The Butterfly Effect
Welcome. This is where I write about the work that matters most to me — the work of re-rooting our life together in place, citizenship, and the gift.
We live in a time when the institutions meant to hold us together feel brittle, when the stories we’ve told about ourselves no longer seem to fit. The market and the state have claimed more of our attention than they were ever meant to, while the quieter bonds that make us neighbors, citizens, and kin have worn thin. This space is my effort to name what’s been lost and to imagine what it would take to live otherwise.
I’m not here to flatter power or translate it into something palatable. I’m not here to sell you a future that arrives in a box, with instructions written far from where you live. I’m here to notice — with care and sometimes with sharpness — what’s actually happening to the places and people we love. And to ask what it would mean to rebuild the common life from the ground up.
What you’ll find here
You’ll find essays that draw on history, political economy, and the deep well of agrarian thought — but always anchored in the real world of work, worship, and worry. You’ll find conversations with people who haven’t given up on the possibility that we could belong to each other again: community builders, fundraisers, pastors, teachers, organizers, neighbors. You’ll find reflections that try to make sense of the choices before us — and the limits we must honor if we want to remain human.
Beneath it all is a simple framework: place, because we can’t be citizens of everywhere; citizenship, because belonging is more than a feeling; and the gift, because the work of keeping one another is not a transaction but a sacred trust.
Why this matters
I believe writing can do more than comment on the world; it can be part of the work of mending it. That means telling the truth about what’s broken and telling it plainly, but also keeping faith that repair is possible. It means honoring the local over the abstract, the durable over the fashionable, and the hard-earned over the easy win.
How to be part of it
When you subscribe for free, you’ll receive my regular essays and selected conversations, as well as early access to new projects. As a paid subscriber, you’ll have access to the full archive, enjoy complementary access to webinars, and become part of a community of readers who believe the work of re-rooting our common life is worth doing — and worth sustaining.
This is reader-supported work. Every subscription helps keep it independent, honest, and answerable only to those who believe in it enough to stand with it. If that’s you, I’d be glad for your company.
