Jonathan Ryan's Blog, page 43

Mary Karr: Trying to Say God

This post begins our series of features on the writers, musicians and artists who will be speaking and performing at the Trying to Say God Conference, June 22-24 at the University of Notre Dame. “Talking about spiritual activity to a secular audience is like doing card tricks on the radio,” Mary Karr, bestselling author of [Read More...]

Screwtape Does America

(At four o’clock this morning, I (Jonathan) woke up and thought about the events about the past few days. They’ve been weighing heavily on my head and my heart. For some reason, I thought about my favorite book of spirituality, The Screwtape Letters by. C.S. Lewis. For those not familiar with the book, Lewis [Read More...]

St. Francis de Sales and the Artist-Theologian

Before I was confirmed in the Catholic Church three years ago, I had to choose the name of a saint as my “new” name. It’s not just for popes, after all. The reason for picking a “patron saint” is that person is to be our guardian throughout the rest of our lives by interceding [Read More...]

What it Means to be a Catholic Woman in Trump’s America

2016 was the year of my disillusionment. The election of Donald Trump seemed like a very laughable bad dream, like being in middle school when we used to devise masked ways to cuss (“Twat, did you say? I cunt hear you!”), only in Trump’s case, he really did say it, he most likely did it, [Read More...]

Dark Devotional: We must be crazy

Mark 3:21: For they said: He is become mad. He was crowded by so many people that he couldn’t even eat, Jesus was. And so were those who followed and served him faithfully. And his family, not so much the ones who loved him best or knew him best, but the ones who thought themselves [Read More...]

Trying to Say God (as artists)

A few years ago, Kaya Oakes wrote in America Magazine that “Catholic literary culture today might best described as a funeral for multiple corpses. This, for living Catholic writers, makes for a rather depressing set of circumstances to enter into.” Soon after, Iwent to the Future of The Catholic Imagination conference at USC and saw [Read More...]

Dark Devotional: I Don’t Have to Hide My Sins

John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said,“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. There are two images that drew me to the Catholic Church: the Eucharist and the Crucifix. They are separate, but in essence, the same. The Body of Christ, lifted up before all of [Read More...]

Sick Pilgrim and Sacramental Weird Fiction Writer, William Paul Blatty, Has Passed.

I’m sad today. William Peter Blatty has gone into the Unseen realm. As the writer of The Exorcist, he blazed a trail for us modern sacramental weird fiction writers. He is a big influence on my own philosophy of writing and story telling. My favorite quotes of his: “It’s an argument for God,” he says [Read More...]

And The Title For The Sick Pilgrim Book Is….

Jess: What do you think we should name our book? Jonathan: I dunno, what do you think we can get away with? Jess: Hmm, how about, Strange Journey: How Two Homesick Pilgrims Stumbled Back Into the Catholic Church? Jonathan: Jess, they’ll never go for it. Jess: … Loyola Press: Hey, we actually came up [Read More...]

Praying with Depression (and Children)

“I want us to recite the Lord’s Prayer together in the mornings as a family before we leave for school or work,” Sergei tells me. I roll my eyes. Our mornings are hurried. There is barely time for breakfast, clothes, teeth and hair. Do we need to add another thing? And mornings are still hard [Read More...]