Some journeys do not move in straight lines.

They turn. They deepen. They fall quiet. They return.

That, in many ways, has been the journey of Unplugged Pagan.

When I came back to blogging in 2018, I was not returning with a polished plan or some grand vision of what this space would become. I was returning because something in me still needed a place to speak. A place for the old gods, for fire, for ritual, for memory, for grief, for devotion, and for the quieter parts of life that do not fit neatly into everyday conversation.

Unplugged Pagan began there: not as performance, but as return. Not as certainty, but as a small flame asking to be tended.

Over the years, this space became a meeting ground between Kevin and Lugh. Kevin, the name on paper, moving through work, fatigue, obligation, and the ordinary business of life. Lugh, the name tied more closely to spirit, myth, calling, and the inner life. For a long time, those names could feel like different chambers in the same house. But this path, and this space, have slowly become one of the places where they learned to stand beside each other instead of apart.

Life, after all, moves like a wheel.

It blooms. It withers. It breaks open. It goes silent. It begins again.

So does devotion.

So did this site.

In the early years, that showed up through posts on Brigid, fire keeping, drumming, festivals, myth, Paganism, and community. I wrote out of hunger then: hunger for meaning, for rootedness, for something sacred that could be lived honestly rather than simply talked about. Some of those posts were rough. Some wandered. Some were little more than sparks thrown onto the page. But even then, something real was being built.

A hearth.

A place to return to.

A place to keep the inner fire alive.

As the years turned, life turned with them. The world changed. Community changed. Silence changed. There were seasons of distance, disruption, loneliness, and inwardness. And those seasons taught me something I trust more now than I did at the beginning: the sacred does not live apart from life. It lives in the middle of it. In work. In weariness. In grief. In uncertainty. In the choice to keep tending something even when no one else sees it.

That is where devotion proves itself.

Not in spectacle, but in return.

Not in perfection, but in persistence.

Not in never drifting, but in coming back.

Brigid, the hearth, and the language of flame have remained close to the heart of that for me. Fire is honest. It must be tended or it dies. It warms, reveals, transforms, and asks relationship of the one who keeps it. In that way, it has always felt to me like one of the truest mirrors of devotion.

And over time, that devotion has come to live more and more in the small things: the cards laid out in the morning, the weather at the window, the candle lit before the day fully begins, the old names spoken into an ordinary room, the quiet pause before the noise of the world takes over. These are not grand gestures, but they are real ones. They are the kinds of practices that keep a soul from going numb.

That is why Unplugged Pagan feels less to me now like a conventional blog and more like a hearth journal. A record of seasons. A field book of devotion. A place where the sacred and the ordinary are allowed to sit together without apology.

When I look back over the years of this space, I do not just see old posts. I see the wheel marks of a life. I see hunger, silence, return, endurance, and the slow work of becoming more whole. I see Kevin and Lugh both leaving footprints in the same ash. I see a path that has not been straight, but has been real.

And maybe that is the truest thing I can say about Unplugged Pagan.

It has been a path of return.

Return to the page.

Return to the gods.

Return to the fire.

Return to the self.

Return to practice after silence.

If you have been here for years, thank you for walking through these seasons with me.

If you are new here, welcome.

Welcome to the hearth.

Welcome to the wheel.

Welcome to the unfinished, sincere, ongoing work of living a sacred life in an ordinary world.

After all these years, I am still here.

Still returning.

Still tending.

Still walking with the wheel.

We Need Dreamers Again

I just sat and watched, thanks to modern technology, the Artemis II launch.

There has been a lot of controversy around this mission. Some of it has been about safety. Some people were frustrated by the delays, the scrubs, the caution, the waiting. But honestly, if you are launching human beings into space, I would rather see oversafety than carelessness. They scrubbed the first launch, fixed what needed fixing, and then launched when they were satisfied. That is how it should be.

But the bigger argument I keep seeing is this: Why are we going back to the moon?

And I keep coming back to a much simpler answer.

Why not?

Maybe the better question is not why we are going back to the moon. Maybe the better question is why so many people have stopped believing we should reach for anything bigger than whatever disaster is sitting in front of us this week.

We are living in a time of tension again. A time of conflict, division, posturing, and far too many people beating the drums of war. It feels, in some ways, like an echo of an older world. Different details, same sickness. The same appetite for conflict. The same willingness to pour lives, money, and attention into destruction while acting as though building something bold, beautiful, and forward-looking is somehow irresponsible.

So let me ask the question that seems just as important: why is the United States still tangled up in the Middle East? Why is the world still feeding war after war after war? Why are we still acting as if violence is vision?

Wars solve very little, and what they do solve usually comes at a cost so high that the word “solution” hardly fits. Too often, one power is simply replaced by another, and ordinary people are left holding the bill in blood, grief, and ruin.

So no, I do not think the problem is that we are going to the moon.

I think the problem is that we have forgotten how to dream without apologizing for it.

With the eventual decommissioning of the International Space Station, we are standing at another threshold. So what comes next? Do we shrink? Do we retreat? Do we keep our eyes fixed only on the fires below us? Or do we look up again?

Because space is not the final frontier. It is the next frontier.

The moon matters not only because of science, not only because of technology, not only because of exploration, but because it reminds us that human beings are supposed to reach. We are supposed to imagine. We are supposed to build toward something more than survival, outrage, and endless war.

We need dreamers again.

Where did they go?

Where did we go?

This cannot be left to the United States alone. Canada, it is time to step up too. If we want to call ourselves a serious nation, then we need to act like one. Not only in trade disputes, not only in reaction to tariffs, not only when our backs are against the wall, but in vision. In purpose. In ambition. In imagination.

And not just Canada. India, China, Russia, Europe, all of us. Space should be one of the places where humanity remembers how to do something greater than tear itself apart. Russia, get out of Ukraine and do something worthy of the future. The rest of the world, stop pretending that war is maturity and dreaming is childishness.

It is not childish to dream.

It is necessary.

The moon is not the whole answer. It never was. But it is a symbol, and symbols matter. It tells us that we are still capable of lifting our eyes beyond the battlefield, beyond the headlines, beyond the petty and the brutal, and toward something that asks more of us than hatred does.

So to those who say we should not be going back, I will say it plainly: I think you are wrong.

We should be going.

Not because everything on Earth is fixed, but because it is not. Not because humanity has become wise, but because it still has a chance to become wiser. Not because the moon will save us, but because reaching for something higher may remind us that we are meant for more than this endless cycle of war, fear, and short-sightedness.

We need to dream again.

And sometimes the next step in that dream begins by looking up at the moon and saying, yes, we are going back.

Godspeed.

Category: Reflections

Still Walking the Wheel

Why We Still Need the Moon: Dreaming Beyond the Battlefield

We Need Dreamers Again