I zipped my black puffer jacket and stepped off the porch into the air. It was cold, not bitingly so, yet I felt its promise. My knees stiffened as a I moved, thirty-six and already negotiating with cartilage. Frost thinly layered autumn leaves like sugar on glass as they crunched beneath my feet. I walked the long winding road into the woods, past the tree line, out toward the dairy farm where brown-spotted calves and their mothers raised their heads in slow bovine curiosity, then returned to their chewing once I passed. My knees and the rest of me loosened as I plodded along into the gray of evening. The light felt bleached of warmth and the sky hung low, like wet wool stretching across the trees. Surely you know this faceless weather. How it can numb your fingertips before you notice, settle in your lungs like a damp fog, where every exhale turns visible, and every inhale reminds you it’s going to be like this for a while.

This time of year, it takes effort to layer up and step outside. The sun disappears earlier each day, and some part of me wants to follow it. This is the season when I start searching flights to Florida or wondering if there’s still time to slip away to Spain. Some years, I go, boarding a quick flight thousands of miles away to trade one season for another. A kind of luxury, yet I am no longer sure I want to indulge that reflex so easily.

When speaking with two friends this past week, each shared how they were taking a different approach to winter this year. Anastasia was looking forward to settling into her “den” in Colorado for the season. Johnnie said he would welcome the shortening of daylight in Cambridge and mirror nature’s rhythm.

They made it sound almost sacred. Winter as something to honor, not merely endure.

I paused, as that’s not how I’ve known winter. I’ve mostly treated it as something to duck. Slip past. Schedule my way around. For the gray makes me solemn. And the cold makes me restless. Still, I’m listening to them now, because something in me has sparked. Something in me is wary of running toward warmth like it’s a god-given birthright.

Over the last several weeks I’ve been reading the Showings of Julian of Norwich. She was a 14th century mystic and the first woman whose writings were presented in what we now call English. Remarkably she had such a disregard for her own ego that we do not even know her real name, as she never signed it at the end of her writings. “Julian” was the name of the church where she asked to be enclosed in an anchor-hold—a small stone cell built against a church wall. She chose to live inside there for decades, with only a window to the sanctuary and another to the street, no door. Yet she did not choose this home as self-inflicted punishment, or end up going mad. Something else happened. She descended within.

Julian once wrote, “God is not outside.” And while she meant this in a mystical sense—that there is no separation between the divine and the created—I’ve been thinking of it another way. If I can’t go outside as easily, what might I find within?

What if winter is not an obstacle, but an architecture? What if settling in is not resignation, but formation?

I am wondering now if winter might be an anchor-hold for those of us who’ve often regarded it as a mood-killer. Maybe it could be a context to lean into rather than a season to shortcut. An opportunity to embrace stillness.

Writing in the silence between stone, Julian described her understanding of the human soul: it was “oned” with God, united by a knot so subtle and so mighty that in it we are made endlessly holy. While that may not be language we use now, something about that image—being knotted into the divine, bound not by pressure but by presence—stimulates me.

If I can’t see the sun, or travel to chase it, can I trust that I am still wrapped up in something radiant?

We all know what it is like when the sun hits our faces. We come slightly more alive. It is one of the most liberating sensations: to feel a star light us up, warmth stretch across our achy skin, thaw us out. And yet in some seasons and places, nature seems to be telling us, “You cannot have sun whenever you want. You cannot be warm whenever you’d like. In the gray and in the dark, will you still come alive?”

While our choice to spread wings and fly to Florida or Spain or an easier pasture to flee discomfort may not be a failure of spirit, it might denote restlessness. Yet to Julian, even that restlessness would be “behovely,” as she put it in her Middle English.

“Sin is behovely,” she wrote. A word that means “necessary, appropriate” or “part of the pattern.” In her world, sin or failure wasn’t a problem to be solved but a path to tread and learn from—a provocative idea for our time, let alone hers.

Julian believed that nothing—not restlessness, not doubt, not even sin—could separate us from God in the slightest. She said unfailing union with God— “oneing”—was not only real, but the truth behind all appearances. That the love of God creates such a oneing that no person can be separated from another. That in God’s sight, one person is all people, and all people are in one person.

