Things Keeping Us Alive – May Edition

“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.”

― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Instead of being swallowed by our often-shadowy outlook, we sick pilgrims know it’s important, every now and then, to focus on the little things that bring us great joy.

Okay maybe not great joy. Small joy?

I hijacked this feature from Jess, who normally takes charge of this regular post, this small glimmer of rejuvenation in the typically pale and ghostlike quality of Sick Pilgrim. However, Jess finds herself stuck in a busy cocoon, so I strike a match and hope this feeble candle gives some light to a world that sometimes seems profoundly dark.

Recently, I received an email that officially confirmed my acceptance into the Ambassador volunteer program of FARA. The Ambassador program is made up of people who have FA throughout the country and emboldens them to spread awareness of FA and to connect with others who have this incredibly rare disorder. I am really looking forward to any opportunity this may lead to; being in a unique position to make a positive effect on others is ideal and a large part of what a meaningful life is, I think. That sounds awfully high-and-mighty. I hope I don’t screw it up.

Also, this is shaping out to be a great month for my love of escapism: Captain America: Civil War was just released at the movie theater, Deadpool was recently released on home video, and Game of Thrones is airing new episodes. My geeky heart overfloweth.

Foreshadowing of a Sick Pilgrim group picture. (Image from HBO.) — Foreshadowing of a Sick Pilgrim group photo. (Image from HBO.)

Tunda-mino us is an awesome Youtube series made up of 4-minute clips of the Thundercats cartoon, dubbed over with hilarious Cajun voices and plot-lines. As Sick Pilgrim’s Cajun correspondent, this hits close to home: Magnalite pots really are the Holy Grail of cookware; “getting down” is an absolutely necessary step of riding in a car. I wonder, do I really talk like that, me?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DASA7x7ezg4

How about some other sick pilgrims?

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Jess here. I’m poking my head out of my hobbit hole, where I am so diligently working to finish my feature story about teenage spirituality for US Catholic, to tell you that you should definitely be listening to the Nocturne podcast by Vanessa Lowe. It’s essay radio exploring every corner of the night, and it blends expert storytelling, research, and Lowe’s lovely voice. Each show is like a meditation, or a dream, or even a prayer. I want to be Nocturne podcast when I grow up. I also want to be this Kurt Vile record.

Also, I had a transcendent spiritual experience yesterday while not working on my story. I took a walk in an apple orchard and listened to Mahalia Jackson. This isn’t the first time His Eye Is on the Sparrow has has saved my life. Thank you, Queen of Gospel.

Carry on.

Colleen Connell Mitchell blogs at Blessed are the Feet and just released her first book.

1. Blood pressure medicine. Literally. We had our annual medical mission a few weeks ago, and my doctor friends used me a test patient for their blood pressure cuff. Only I was not a model patient as it turns out mine was very high. We monitored it all week, and my friends left me with the gift of two medications and the stern warning to take it or I could, well, basically, die an untimely death. I brooded and stared at the medicines hatefully for a couple of days and pondered not taking them at all and just letting life have its way with me in true Sick Pilgrim fashion. Then I saw the light of sanity and started taking the little pills twice a day. Miracle of miracles, it seems I will live after all. Thank God for bossy doctor friends and their prescription pads.

2. My therapist. If you doubt why I might need her, refer to my sordid thoughts in #1. I took me a long time to admit that this was a valid need for me. And then to find an English speaking therapist in a Latin American country. And to commit to getting my butt on the bus for 2 1/2 hours each way once a month. But I did it. And then I didn’t for a few months. And then the dark clouds gathered and thundered and refused to blow over. So I did it again this week. And I promise to never, ever quit. This woman digs into my wounds and somehow uncovers the best of me inside them. And she looks at me with her no b.s. allowed gaze and calls me on the things I said I’d change months ago and haven’t. So, yeah, I love and I hate her and if she does not literally save my life, at the very least she saves my sanity insofar as it can be saved.

3. Finally getting to share my book with people. Do you know what torture it is for a broody writer to finish her first book and then have to wait months before anyone reads it and gives her feedback? It is the worst, I tell you. I MIGHT have convinced myself that it was just awful and everyone was trying to decide how to tell me nicely without making fall of the ledge into the darkness (reference #1 and #2 if this needs explaining). So when the endorsements starting rolling in this week for Who Does He Say You Are, and people whose opinions matter to me, like dear Aunt Jess, actually said they liked the book, well, my sad, broody little heart actually leapt for joy!

