Welcome to "Fullness of Joy"

A few words about why I'm starting this Substack — and my hopes for it

The fullness of joy is to behold God in all. — Julian of Norwich

Okay, friends. After considerable soul-searching, prayer, and discernment, I’ve decided to do something fairly momentous. I am shifting my focus away from blogging and toward this new Substack newsletter.

That may not seem like a big deal to you, but it feels pretty big to me. You see, I’ve been blogging since 2003 — over a third of my life now. Maintaining a blog has been not only a discipline and a spiritual practice in its own right, but it has also been — at least in the early days — a wonderful way to connect with readers, get feedback on my writing, and therefore a great tool for honing my craft.

I’ve used my blog to develop new ideas for my books and retreats, and to wrestle with questions and criticism from readers both friendly and not-so-friendly. It’s not overstating things to say that maintaining a blog has been a central element of my work (or, should I say, ministry) as a writer, speaker, and teacher dedicated to the splendor of contemplative and mystical spirituality.

When I started blogging, I used the LiveJournal platform (does anyone remember LiveJournal? I think it’s still out there, but lives just down the street from MySpace), but by 2007 I had graduated to Wordpress.com, and eventually to my own self-hosted website (also Wordpress). My URL, anamchara.com, was chosen because of its connection to both spiritual direction and Celtic spirituality (and believe it or not, I registered that domain name before John O’Donohue’s bestselling book Anam Ċara was published). That website is still active, and I have no intention of taking it down — and I’m sure I’ll continue to post some new content there from time to time. I also occasionally have cross-posted my content on other blogging websites like Patheos and Medium, and I suppose I’ll continue to do that sporadically as well.

But now, my intention is to post most or all of my new writing, that previously I would have put on my blog — here on Substack instead. I have two reasons for doing this.

The first reason is practical. Blogging has changed so much over the 20+ years that I have maintained a blog. In the good old days, it seemed like communities formed around blogs — at least, one formed around mine. We had some wonderful debates and conversations in the comment section of my blog, and that was half the fun. I remember the joy of posting something before I went to bed at night, and then waking up to see that the readers from Australia, New Zealand and Europe were already posting comments in response.

Those were the days.

Things began to change with the arrival of Facebook. More and more, it seemed that community happened on social media sites, and the comments on my blog started to have a higher concentration of spam and trolls. My blog traffic stopped growing, even though my books were selling respectably well and my work as a speaker/teacher kept growing (by 2013 I was living my dream and doing this work full-time). Of course, I think things were shifting, and more new readers were finding me through social media. Eventually I turned off the comments section on my blog altogether, tired of wading through the spam.

By 2017 my attention got divided even further, although initially for very good reasons. After a number of people asked me how to support my work, I set up a membership program through Patreon. Patreon has been a tremendous blessing for me, as people have provided generous support to help sustain my work; but it’s part of the Patreon ecosystem to offer “rewards” to paying members, which I have enjoyed doing but it has unavoidably meant dividing my attention: every hour I spent creating new content for Patreon members was an hour away from the blog. By dividing my attention between Patreon, social media, and the blog, it seems that too often, the blog just got the leftovers.

But the final straw for my blog, it seems, has been the arrival of AI. I cannot prove this, but I certainly can say that in the past few years as Artificial Intelligence apps like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini have become more prominent and widely used, my blog traffic has continued to lag. One reason for this may be that when AI scrapes my website for its content — and then delivers that information to AI users — people no longer have a reason to actually visit my blog. You can learn basic information about mysticism, Christian mysticism, contemplative prayer, Celtic spirituality and other related topics that I write about, without ever having to visit websites like mine. One question to ChatGPT and you’re all set.

As all of this has been going on, I’ve watched as many of my colleagues began posting newsletters here on Substack. At first I resisted coming to Substack, seeing it as just one more channel for content creators to use — and between social media, Patreon, and my blog, I had enough channels, thank you very much!

But then it slowly began to dawn on me that Substack actually combines the best elements of all three platforms. Unlike Patreon (or blogging in the world of AI), Substack has an ecosystem that helps new readers to find me (and vice versa). And it gives me the creative freedom like hosting my own blog, and the opportunity for readers to support me without having to visit a different site (i.e. Patreon).

So last year I started a Substack called Mystical Journey which is designed to publish short devotional writings 3-4 times a week. That’s going strong, but I have a very narrow focus for it: the writings I publish there are very short, concise, and designed to be inspirational in nature: i.e., to offer direct support for your daily spiritual practice.

As the months went by, I kept thinking of other topics or ideas I wanted to explore here on Substack, that don’t really fit in to the “Mystical Journey” format. Hence, this second newsletter, which I’m calling “Fullness of Joy” after the wonderful quote from Julian of Norwich that you see at the beginning of this post.

So what is Fullness of Joy all about? Well, it’s about beholding the Divine in all. All people. All circumstances. All conflicts. All creativity. All the news. All hopes and dreams. All the mystics from all the traditions.

In other words, I’m hoping to recapture a bit of the anarchic, free-wheeling spirit that marked the early years of my blogging journey, before I become a Published Author of Books on Mysticism (™) and then tended to always be thinking about how my writing fit in with my overall “brand.” In the early days I wrote about Christian mysticism, of course, but also about popular music, and paganism, and what bugs me about institutional religion, and various other topics. In other words, I wrote about whatever happened to tickle my fancy at that moment.

So I want to recapture some of that anything’s possible energy. Naturally, contemplation is embedded in my DNA so whatever I write about will be approached from a contemplative heart. That’s what gives my work — all of it — its center. So if I write about Buddhism, or Christianity, or Paganism, or Celtic spirituality, or gender diversity, or psychedelics, or anxiety, or living in the south, or interspirituality, or Tarot, or cats, or being a vegan who cheats… or whatever, I hope my words will all be informed by a contemplative heart.

And of course, I hope you’ll join me. At least for now, and maybe forever, all the writing on this Substack will be freely available to all subscribers, paid or free. Just like a blog. Of course, if you subscribe not only do you get my sincere gratitude, but you also get the satisfaction of knowing that you are supporting independent contemplative writing. But that’s totally up to you. You're welcome here either way.

Thanks for reading this far… and I’ll see you around!