Jonathan Ryan's Blog, page 21

Vatican Treasures: What’s Actually on Display in the Met’s Heavenly Bodies Exhibit, Part III

In these descriptive essays, guest contributor, Susan L. Miller, captures the incarnational dimension that lies at the heart of both Catholicism and art. It is sometimes difficult for us to see fashion as art. In a sense, fashion is too physical, too concrete. It clothes bodies after all. What’s more, there is an aspect to […]

Sick Pilgrim Goes to the Movies: Pope Francis

  In the romance languages the word sin means lacking or without. As a catholic, this word has always meant something different to me: to commit a crime against the will of God. If we look at the word through the lens of what it means in a different language, we can see the connection […]

Dark Devotional: My Bittersweet Birthright

Reading Scripture is rarely a balm to me. Since I was a small child I experienced crushing scrupulosity, a result of perpetual spiritual abuse. So tonight I sat down to read this Sunday’s readings with a heavy heart. I’m not a good candidate to write a reflection on anything Godly today. Honestly, I skipped four […]

The Mothers at the Border Are Named Jochaved

Like many, I’ve been deeply grieved by the policy of family separation at the border. For weeks I’ve cast about looking for a handhold, for an idea of what to do, for who I am to be during a desperate time like this. Like many of us, I’ve come up short. Somehow the drumbeat of […]

Dress Like a Saint: What’s Actually on Display in the Met’s Heavenly Bodies Exhibit, Part II

In these descriptive essays, guest contributor, Susan L. Miller, captures the incarnational dimension that lies at the heart of both Catholicism and art. It is sometimes difficult for us to see fashion as art. In a sense, fashion is too physical, too concrete. It clothes bodies after all. What’s more, there is an aspect to […]

Dark Devotional- Uncompromising Anger, Uncompromising Hope: A Baptismal Call

As I sit down to write this Dark Devotional, a warning flashes to the left of my screen: “Something’s not right. We’re having trouble connecting, but we’ll keep trying.” Story of my life, and certainly resonant with the prophetic mission we hold as a baptized people. All around us there are signs that something is […]

Approaching Mystery: I Once Worked on a Farm in Africa by David L. Ferrell

I would like to tell you a story about that farm. I lived in Nigeria for six months in 2012, working for my friend Brian and his NGO which facilitated micro-enterprise ventures. The rest of our crew was made up of Nigerian nationals. One of our major projects was a dry-season farm. We built an […]

Miss Fourth of July by Joanna Penn Cooper

I begin with two facts: In 1983, when I was 12, I was named Miss Fourth of July in a parade in my grandmother’s neighborhood in a small, historic town in North Carolina. After the Civil War, virulent racists in government invoked the image of the purity and innocence of white womanhood as reason for […]

The Catholic Imagination: What’s Actually on Display in the Met’s Heavenly Bodies Exhibit, Part I

In these descriptive essays, guest contributor, Susan Miller, captures the incarnational dimension that lies at the heart of both Catholicism and art. It is sometimes difficult for us to see fashion as art. In a sense, fashion is too physical, too concrete. It clothes bodies after all. What’s more, there is an aspect to fashion […]

Sick Pilgrim Goes to the Movies: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

  When I have trouble picturing Jesus, I picture Mr. Rogers.   The challenge for me, when picturing Jesus, is the complicated relationship in my own mind between the Image and the images, the Word and the words, the Son of Man and the men I have known.   Mr. Rogers, though… Mr. Rogers just […]