Whether or not you believe in the divine, what kind of winter might it be to believe that even in the most withdrawn and quiet months, you are still bound to everyone, everywhere?

Honestly, I’m not settled in yet. I’d love nothing more than to shoot off to a merrier terrain. Maybe I will. But I’m circling the idea of an anchor-hold. Perhaps this winter will be less about getting through and more about being reshaped by its starker contours.

Maybe, like the anonymous author from Julian of Norwich, we don’t need to flee our enclosure or always seek the kiss of the sun. Maybe, instead, we are being invited to stay long enough to see it is not the sun we are missing, but our own glow in its absence. It is there, whether our name is remembered or forgotten. Our light burns within the long night.

Until the next cast,

Jordan

In the waiting, we become who we are. More prepared for what might want to be reeled in. Out here, we’re fishing the universe together.

thoughtworms are hooks for aliveness, short casts into the deep.

innersparks are essays that keep the light, long fires for a long night.

offlines are composed without internet from memory and attention, honest on purpose.

Here, we return to Ourselves, again and again. Reminded we are stardust burning in the darkness. The darkness cannot overcome us.

All of my work is in service of ushering in a new renaissance. Historically, renaissances have preceded social renewal and needed revolution, the inner work before the storm, the slow clearing that helps us see what we’re building toward and what we’re willing to march for.

To read every entry I write, you can upgrade to a paid subscription. Or become a renaissance patron, helping fund the books and seed Epic Ordinary’s Change Lives Fund.

Become a renaissance patron

Samir and I built Your Epic Ordinary Life for people ready to say aloud what they’ve been carrying, a guided memoir experience with someone across from you who knows how to listen longer than is comfortable. It begins with An Hour to Be Seen. You talk for an hour. Within two days you hold a one-page portrait of your life, written by a human who actually heard you. The truest way to start.

Book your hour

I always wanted to be one of those guys who hiked up rugged mountains, camped by nightfall next to flickering fires, caught fish with his bare hands.

Domesticated rhythms of work and life meant I never gave myself permission to try.

When I moved to Spain two summers ago after getting divorced, Rob and I set off one morning into Sierra de Gredos, a mountain range in the central region of the country.

We walked for what felt like miles through a thick, dry forest on a steady incline.

I was young and fit by most accounts, but none of that prevented my breath from feeling deranged in the heat of afternoon.

Meanwhile, Rob breathed just fine. Which surprised me (and, I admit, injured my pride a little).

Rob was pushing sixty with an average build, yet traversed the woods with the same ease that he did his frequent travels between the Saïd Business School and Arenas—not a straight-line commute.

Rob’s steps were sure and steady. He might as well have been Spanish, given how much time he had spent here the last twenty-five years. He knew the terrain. And it knew him back.

I trailed him with a kind of wistfulness, seeking solid ground amidst my life’s shifting landscapes.

Generative artificial intelligence had spurred onto the news scene at the time of our hike. As Rob and I caught up with each other, we explored the immense hype around AI, and looked for pertinent connections between it and my research into hurry.

We walked another mile uphill. “Where are we going?” I asked. I don’t recall whether I was questioning where AI was taking the human race or the overgrown trail ahead.

Then, as if he had noticed something, Rob stopped. Took a step off the beaten path. Bent his knees toward the ground. Scooped a pile of dirt into his hands. It spilled between his timeworn fingers.

“There is more complexity in a spoonful of this soil than all of New York City,” he said.

At first I didn’t know if he was being serious or hyperbolic or what this might have to do with AI. But I shut up and listened.

“Take a human body, for instance. There are as many non-human cells in you and me as our own human cells. Around thirty trillion are our own. Thirty trillion belong to microorganisms that affect health and mood. Each cell is as complex as New York City. So, if we have thirty trillion cells… that’s thirty trillion cities.”

He then pointed from the tip of my pinky toe all the way to the crown of my glistening forehead.

“From the perspective of two single cells on a relative scale between the farthest reaches of your body, they are near equivalent to the distance of any human being—right now—to the edge of the observable universe. As far out as our most sophisticated telescopes can detect: forty-six billion light years away1.

“So, you are a universe. I am a universe. ‘I am large. I contain multitudes2.’”

