Jonathan Ryan's Blog, page 35

Dark Devotional: Get Behind Me, Satan!

  From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing […]

My Daily Bread-lessness: A Celiac Sufferer’s Prayerbook

  Why spend your money for what is not bread; your wages for what does not satisfy? Only listen to me, and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare. — Isaiah 55:2. Think: My Child, you are no doubt familiar with the symbolic interpretation of Isaiah, often summed as “Man cannot live […]

Things Keeping Us Alive, August ’17

There are only faint traces of Hurricane Harvey outside my window: Repetitive rainfall. Darkness uncommon for late August in Louisiana. Hurricanes are commonplace around here, but I know full well that Southern Louisiana is untouched compared to the devastation the storm has wrought upon Texas. (For example, here I am on the internet.) O God, […]

Approaching Mystery: Sleepwalking by Issa Lewis

  Camp Innisfree was “up north,” as people from Michigan’s lower peninsula called anything north of Mount Pleasant, on the Leelanau peninsula jutting out like the pinky finger on the right hand of everyone who tries to show you where they live in the state. The fourth, fifth, and sixth graders of my small private […]

Narcissism, Exorcism, and the True Nature of Evil

Sixty years ago, C.S. Lewis began his book, Mere Christianity by giving us an example of two people disagreeing and trying to put each other in “the wrong.” His argument, of course, is that we all have a sense that right and wrong are realities, even if we aren’t always very good at defining them. […]

Dark Devotional: A Wild Messiah

“     I still remember the first time I read The Chronicles of Narnia, about 10 years ago, and encountered the following passage: “He’ll be coming and going” he had said. “One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down–and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s […]

Dark Devotional: Even the Dogs

    … a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.” But Jesus did not say a word in answer to her. Jesus’ disciples came and asked him, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.” He […]

The Cajun Saint and The Cajun Doubter: Charlene Richard and Me

The sun shone starkly and the humidity hugged us unwelcomingly as my mom and I entered the graveyard. The August midday sun made the colors pop–the freshly mown grass was brightly green, the tombs, even the ancient and barren old ones, were dramatically white, and the newer graves were decorated with recently placed multi-colored flower bouquets. […]

St. Maximilian Kolbe, Pray for Me, a Sinner, and a White Man.

I’m a white male, aged 35-45. According to all statistics and research, I have a power in America. It’s not something I asked for or wanted.  At first glance, nothing about my life screams prestige or influence. I come from a teenage union, my parents picking soybeans in an Indiana field just so I could […]

Dark Devotional: Who Will You Call When You’re Drowning?

  I want to tell you a story.   I want to tell you a story of a powerful, personal experience of the Holy Spirit.   I want to tell you a story of a time when the presence of God with me was tangible, undeniable, enveloping like warm water, as real as the chair […]