Jonathan Ryan's Blog, page 38
June 19, 2017
Séance with the Freudenabteilung (or, Communing with Dead Nazi Sex Slaves): Listening to Joy Division as Religious Experience
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” – Neitszche When you struggle with depression, it’s tempting to juxtapose your own horror stories with the real horror stories [Read More...]
June 16, 2017
Trapped in the Nightmare: A Bloomsday Dark Devotional
June 16 is Bloomsday — a special day for Irish literary geeks, on which fans of James Joyce’s Ulysses gather in Dublin to retrace the steps–and drink the drinks–of the novel’s hero, Leopold Bloom, who both starts and finishes his surreal Odyssean journey in his wife’s bed. Ulysses, with its ring-like structure and themes [Read More...]
June 14, 2017
Pest’s Letters: To My Friend Who Died of an Overdose
Dear B, They found your body on the floor of your house last week. I don’t know any details, but the cause was an overdose…surprising few if any. You were my best friend in high school. We’d complement each other using quotes from Friends (especially from Phoebe), our shared love of movies and deep conversations, [Read More...]
June 10, 2017
Dark Devotional: Frankenstein and the Most Holy Trinity
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. –St. Paul “I am alone, and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must [Read More...]
June 2, 2017
Dark Devotional: Speak My Language
I don’t sound very Christian. That’s what I was told after I proudly mentioned to my neighbor, a white haired and thoroughly religious grandmother-type, to check out the blog I sometimes wrote for, Sick Pilgrim. A couple of days later, she got back to me with that assessment. And she didn’t mean it as an [Read More...]
May 26, 2017
Dark Devotional: Go and Make a Mess of Things
Could it be that our weakness is exactly what the power of the Gospel needs to reach the poor and persecuted?
May 19, 2017
Dark Devotional: Don’t Lay Your Hands on Me
“Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed the Christ to them. With one accord, the crowds paid attention to what was said by Philip when they heard it and saw the signs he was doing. For unclean spirits, crying out in a loud voice, came out of many possessed people, and many [Read More...]
May 18, 2017
Things Keeping Us Alive, May ’17
Sometimes April showers don’t bring May flowers. Sometimes the thing keeping you alive last month gets taken off Netflix a few short days after you say it’s a small joy in your life. Netflix is a cruel, cruel mistress. RIP, Scrubs. I need to hear about small joys in peoples’ lives. I love it. Those small, [Read More...]
May 16, 2017
Looking Past the Miracle: The Poetry of Mary Szybist
I first heard Mary Szybist’s poems about 13 years ago in a St. Louis reading series. The illustrious restaurant/bar that hosted the series was dimly lit that night, save for strings of small white lights around the picture window to the street. The lighting created a large halo behind the readers—Szybist, a professor at Lewis [Read More...]
May 12, 2017
Dark Devotional: Three Ways to Survive the Mother’s Day Homily
Dear Catholic Women, If none of your children have any embarrassing quirks, or if your children are all under the age of 12 and haven’t made choices that cause you to want to crawl under the pew, then feel free to move on. Enjoy the homily, enjoy the blessing your priest bestows on all the [Read More...]