I took a moment to process his words, the minutiae of microbes and soil muddled with the grandeur of mountains and men and space. Slowly, I felt my chest rise and fall, recovering a steady cadence. For the first time in what felt like a long time, air deeply filled my lungs, dispersed to every last inch of my flesh. “Then we are birthing new universes all the time,” I said. “Since the cells in our body regenerate frequently.”

Rob formed a small smile. Further spun his web of thought. “To say that AI in anyway comes close to resembling that is… misleading. It massively underestimates the glory of God. A phrase that’s helpful for humility whether you consider yourself a believer or not. The idea that we are human beings and therefore can do anything is hugely dangerous. Coming into a landscape like this can help us remember that.

“For decades I’ve hiked these trails. When I come here on a day after it’s snowed, I haven’t got an idea where I am or where to go. All my cairns are covered. Meanwhile, the squirrels and mice don’t bat an eyelid.”

I noticed a cairn nearby, piled with five or six stones in semi-orderly fashion, marking out the next trail. “We think we know,” I said. “We don’t pause long enough to understand what we already have. So eager to use AI to enhance every facet of life, because that’s what everyone else is doing, because that’s how we’ll increase our margins.”

“Sometimes the problems we want to solve aren’t problems at all,” Rob said. “Which only brings about more problems.”

I looked, and the dirt had finished spilling between his fingers. He closed his hand and lowered it to his side.

“Careful. Prudence. Context. Caution,” he said.

We proceeded on our hike, and drank cold, clean water from a river.

Later, we would notice an ibex in the distance, which had already noticed us.

When we finally emerged from the forest line at a higher elevation, I witnessed great big rocky white peaks that told me a story about my smallness and their trustworthiness. We sat down on a clearing of ground, and Rob pulled a loaf of bread from his backpack, tore off pieces, and lined them with slices of smoked salmon and Manchego. We ate until full. Then each of us chose a patch of ground, laid down our tired bodies, and took siestas beneath the shadow of the sun.

All we had was all we needed.

Behold, the glory of God.

Until the next cast,

Jordan

I selected this chapter from my forthcoming book The Urgency of Slowing. I intend to publish next year. If you would like to provide feedback on chapters as I write them and commune with a small group of people from around the world making a slowing down, you can apply to join the Porch Sit Revolution.

Join my book reading group

In the waiting, we become who we are. More prepared for what might want to be reeled in. Out here, we’re fishing the universe together.

thoughtworms are hooks for aliveness, short casts into the deep.

innersparks are essays that keep the light, long fires for a long night.

offlines are composed without internet from memory and attention, honest on purpose.

Here, we return to Ourselves, again and again. Reminded we are stardust burning in the darkness. The darkness cannot overcome us.

All of my work is in service of ushering in a new renaissance. Historically, renaissances have preceded social renewal and needed revolution, the inner work before the storm, the slow clearing that helps us see what we’re building toward and what we’re willing to march for.

To read every entry I write, you can upgrade to a paid subscription. Or become a renaissance patron, helping fund the books and seed Epic Ordinary’s Change Lives Fund.

Become a renaissance patron

Samir and I built Your Epic Ordinary Life for people ready to say aloud what they’ve been carrying, a guided memoir experience with someone across from you who knows how to listen longer than is comfortable. It begins with An Hour to Be Seen. You talk for an hour. Within two days you hold a one-page portrait of your life, written by a human who actually heard you. The truest way to start.

Book your hour

On most mornings, I roll out of bed, wipe the sleep from my eyes, pull on a pair of sweatpants and throw on a long tee, meander into the kitchen, grind two tablespoons of dark espresso beans, pour my latte, and wander to the porch to sit. There, I sip from a stone mug and glimpse more of my foggy breath in the cold this time of year. The porch offers me a view of the woods. Leaves lightly rustle on branches in the wind, fall to the ground here and there. Squirrels gather acorns. A female cardinal chirps, flies, and lands near its partner. My mind drifts to another place, and when I notice it has, I return my attention to the ordinary glory around me. I sip some more, then again, and abide there until I’ve both finished my coffee and remembered I come from nature and can always return to it. It is an illusion that we are ever disconnected.

This is the most precious part of my day, and it is a time hidden from anyone else. I take no phone or book or stimulation to the porch (except for my coffee). Porch sits ground and activate my senses in a slow, mostly effortless manner. I need only bring my body.

