Every month here at Sick Pilgrim, we like to bring you a feature we call Things Keeping Us Alive. A diverse group of people share a couple of small, cheap to free joys in their lives at this moment. Though the Sick Pilgrim blog often treads in melancholy, it’s important not to be swallowed by despair – and that’s as much for ourselves as for our readers. We’re too Sick to be the preachy type. But as St. Teresa of... Read more
Seed work is work for the dark. It is growth to be entrusted to soil that I did not make; enriched by the work—the lives, the words, the acts, the deaths—of others who came before, broken down and blended into a rich dark compost; watered from clouds I cannot form; floating in Heavens I cannot reach. Read more
I just read an article in First Things, called “First Church of Intersectionality,” by Elizabeth Corey. Her article was timely, in that I’ve been, over the last several months, reflecting more and more on what it means to have a body. To be a body. To move through life in a female body. In a body with fair skin. In a body that’s both given life and been the scene of a crime. In delving into the riches of Catholic teachings on justice... Read more
Best are those with minimal blood: perhaps poison, asphyxiation, or even strangulation. But even better is the off-camera death, where we don’t see the victim stalked by their killer. Oh, I like a murder that feels staged—and that’s also available on Netflix. My husband and I watch at least three murder mysteries a week, usually of the BBC variety: Midsomer Murders or Marple, Sherlock or Foyle’s War. In between, I devour mystery novels, reading through author’s life’s work until I... Read more
Art by Brian C. Jocks “Come... Read more
As a writer and artist, people ask me why I’ve gotten back into parish work. It’s a fair question as many people see local parish work as a hinderance to creative expression. The local church often does strangle creativity in a variety of ways. Every time I look at a lily white Marian prayer card, for example, I feel brain cells dying like I drank a quart of alcohol. Yet parish life can also contain surprises and little mysteries to... Read more
Following Christ often appears insane. It seems to contradict all the things this world tells us is good. What's more, Christ tells us that we have to love him more than our most basic, fundamental social units. Read more
A Catholic writer lives and works at this edge of meaning, between light and the dark. Read more
In a world dominated by selfishness and the pursuit of their own interests, those who preach love, poverty and forgiveness will inevitably be persecuted. Read more
When I was young, summertime meant joy. And it mostly still does – the long days, the eagerness to be outside, even the suffocating heat of South Louisiana recalls days of summer break for school, freedom unlike anything else in my school-aged mind. But getting older means that freedom isn’t as carefree as it once was. Maybe it’s empathy that lessens the unbridled happiness. I know people are struggling right now. So summer’s not as insular, not as huge a... Read more
Sick Pilgrim
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In