There are 2,800 of you here now.
I looked at this number this morning and witnessed myself thinking about the beautiful way a community gathers.
Sacred Paris began quietly. There was no grand plan for thousands of readers. I simply wanted a place to follow and record the things that kept calling to me: hidden chapels and forgotten women, reliquaries and poems, saints and mystics, old books, strange histories, sacred objects, pilgrim roads, and the questions that sometimes follow me home from a church and refuse to leave.
I would go looking for something, and I would find something else — this has been the beauty of living here in Paris.
And then I would come here and tell you about it.
Slowly, you found me.
More than 300 of you have arrived in the past month alone, many after Meggan shared the pilgrimage we are creating together in Sainte Baume next year. If you are one of them, welcome. You have arrived in the middle of a long and beautiful conversation.
There is another number I have been quietly watching for a very long time.
100.
This morning, Sacred Paris has 96 paid subscribers.
I know that on the internet, where everything seems to be measured in tens of thousands and millions, 100 is a very small number.
But I have always had a tenderness for small things.
Small chapels. Tiny medals. Handwritten prayers tucked beneath statues. Mother of pearl rosaries worn smooth between someone’s fingers. A candle lit for a person who will never know you lit it. A handful of people willing to walk a little farther because someone says, there is something I want to show you.
So 100 feels enormous to me.
Because I know what these subscriptions mean.
They allow me to keep wandering. To buy the obscure books from the esoteric bookshop. To follow the footnote. To take the train. To enter the exhibition. To return to the church. To sit in front of the painting a little longer. To go looking for the story beneath the story.
And then to bring what I find back here.
I have never really thought of the people who pay for Sacred Paris simply as “subscribers.” I think of each one of you as patrons of the work.
There is something ancient about patronage. Before algorithms and follower counts and subscription platforms, artists, writers, pilgrims, scholars and seekers made their work because someone believed it was worth making.
Ninety six of you are doing that for Sacred Paris.
And I want you to know that I notice, and that I appreciate you very much.
I have always wanted membership here to feel reciprocal, which is why every yearly paid subscriber is invited to spend a private 60-minute session with me. We might talk about spiritual practice or creative work, pilgrimage or ritual, a threshold you are standing at, or simply the question that has been following you around lately. Just this week I connected with two of you who are making your pilgrimage plans to France; it was such an honor to witness you and offer my wisdom.
My Founding Circle members also receive the tote of their choice from The Ethos Collection, a small physical piece of this world we are building together.
And tomorrow, I want to add one more gift.
I am four patrons away from the little milestone I have been dreaming about for a very long time.
For anyone who becomes a new annual paid subscriber between now and midnight tomorrow, I am giving you my complete 112 Days of Radiance Journey, a $222 offering, as my gift.
Not because 100 is an ending.
Quite the opposite.
I think it is a threshold.
There is a word I return to often in my work: pilgrimage.
We tend to imagine that a pilgrimage begins when we set out for somewhere far away. But I think it begins much earlier than that, it begins the moment we decide that something is worth moving toward.
Sacred Paris has been that kind of journey for me.
One church at a time. One essay at a time. One reader at a time.
And now there are only four of you between this little publication, and a number I once wondered if I would ever reach.
Maybe tomorrow we will cross it together.
And perhaps there will be 101 of us.
Or 107.
Or 112.
What a blessing it will be to welcome more of you more deeply here.
Thank you for reading, thank you for wandering with me, thank you for your support. And especially, to the 96 people who have already chosen to help sustain this work: thank you for believing that these stories, these places, these questions, and these small sacred things are worth paying attention to — thank you, thank you, thank you.
They are worth everything to me and so are you!
With 100 “I love you’s”…
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