Today, we live in an age where the loudest, most impatient voices dominate our senses. We are bombarded with how-to content, bad news, and distracting reels. Many of us feel a pervasive need to be plugged in, switched ‘on’—perhaps under the premise staying digitally connected means we are “in touch” and, from there, can make a difference.

Yet when I am unplugged, I feel most connected. It is the unhurried acts that gently cleanse.

I like to remind myself that I can be alone with me. To do nothing, and that nothing is quite something. My morning stillness is not without any effort: the most fruitful occasions are whenever I sit there for longer than I want. That is a discipline in itself. To unplug, to wait, until I find myself lost in now.

This quiet ritual has revealed to me that many of the important experiences I have will remain largely unknown. There will be no fanfare or accolades. Alone, I witness myself during a porch sit. Much of our lives is unseen by others—what we think and say and do often remains obscure.

Are you content to witness yourself?

In a world trained to react, choosing to be still can feel radical. Yet the shape of the world reflects the shape of our collective attention.

Giving our attention to reality TV and constant distraction on social media, for instance, may have facilitated the rise of a former-reality-TV-star-turned president, a person who is loud, inflammatory, and demands attention. For him and other leaders like him, I would argue their rule requires our giving them attention, lest they lose their foothold.

And so, as certain leaders rage and divide and we continue to bend our ears, we give them what they want.

The author Italo Calvino once reflected it is not the mouth that shapes the story, but the ear1. Tyrants in the digital age benefit from our attention: from our incessant scrolling on apps and purchases from companies backed by their allies, to our consumption of incendiary remarks on news feeds that feed on fear. Being loud sells. And with our ears, they shape the story of humanity.

Could sitting on our porches doing nothing spark a rebellion? We know there are different forms of protest, many of which are useful. In a digital age, one less tried may be to boycott who and what we give our attention to. To unplug, which is not the same as sticking our heads in the sand, may be one of the most radical forms of protest available to us today.

Unplug. Unwind. Undermine.

Perhaps more than ever, we are in need of finding and giving our attention to still, small voices amid the cacophony. It may be difficult for our ears to distinguish them at first, as we may be accustomed to engaging with those who lead by banging about. But still, small voices have not become too small. They are there. Rustling leaves. Chirping birds. Running streams. Ordinary people doing hard, human work. And… the still, small voice humming through every fiber of your human being is there, too, where it has always been.

When we scroll, we chase what’s trending. But when we are still, we begin to notice what endures. You can always choose to tune your frequency to the soul of the universe. By lending your ear and, at other times, withholding it, you can reshape the story humanity unfolds.

What will you listen to today?

Until the next cast,

Jordan

In the waiting, we become who we are. More prepared for what might want to be reeled in. Out here, we’re fishing the universe together.

thoughtworms are hooks for aliveness, short casts into the deep.

innersparks are essays that keep the light, long fires for a long night.

offlines are composed without internet from memory and attention, honest on purpose.

Here, we return to Ourselves, again and again. Reminded we are stardust burning in the darkness. The darkness cannot overcome us.

All of my work is in service of ushering in a new renaissance. Historically, renaissances have preceded social renewal and needed revolution, the inner work before the storm, the slow clearing that helps us see what we’re building toward and what we’re willing to march for.

To read every entry I write, you can upgrade to a paid subscription. Or become a renaissance patron, helping fund the books and seed Epic Ordinary’s Change Lives Fund.

Become a renaissance patron

Samir and I built Your Epic Ordinary Life for people ready to say aloud what they’ve been carrying, a guided memoir experience with someone across from you who knows how to listen longer than is comfortable. It begins with An Hour to Be Seen. You talk for an hour. Within two days you hold a one-page portrait of your life, written by a human who actually heard you. The truest way to start.

Book your hour

A few days ago my close friend Ashok and I were meandering through the unpretentious yet charming town of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, when I felt a small stir atop my head.

Thinking little of it, I reached a hand to pat my curly mess of hair for whatever had lodged itself there. Perhaps it was an acorn or tiny piece of stick that had fallen from a t…

Read more

A year and a half ago, my grandmother passed away, whom I affectionately called “Gram.”

