Living the Rapture of Being Alive
Joseph Campbell once told Bill Moyers that people aren’t searching for the meaning of life — they’re searching for the experience of being fully alive.
That sentence changed everything for me. It became the North Star for four decades of writing, a career in business, a bookstore, two farms, grief, sailing, love, and a cabin in the Wisconsin woods where I now sit watching the seasons turn.
This Substack is what that North Star looks like on the page.
What You’ll Find Here
I write across a wide range — climate change, investing, poetry, grief, mythology, psychology, and the inner life of being human. These aren’t disconnected topics. They’re facets of the same question: how do we live this life fully, in the bones, connected to soul?
Some pieces are examples of living that rapture. Some are about it. Some are a guide to it.
You’ll encounter:
Climate — the urgent, practical, and the long view
Poetry — written to surface what ordinary language can’t reach
Postcapitalism and the AI Revolution—How technology is changing our present and future
Eloquence of the Heart — exploring the language of deep emotion
Grief, love, and the inner life — drawn from real experience, including the death of my wife in 2018
Mythology & psychology — Campbell, Hillman, Bly, Estes, and how their ideas illuminate everyday life
Who I Am
I’m a poet and author with a writing practice spanning more than four decades. I’ve published six books, hundreds of articles and white papers, served as poetry editor for Holy Cow! Press, and edited Inroads: A Journal of the Male Soul.
I spent thirty years in business — consultant, entrepreneur, bookstore owner — and closed my career by taking a solar company from $500K to $15M in revenue over three years. I’ve been involved in mythopoetic men’s work since the mid-1980s, which is where I found the thinkers who shaped how I see everything: Campbell, Bly, Hillman, Estes, Woodman.
Today I live simply: a small cabin on ten acres in northern Wisconsin, deep forest, a handful of neighbors within a mile. Writing, gardening, mountain biking, sailing. Watching nature. Thinking. This life is not accidental — it’s constructed so the work can happen.
Free or Paid — Here’s the Difference
Free subscribers get everything I write on climate change, postcapitalism, poetry and selected highlights on AI and inner experience.
Paid subscribers get three things:
Books in progress — access to my books as I write them, on AI, grief, adoption, mythology, inner experience, and American renewal, delivered in real time as the work unfolds.
Personal writing on grief, love, sex, and relationships — content I’m willing to share with serious readers but not the open internet. Paid subscribers have earned my trust, and I write to them accordingly.
The satisfaction of supporting work you find valuable — the way you might support public radio or a church. Most trolls won’t pay to troll. Your payment tells me you’re serious.
Subscribe now — free or paid — and come alive to your own rapture.
