Jonathan Ryan's Blog, page 14

Our Lenten Wilderness: Unknown Pleasures and Revelations

Lent is a season, yes, a time. But it is also a place. Lent is Wilderness, a ruin, a wasteland. During these weeks, we learn of Jesus in the Wilderness. For 40 days, he’s stuck with himself and his thoughts and prayers amid the barren land and empty sky. When The Adversary arrives, at least […]

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Catholicism: A Listicle with Apologies to Wallace Stevens

1. Inside you there are two wolves. One wolf is Catholicism; the other wolf is dead. 2. You say that like it’s a bad thing. 3. The best thing about Catholicism is its people: Dorothy Day. Mother Theresa. 4. The worst thing about Catholicism is its people: Theodore McCarrick. Jean Vanier. […]

Ash Wednesday with St. Anne

St. Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary, grandmother of Jesus, is the patroness of mothers. And junk collectors, according to a piece of street art I bought in the French Quarter years ago. The artist had painted her creepy greenish visage, which looks more like the ghost of Jacob Marley than the traditional saint of […]

Dark Devotional: Four Horsemen

By guest writer Milo Meldrum 1. Conquest I want to control everything: the way I am hurt and the way I am healed, to make a conquest of my own body by brute forcing nature with less grace than an animal. I am three years old, slipping in the bath and splitting my chin […]

Rereading “I Walk with Jesus” in January 2020

I remember a sunshiny morning in 1987. I remember sittinginSunbeam on the floor of my parents’ bedroom, next to their enormous bookcase. Books by Edith Stein and Catherine of Sienna and Theresa of Avila were on my left. I had pulled out the small stack of children’s books from the bottom shelf. I was leafing […]

For the Exiles on Christmas Eve

I woke yesterday morning really wanting someone to give me the answer. How do you celebrate Christmas when your spiritual life and your sense of identity are broken into “before” and “after?” For me, it was the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report. I know other people who were similarly broken by that report. I […]

Untangling the Bones

  In the town where I grew up, the first day of doe hunting season was a school holiday. My grandfather wasn’t a hunter, but sure enough, every winter as the deer were shot, slaughtered, and processed, packages of venison would arrive from friends with too much meat for their freezers. The first time I […]

Iconoclasm and Misogyny at the Amazonian Synod

  Yesterday, as the Amazonian Synod in Rome comes to an end, it was reported that a statue that symbolized the Synod (Our Lady of the Amazon) was stolen and thrown into the Tiber River. Some celebrated (which was gross). Some were dismayed and cried “racism” and “iconoclasm” (which was correct). Henry Karlson had a […]

What I Learned from Dating a Catholic Priest: Part 1

  Cool evening air whispered through the windows of my studio apartment where I lay one late Spring evening, hinting to me that life was still being lived outside. My arms and legs were cement. I hadn’t moved on the bed since beginning to play Sharon Van Etten’s album “Because I was in Love,” thirty […]

What I Learned from Dating a Catholic Priest: Part 3

    I began my summer.    I started running in the mornings with a good friend. I sprinted out the pain. I tried out different meet-up groups, I needed new friends. I would not let the betrayal destroy me.    Then one sunny day I went to a picnic on the lake near my […]