A border collie running an agility course is a being happier than which none can be conceived.

Happy 19th birthday to this kiddo!

Prayer before a fire (stealing lines from both Gandalf and Gordon White):

I am a servant of the secret fire,
The fire of creation.
All fires are the one fire,
And blessed be its flame.

Lovely night for a backyard fire

I finally read that Kingsnorth essay “Against Christian Civilization” and, yeah, it’s a banger.

This article is being passed around in my little circle here at micro.blog. Absolutely worth reading. All of the vigor, these days, seems to be outside the mainstream (i.e., universities, legacy media, Democrats). Rachel and I were watching some videos of Dr Zach Bush this morning. He (and other “alternative health” folks) are clearly out of the mainstream. Yet his vision is so compelling.

I don’t know what to make of his claims (or those of Thomas Cowan) that fall outside the mainstream. Maybe they’re wrong in important ways. But, as I said to Rachel, I’ll take being wrong in details but right directionally. What does mainstream medicine offer us? Depressed and lonely? Take this pill. Sick? Take this other pill. The two pills causing new problems? Here are more pills to handle that.

I’m too dispositionally cautious to go very far into the deep end. But the Recognized Authorities are less compelling every day.

One of the most clarifying things Charles Eisenstein says is (paraphrasing):

If you were placed within the totality of another’s circumstances, you would behave in the same way they do.

That is, if you had the right mix of childhood trauma, economic deprivation, lack of exposure to a wider world, etc., you’d be a racist too. Given the right mix of circumstances, you’d also abuse children. To deny this is to live within the illusion of moral superiority.

This doesn’t mean bad behavior is excused. It does mean, however, that the right response to the temptation of moral superiority is to reply “there but for the grace of God go I.”

We pruned out Concord grape vines today. It’s more complicated than I would have thought! Hopefully we did okay.

Rebecca Solnit very effectively satirizes a prominent model of online activism.

Wisdom from Gabor Maté on healthy anger, and how to process unhealthy rage.