About a year ago, I took one of my many trips to Utah, which has become my go-to vacation spot. I have a ton of friends out there, including one of my best friends. She’s your typical California hippie, open to anything spiritually. Lately, she’d been going to a Christian reiki healer who, supposedly, really knew what she was doing. I’m not a spiritual prude. I’m a self-described Midwestern Lumberjack mystic, but I also nurture a pretty severe skeptic streak.... Read more
“My children…This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13) I was involved in a mom’s group at our church. Just a couple of women each time, led by a nun a little on the serious side. There were no thrills, no frills. We looked at what the reading would be for the next week and Sister Joanne would ask probing questions to pry words out of our modest little... Read more
Huh? Prince can’t die. Prince isn’t even human. Prince is ageless, immortal. Prince does not get the flu. Prince does not go to the doctor. Prince doesn’t do anything so ordinary and mundane and predictable as death. I’ve seen dozens of FB statuses like these. Like so many of my friends, when I heard the news that Prince had died, I was mostly shocked that Prince could die at all. Prince was already a ghost, drifting in and out of the... Read more
We’re still recovering from our first-ever Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College–where Jonathan and I were both blown away by the great stuff and people and books and art and music we heard and encountered. Wow. Nothing like being jolted out of the darkness by the goodness and beauty of God and our fellow man. Those Calvinists are kicking our Catholic asses at this celebration of the arts and culture thing. The drama began for us when Jonathan’s co-panelists canceled at the last minute,... Read more
I had a strange dream over the weekend. I was in a hospital with a bunch of patients who suffered from a variety of terrible diseases. Some people looked healthy even though a deadly disease ate away at them from the inside. Others had hideous red and purple scars all over their bodies. I soon realized that I wasn’t just visiting this place. I was a patient myself, with festering scars all over my body. A woman dressed in white with glowing... Read more
Editors’ Note: This article is part of the Patheos Public Square on Sacrifice: Religions and the Role of the Scapegoat. Read other perspectives here. “If you want to live in pride and division and anger, you can. But if you will be a part of the best of us, and live and laugh and be ashamed with us, then you must be content to be helped. You must give your burden up to someone else and you must carry... Read more
(With this post, we’re kicking off a series called Popular Piety, exploring the physicality and magic of traditional, cultural Catholicism.) Gerald Boullion is a traiteur, a Catholic faith healer popular within the Cajun culture of southern Louisiana for hundreds of years. Like the Native Americans, the Protestant Christians of the Appalachians, and countless other remote populations for whom doctors were scarce or nonexistent, the Cajuns used their faith as medicine. Like so many of the more mystical aspects of Catholicism, this tradition seems to... Read more
Sick Pilgrims! Come hang with us at the Festival of Faith and Writing next week. Jess and Jonathan will both be speaking on panels (schedule below). And if you’re interested in hanging out Friday night after we all listen to Tobias Wolf, let us know on our Facebook page. We’ll be posting details there. During the week, we’ll be posting quick thoughts, reflections and other things. Maybe even a few quick interviews. Plus, Jonathan will be at the Ave Maria booth occasionally, so come... Read more
My husband and I lived in Edinburgh, Scotland for three years in graduate school. We felt at home amongst dead theologians, drizzly sideways rain, and a dram of whisky that would warm you up when it got dark at 3:30. We ate cheaply, walked miles a day, and spent too-many hours in small, chilly offices and libraries, pouring over old words. Weekends we’d invite friends over to drink cocktails and, after hours of political and religious debate, they’d leave their... Read more
An article in The Atlantic grabbed our attention last week–about young Jews embracing the more traditional practices their parents had rejected. We completely identified. The return to traditional faith practices–what the Catholic Church refers to as “popular piety”– played a significant role in both of our returns to Catholicism, the religion our parents had abandoned. Our families had been Catholic for generations. Jess’s parents were old school cultural Catholics from New Orleans–they went to Mass and prayed the rosary but they also threw salt over... Read more
Sick Pilgrim
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