My Cub Scout leader was built like a dump truck. He was squat and jowly, with a huge belly and a retreating wave of dark, curly hair. No one would share a tent with him due to his incessant farting, but he was kind and jolly, and made jokes around the campfire about whose turn it was to fetch the left-handed smoke-shifter from the car, or how great last year’s snipe hunt was. He had the sturdy, dependable air... Read more
The Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech. They sent their disciples to him, with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion, for you do not regard a person’s status. Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”... Read more
“I have only one thing to do and that’s be the wave that I am and then sink back into the ocean.” –Fiona Apple This lyric comes from a song called “Container,” but I’ve always found that to be a bit of a misnomer. If I close my eyes and imagine life as a wave, I can feel myself spreading out and melting away. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pRvn7J9ZPQ Imagine what it is to be a wave: to retreat inside yourself and then... Read more
I grew up in the Appalachians of Western Pennsylvania, enfolded in these ancient, forested mountains. It’s a place of constant drenching rain and mystic fogs. Oaks and maples, emerald in the summer, blaze out come October frosts, before waning to spindly bare branches beneath the snow. The roads through my mountains turn and swerve every which way. Our friends from Texas hated them, missing the gridlines of their home. Their mother said Pennsylvania roads must’ve been plotted by “a drunk... Read more
When two friends told me that not only was the Bleeding Woman their favorite story in Grit and Grace, a book of “creatively re-imagined” Bible stories I wrote for tween-age girls, but that they cried while reading it, I chalked it up to their being women of a certain age and, well, perimenopausal. Hormones. After all, I’ve heard enough stories from my older friends about periods gone wild as menopause sets in that I figured these two... Read more
It’s hard to write when you’re hugely distracted by really entertaining friends. The type of friends who have all the snark, and more wit than you can ever aspire to possessing. That’s what I realized when I sat down to write this, a week ago, attempting to submit something early for once. Look, roomie! I did it! It’s hard to reflect when the song on your Pandora station is happily chanting like a drunk 1990s jock, “Welcome to... Read more
States of Matter * I don’t know why the idea of dead bodies didn’t bother me. They never did. Maybe it was because I believed the resident was no longer home, had somewhere better to be, and what was left was delightfully quiet. We could respect each other and go about our business unbothered, theirs stationary, mine frenetic, different states of matter. Solid to liquid, liquid to gas. There is this old cemetery in my home town where we... Read more
I love to pray. I love to spend time with God, in silence, in community, in Word and in liturgy. Sometimes, though, at the most inopportune times, I’m called upon to lead prayer and I just want to laugh in despair (Who, me? Lead you in something vulnerable and heart-opening? When I feel like THIS?!) At a recent planning meeting in which I was supposed to launch a new ministry, I gave our pastor the look, turned to the person next... Read more
The Nicene Creed tells us that God is the Creator of all things “Seen and Unseen” or “Visible and Invisible.” Sick Pilgrim owes its existence to the blurry lines between the two, places that are not quite “night” and not quite the “day,” places of the the uncanny where Mystery, not certainty, rules. A few years ago, we (Jonathan and Jess) met for a beer at a faux-pub near Notre Dame. Jonathan, who was working as an editor at a... Read more
Maybe this is contradictory to what is expected from a somber sick pilgrim in a post reminding us of the small joys right now, but September has been great to me. Maybe the blusteriness and deathly season of autumn and the approaching of THE BEST HOLIDAY- HALLOWEEN stirs something within us unwell sojourners. The Great Pumpkin comes soon; be glad. Last month, I visited a graveyard with my mom after her diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and wrote about it here.... Read more
Sick Pilgrim
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