Trivium

Snow now blankets the ground in New Hampshire. The maple and birch trees are bare of leaves but full of snow. The air is crisp and cold. When it’s snowing, the air has a kind of sound that is difficult to describe. It’s got a texture to it as if someone were brushing the air with a stiff brush. Other sounds seem to recede into the background, and I’m left to listen to the snowflakes as they fall.…

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

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…

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

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…

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.

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

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…

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…

Check out a new post on my free Substack page. What does it mean to read philosophy for its own sake, without lecture notes or citations? A detour into classical Indian thought shows how Hindu and Buddhist philosophers debated the nature of the self—and whether there even is one to find. https://craigphillips.substack.com/p/returning-to-indian-philosophy

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,…

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…

I hope you will enjoy my new post, “The Art of Aimless Exploration,” on my free Substack page. An aimless twelve-mile ride on an e-bike reminded me that some of life’s best discoveries happen when we’re not actively seeking them. They happen when we’re open to surprise, willing to explore the dead ends, curious about what lies beyond our well-traveled paths. Sometimes we need to get lost to find…