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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

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

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.

This week my reading moved from a 1677 woodcut map of New England to a 1606 copper engraved map of the religions of the world, to a seventeenth-century catalogue of world religions and Christian heresies, to a sprawling space opera set across the solar system. A rare book arrived in the mail, a public talk prompted uncomfortable questions, and the common thread running through all of it turned out to be the same: people trying to draw the world as they wished it to be, and the significant silences their clean lines depend on.

Check out the new post on my free Substack page!

https://craigphillips.substack.com/p/maps-space-battles-and-old-heresies

In my newest free Substack post I explain why my posts seem to “jump all over the place” — from fountain pens and making sourdough to learning ancient languages — by revealing how all these diverse interests connect through a central question: “what does it mean to flourish?” I explore how seemingly unrelated passions can form an “architecture of wonder” where each pursuit informs the other, suggesting that lifelong learning isn’t about accumulating separate skills but about recognizing the hidden patterns that connect different aspects of a meaningful life. My hope is that you will examine your own scattered interests and discover what flourishing might mean in your everyday life.

I hope you will enjoy this post on my free Substack page:

“Taking the time to experience our internal desert—to sit with our fears, contradictions, and longings without trying to fix or flee from them—is essential for authentic growth. It’s in these stripped-down moments that we discover not just our limitations, but our capacity for change, for compassion, and for becoming more fully ourselves.”

Everyday Life: Flourishing in These Times

https://craigphillips.substack.com

I recently posted a meditation on my free Substack Page based on my experiences of mowing of ten acres of field every summer in the Adirondacks. It’s about how we avoid solitude and why the most uncomfortable spaces sometimes offer the most essential encounters with who we really are. “When you can’t escape the heat, the noise, or the monotony, you eventually stop trying to escape yourself.”

You will find it at:

https://craigphillips.substack.com

I hope you will enjoy reading it.