4. Paperback novels. I have developed a habit of dropping two into my Amazon cart at all times and every time someone is coming down to Costa Rica, Prime-ing them on over and begging they grant me two books’ worth of luggage space. The smell of a real paperback and the draw of a good story save me from myself on a regular basis. I have devoured Little Bee, State of Wonder, and A Gate at the Stairs, and A Gathering of Old Men in the last couple of months. And they made feel all the ways and lost myself in love of completely fictional characters and lose sleep over their fates, just the way a good story should. And I love them for it. I am not considering paperback fiction medically indicated for my overall wellness.

5. The second season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. I have no explanation for this. It is what it is. It makes me snort laugh. And snort laughing is life-saving medicine. [Be sure to check out Matt and Jonathan’s review of Kimmy and a few other recently released Netflix original shows.]

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Karl Persson blogs at The Inner Room and is Sick Pilgrim’s Viking correspondent.

1. The Ignatian exercises. I have been doing these, under spiritual direction, for the past year. What I love most about the exercises is that they are in fact exercises – not spiritual experiences, not Bible studies, not a certain guarantee that your life will be purpose-driven and glowing. The point of the exercises is that you do them – are there with God for an hour – whether something happens or not. The volatility of my own internal life – vexed with mental illness – is something that made it impossible for me to experience the kind of interior spirituality that was the norm and that I longed for in my Evangelical childhood – I had long ago sealed off that cave. The exercises have given me the hooks and picks and ropes to carefully open that again and repel back down into it – a climber revisiting a chasm he once lost Christ in, to see if He is still there. And He is still there.

2. Anne Carpenter. Most times I read her blog posts at The Rule and the Raven, and they just make me want to stop writing – in the best way possible – because she’s saying the very things I need to say in ways I never quite manage. I like her because she writes searingly about pain and suffering – not the kind that we can neatly fit into any kind of “it’s for the greater good” or “all in God’s plan” rhetoric – but the really horrific unspeakable and chronic kind – and she demonstrates hope and faith amidst this not by wrapping everything up neatly and figuring everything out, but by putting one foot in front of the other. She keeps writing.

Recently, I was using her book on the theological aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Theo-poetics) in my own academic work, and came upon a passage about glory. Normally, I’m fairly bad at dealing with theological treatments of glory because it often feels to me like they bypass or gloss the real suffering that goes on in the world – even when I recognize them as theologically true, there is an affective part of me that balks. But somehow knowing that Anne could write about glory in such a theologically acute and formal way even while ripping my heart out, left me defenceless against glory – I know she knows suffering, and that when she speaks of glory it is something other than a pangloss. I happened to be going outside very soon after reading this bit about glory and finding myself unable to dismiss it – and I noticed the wind. It might seem like a very small thing, but when one spends all one’s time in one’s head worrying about things and unable to notice exteriors, well – for a moment I felt God’s glory in the wind.

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Tammy Perlmutter writes from Chicago and is the founder of The Mudroom.

1. I picked up some intensely moving and challenging books at the Festival of Faith and Writing. I read Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian by Wesley Hill in 3 hours on my flight to Guatemala City. I’m working my way slowly through A Beautiful Disaster: Finding Hope in the Midst of Brokenness by Marlena Graves, a beautiful memoir that God has used to speak deep truth to me, and I have three great books on deck Jen Pollock Michel’s Teach Us to Want: Longing, Ambition, and the Life of Faith, Michael Bays, Finding God in the Ruins: How God Redeems Pain, and Michelle Van Loon’s If Only: Letting Go of Regret.

2. My Spotify playlist for anxiety called the Goodbye Panic Mix with They Might Be Giants, Yaz, Thompson Twins, B-52’s, Dead Milkmen, Berlin, Violent Femmes, Dead or Alive, The Go-Go’s, The Bangles, Bananarama, Cyndi Lauper, and more. This music gives me a lot of joy and nostalgia.

[I feel a Sick Pilgrim playlist coming soon. -Matt]

What’s kept you alive this May? Let us know in the comments.

Things Keeping Us Alive – May edition