Why would a Protestant want to be part of Sick Pilgrim? There are basically two ways of thinking about what it means to be a Protestant Christian. One road is that of ascetic severity: if it’s not in the Bible or a given book of confessions, then it has to be thrown out. Calvinist strands in particular have tended to expel both extra-biblical Christian lore and the sensory engagement that has characterized popular piety – icons, incense, Marian devotion, etc.... Read more
Art by the crimson and reflective Brian Jocks. My sophomore year at Taylor University, a small Christian college in Indiana, I sat between two friends on a couch, watching a movie in our dorm. I was eating a snack-size package of bland vanilla cookies — the only sweet thing they’d had for sale at the front desk. They weren’t very good, but I couldn’t stop eating them. I didn’t know why, didn’t investigate why. But I was the only one... Read more
Several years ago, I happened upon naturalist Sallie Wolf’s website detailing her “moon project.” For 20 years, Wolf has observed the moon, desiring as she put it, to live like a preliterate person, without access to books or the internet, learning only through the power of her own observation. She developed a visual tool for charting the moon’s position in the sky, a semicircular diagram that she called “my watchful eye.” For years, along with all the other records and musings and... Read more
In those days, God delivered all these commandments: “I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. You shall not have other gods besides me. You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them. For I, the LORD, your God, am... Read more
The sun was setting, and this Cajun was still not freezing. In the distant north of Washington, D.C., at the unforgiving time of the ending of February, I expected frigid misery, but I’d eagerly accepted the invitation to lobby on behalf of the 1 in 10 Americans affected by a rare disease or disorder. After all, I’m a political nerd. But I was more nervous than Ramsay hearing that Sansa had released my starving hounds. There was no denying that... Read more
I’m ready for spring. Some people live for colder weather– the days when the air is chilly enough to wear more layers of clothes makes them giddy and eager to wear several accessories, making sure that everything matches or meshes together to look fashionable. I hate everything about that sentence. I blame my Cajun blood. Give me shorts or jeans and a tee-shirt over scarves, gloves, and petticoats any day. I’m not even sure what a petticoat is, and I... Read more
Art by the brilliant and transfigurative Brian Jocks. I do not like Lent. There I said it. I don’t like the fasting. I don’t like the somber masses without the hallelujahs. I don’t like preparing for Jesus’ death. Yes, yes, I know that we are preparing for the glorious moment when he raises up from the dead, but from the minute I finish eating my pancakes and dancing with my students to zydeco on Mardi Gras, until I am... Read more
My trauma therapist warns me that my worst memories might surface later, outside of his office, that sometimes a session shakes one loose, like some kind of burrowing insect or a parasite. It happens while I’m doing the grocery shopping, and a Eurythmics song comes on the PA. I stop in the pasta aisle and remember 10th grade, driving to the bowling alley on Brownswitch Road with a carload of girls, singing along with Annie Lennox to “Who’s that Girl?”... Read more
My family recently spent a week in Big Bend National Park in western Texas. As we drove closer to the park, I noticed trailers and other small dwellings dotting the landscape around the highway. The contrast between the desert sky, the jagged mountains, and the open fields filled with thorny plants and rusty trucks was stark. Read more
A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.” The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean. Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once. He said to him, “See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer... Read more
Sick Pilgrim
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