Jonathan Ryan's Blog, page 28

Approaching Mystery: Emily Terrell on Pascal and the Mystery of Wondering

The year of grace 1654, Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology. Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others. From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight, FIRE. GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob not of the philosophers and of the learned. […]

Dark Devotional: New Year, Same Mission

Associate Editor’s note: This Dark Devotional was written reflecting on the Feast of Christ the King, the end of the Church year. I thought it fitting now, at the beginning of a new calendar year. Hope you will too. Happy new year. -Matt The year is nearly over. Today marks the beginning of the end. […]

Approaching Mystery: Angela Crow’s “It’s a Cage”

  “It’s a cage. It’s a cage. No, it’s a real cage.’” –Ta-Nehisi Coates   At age two or three, after dark, I stood on my home’s stoop, the limits of where I was allowed outside the house, and because of the steps up to this vantage point, I could see the man sitting in […]

Dark Devotional: Blessed Are _____________

I have always struggled with the Beatitudes. “Blessed are _______ for they will ______.” Fill in the blank. I can’t help but sigh, “really?” and “when?” “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted” When? “Rejoice and be glad; your reward will be great in heaven.” That has never comforted me. What about […]

Reflections on Family as Mystery from Joanna Penn Cooper

When I was in graduate school, I read a lot of books by American Buddhists and Tibetan Buddhists who’d come to the US.  (This was not what I was studying, but this is what I read.  Maybe this is why I had to delay my comps by a semester.)  In one of the books, the […]

“What Child Is This?” was written by a severely depressed man. And we love it.

  In December, in the year 2000, I was 21 years old and four months pregnant. I was staying with my Great Aunt Kathleen in her Chicago flat. The ancestral silence of the place was stifling. After months of desperation, contemplation, research, and prayer, I was planning to give my child up for adoption. I […]

Christmas: It’s Complicated

Christmas is complicated. On one hand, the music is familiar, the smells are sweet, the ornaments are sentimental, the snow sparkles, the air is crisp and easier to breathe, the presents are piled high under the tree. On the other hand, we can’t turn back time as much as we wish to, we can’t make […]

Christmas at War: A Dark Devotional

As I read and meditated on this Sunday’s readings, I couldn’t get a question out of my mind. If the theme is that Jesus is the descendant of King David and fulfills the promises made by God to his chosen people, then why insert the conclusion of the Letter to the Romans. After dwelling on the […]

The Great Pumpkin of Advent, a Dark Devotional

For the past two weeks, I’ve been troubled by Jesus’ admonition to stay awake and be ready. In the Gospel for the first week of Advent, he described the servants, left to do their work when the master went away. What is the work that I am left to do, that I am supposed to […]

I See a Darkness (St. John of the Cross Feast Day Dark Devotional)

Here I am at 11pm, in the final hour of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. And I’m doing that thing again. That thing I do when I’m staying up too late because my day felt meaningless. I want to do something fulfilling with these late hours after my kids are in bed (they […]