When I was nineteen, I returned from a summer of working on an organic wheat farm in Kansas, to find that my parents had been ejected from the community where we’d lived for nine years, and taken up residence in a trailer on a compound where a shifty-eyed man was claiming to see apparitions of the Virgin Mary. I stayed with them for two weeks while deciding to return to a university which had not been especially intellectually or spiritually... Read more
Yesterday—the Saturday before the first Sunday of Advent—I read a poem by Nikki Giovanni, and it helped me make sense of my experience in worship this morning, reminded me why during Advent, when so many are already knee deep in tinsel and cheer, the physical sensations of sadness tingle across my chest and down my arms more often than usual. My two youngest kids and I hurried out of the house this morning, leaving my wife and oldest child behind... Read more
In our next installment of “Write the Vision” – Sick Pilgrim’s series featuring writers of faith unpacking their vision of God’s justice – writer Shannon Evans unpacks the evolution of her vision of racial justice. Shannon writes with fierce love and compassion for the widow and orphan, the least and the lost. Today she shares how relationships in her life have formed her vision for racial justice. – Sarah Margaret Babbs, Social Justice Editor My white... Read more
Sick Pilgrim goes Christmas shopping for the Catholic-conflicted and Catholic-attracted in your life. Jessica Mesman Griffith recommends: Kingdom of Women by Rosalie Morales Kearns Sick Pilgrim’s 2017 Book of the Year is Kingdom of Women, which imagines an alternate reality in which the Roman Catholic Church finally makes women priests–and a man slaughters the first class at their ordination. (A scenario that seems all to horrifically imaginable, does it not?) There’s one survivor of the massacre: Averil Parnell–whose life is spared when she’s late to the... Read more
Where does spirit come from? From God ultimately, of course, but I mean, in the world where it works on us. Where does it come from? The Gospel reading seems to make it pretty plain that it comes from the desert: As it is written in Isaiah the prophet: Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way. A voice of one crying out in the desert: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight... Read more
“Think, dear sir, of the world you carry within you, and call this thinking what you will; whether it be remembering your own childhood or yearning toward your future—only be attentive to that which rises up in you and set it above everything that you observe about you.” –Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Letter Six Puddle Apocalypse: In Praise of Forgetfulness As solstice approaches, and I meditate on Advent in an online course with Rebecca Bratten... Read more
One of the things Sick Pilgrim has done, and does well, is to open space for those who for whatever reason, do not fit or have been hurt by the Church. Despite Christ’s exhortations to the contrary, there are invisible people in all of our churches. There are invisible people in every community, and these people on the margins are holy. When we choose the invisible, the poor, the misfit, we have chosen like Jesus. We have chosen Jesus. Advent... Read more
The first reading for the First Sunday of Advent (Is 63: 16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7) begins benignly enough: You, Lord, are our father, our redeemer you are named forever. The line evokes a comforting certainty—I may not understand much else that’s happening right now (in my nation, my diocese, my extended family, etc.), but I know you, Lord, are our “redeemer,” “our father . . . forever.” Lines like this make reading some Advent Scriptures feel like being wrapped in a... Read more
As we approach the solstice, I am thinking about the truth and beauty found in darkness. (Read Jeanette Winterson’s beautiful take on this time of year here.) This week’s post comes from Sick Pilgrim publisher Jessica Mesman Griffith. Starting this Friday, Griffith will be teaching an online course with poet and novelist Rebecca Bratten Weiss, “Reading and Writing Through the Darkness: An Advent Journey.” Registration information is here. –Joanna Penn Cooper, “Approaching Mystery” editor This morning I saw St.... Read more
“Sick Pilgrim was founded as a space for fellow travelers to rest a while. We’re Catholic, but we write for those who are here in the church with us and those who are attracted to Catholicism but can’t find their way in; for those who have Catholic minds or Catholic aesthetics or Catholic hearts but remain, for whatever reason, outside the church; and for those who feel they must seek outside Catholicism to meet their spiritual needs. We want to... Read more
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