire sent me back to John Greenleaf Whittier’s great 1866 poem ‘Snow-Bound’, and to the question of what we lose when no storm can truly cut us off anymore. Modern life is specifically engineered to prevent the conditions that produced some of the best writing in American literature.

https://craigphillips.substack.com/p/snowbound-then-and-now