Jonathan Ryan's Blog, page 36

Approaching Mystery: Late Night Deck Sentence in the Rain

Once I loved the world, or thought I did, I prayed every night, read parts of the Bible, took my mind to school every day, but lived for summer and boats, fished all day by myself, sat cross-legged in huts of pine and leaves, breathed fire and smoke back in the tall trees behind the […]

Drinking Blood and Feeling Guilty: Jennifer the Damned is a Catholic Vampire

  If you’re a Catholic, you take your guilt to confession. Here’s a confession for you: I shamelessly read the Twilight series—and I’m sure I liked it too much.   Karen Ullo’s new novel, Jennifer the Damned (Wiseblood Books, 2017) successfully navigates the teen vampire genre towards Catholicism: Jennifer is a teenaged vampire who kills against her […]

Dark Devotional: Hold Fast and Light Your Lamps

    My Friends, I’m tired of living. I don’t mean this is a suicidal way. This is not a cry for help. I’m just truly tired of living in this world, in this country, that is right now so full of hate. I know I’m not alone and I know this isn’t unique to [Read More...]

Dark Devotional: Creating From the Wound

I live in Los Angeles, the epicenter of self-defining artists. And, like most people in this city, I consider myself an artist. However, unlike most people living in Los Angeles — I believe we’re all artists in some form or another. I’m in constant awe of the way people create, perform, produce, and refine their [Read More...]

Dark Devotional: Creating From The Wound

I live in Los Angeles, the epicenter of self-defining artists. And, like most people in this city, I consider myself an artist. However, unlike most people living in Los Angeles — I believe we’re all artists in some form or another. I’m in constant awe of the way people create, perform, produce, and refine their [Read More...]

Mary Magdalene, Wonder Woman, and Me

In honor of the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, July 22 I wore a long, red, silky and glittery skirt and golden bangles to play Mary Magdalene in our church’s Lenten Passion Play, circa 1990. Per ancient Christian tradition, the script conflated her with the sinful woman of the city from the gospel of Luke [Read More...]

Dark Devotional: Worthy

My first memory is of flushing my father’s drugs down the toilet. I was 3, and he and my mother were fighting. Again. About his drug use. Again. My mother found some stash or other, and sent me to flush them. I did. By the time I was 5, my parents had already separated and [Read More...]

Approaching Mystery: Timekeeping

Some of the most interesting writing happening today exists in the liminal space between genres—micro-memoir, prose poem, lyrical essay. Poet and essayist Joanna Penn Cooper recently taught an online course based on the potential these “in-between” genres have to explore mystery–one of our favorite topics at Sick Pilgrim. The course was called “Approaching Mystery: Writing Vignettes [Read More...]

Things Keeping Us Alive in July: The Trying to Say God Conference

Every month here at Sick Pilgrim, we like to bring you a feature we call  Things Keeping Us Alive. A diverse group of people share a  couple of small, cheap to free joys in their lives at this moment. Though the Sick Pilgrim blog often treads in melancholy, it’s important not to be swallowed by [Read More...]

Dark Devotional: Alive With Decay

Seed work is work for the dark. It is growth to be entrusted to soil that I did not make; enriched by the work—the lives, the words, the acts, the deaths—of others who came before, broken down and blended into a rich dark compost; watered from clouds I cannot form; floating in Heavens I cannot reach.