At her funeral, I remember the church walls were mostly bare, the air was void of any discernible scent, and the varnished pews felt cold and rigid against my back. A knot had steadily tightened in my stomach and was now tugging at my throat. Then, my mother walked up…

Read more

If you’re fishing in a place where no fish may exist, is casting your line futile? Absurd, even?

Maybe others are certain there is little point to your creative act, and you are unsure of it yourself. Will you stop? Should you?

What if what feels like the most important work you could ever do doesn’t bring much return, and likely never will? Ought you primarily focus your efforts on more practical things? Follow the money? Reposition yourself to fish in the rivers and ponds and lakes and streams where there are pisces aplenty?

Perhaps.

But those banks… are so very crowded. Aren’t they?

Look around and you’ll see all the other fishermen and fisherwomen following their best fishing practices they were taught at Best Fishing School. Straining—one after the other—toward the great haul. Or the modest find, the predictable one. And, of course, anyone who catches here must pay their tax—their very fat tax—to the very fat man who sits atop his very expensive boat, eating more fish than everyone else. Yes, even those who do all they can just to scrape the bottom of the refuse barrel must pay their due.

And yet, despite this scene, few ever toss their bag over their shoulder, pick up their tackle box, and set off to a more remote wilderness, where the catch is less sure.

“How would we survive? Plus, everyone we love is here.”

Fewer still—only the most haphazard, flippant fool—would ever wander to where the lush runs out, turns into waterless sands of desert, wait until the sun gives way to a black sheet of night, the stars unveil themselves to dance in place, and with them as one’s witness, cast a line into the universe.

For what can be found in the desert but death? In the nothingness. In the silence. Where the weary winds are ghosts that pass from forgotten to forgotten.

In these dark, uncertain times, when many still cling to their best fishing practices on familiar banks, I’ve chosen to make a fool of myself.

With my faithful rod and trusty tackle box, I’ve wandered into the desert, to see if I might reel in something alive in the unlikeliest of places.

You see, I was born in Fishertown. My mother’s maiden name is Fischer. And while I was given my father’s name and became a Soliday, I was named for “soul” and “sol.” From the womb, I was bent toward inner and outer light.

It would only seem fitting, then, all these years later, that I become a fisherman in the night. And like a madman, cast my line into the cosmos, fishing the infinite with a tackle box of stardust. Choosing to be patient, to wait longer than I want—for the sheer thrill of seeing whether anything wants to come back.

Out here, there are no fish.

But—if I’m lucky—I just might catch a glimpse of myself. A momentary fragmentation, shooting across the sky like a disintegrating star. Maybe—if I’m luckier still—I’ll look down and have caught sand between my toes, confessing truths about stories so ancient, they shouldn’t be knowable; or feel the particles slipping through my fingers, like fleeting moments, somehow never lost.

And maybe, just maybe—if I’m really lucky—the void I’ve wandered into will finally reveal itself.

As Itself.

All along, absence has never meant “alone”—it has only ever been concealing Presence.

Until the next cast,

Jordan

In the waiting, we become who we are. More prepared for what might want to be reeled in. Out here, we’re fishing the universe together.

thoughtworms are hooks for aliveness, short casts into the deep.

innersparks are essays that keep the light, long fires for a long night.

offlines are composed without internet from memory and attention, honest on purpose.

Here, we return to Ourselves, again and again. Reminded we are stardust burning in the darkness. The darkness cannot overcome us.

All of my work is in service of ushering in a new renaissance. Historically, renaissances have preceded social renewal and needed revolution, the inner work before the storm, the slow clearing that helps us see what we’re building toward and what we’re willing to march for.

To read every entry I write, you can upgrade to a paid subscription. Or become a renaissance patron, helping fund the books and seed Epic Ordinary’s Change Lives Fund, and receive a complimentary “deep cast” session, an hour to sit together on Zoom, pour something worth drinking, and explore what your own life is fishing for.

Become a renaissance patron

Samir and I built Your Epic Ordinary Life for people ready to say aloud what they’ve been carrying, a guided memoir experience with someone across from you who knows how to listen longer than is comfortable. It begins with An Hour to Be Seen. You talk for an hour. Within two days you hold a one-page portrait of your life, written by a human who actually heard you. The truest way to start.

Book your hour