Blog Archive
Contemplating the messiness of Christian life
The Messy Jesus Business Blog is an ecumenical Christian gathering of musings about what it means to live the Gospel today. A variety of contributors offer prayer, poetry, book reviews, creative nonfiction and prose about what it means to live a life of faith in our complex, modern times.
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Sister Teresa Maya: Building a Common Home
Episode 56 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh. Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Stitcher | Email | RSS | More “Community extends beyond just a group I belong to… we need to extend that belonging to fellow human beings, no matter who they are.” –Teré Maya IN THIS EPISODE In this episode of Messy Jesus Business, Sister Julia Walsh
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I Want to Tell You Something Brilliant
My Dear Friend, When I woke up on Christmas morning, I thought of John 1:5. It was a rare gift for me to have only one thought, not plagued by a system of worries and threats and to lie awake — even for a short time — with just this one thought. “The light shines
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The heartbeat of Christmas
There is an ancient story that is our common heartbeat. It speaks to us, deeply, quietly and simply; its whispers are heard in the rhythms of our ordinary lives, in between the rushing activity of our regular days. As we move together and alone, the power of this ancient story is known and felt in
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Advent Readiness and Mutual Hospitality
Our home has a Christ room. The room is simple, outfitted with an enormous depiction of Rembrandt’s “Return of the Prodigal Son,” and remains intentionally open for short-term stays of all kinds. We have hosted family members and friends (and friends of friends), kindred community-cultivators, monks and nuns, refugees, respite-seekers and people yearning for imaginative
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Dorothy Fortenberry: Climate and Creation
Episode 55 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh. Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Stitcher | Email | RSS | More “We all will be affected by climate change… can we learn how to understand each other as shared participants in this project of being on earth together?” –Dorothy Fortenberry IN THIS EPISODE In this episode of Messy Jesus Business,
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Advent In a Time of Unbelief
We missed the first Sunday of Advent. While we’ve missed nearly every Sunday mass for the last two years, this one felt particularly discouraging. Maybe because the day before I was heard on more than one occasion saying, “I’m going to go to mass tomorrow if anyone wants to join me,” verbally attempting to hold
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David Hockney and ‘the Duty of Delight’
On the cusp of turning 80 years old in 2020, David Hockney, the British pop artist known for his vivid California landscapes, decided to go to Normandy to paint the arrival of spring on his iPad. Taking his iPad outside in ‘plein air’ (a French expression referring to the act of painting outdoors), he painted
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The Holy Grail: God’s grace on earth
Recently I watched the “The Fisher King” for the first time. For those unfamiliar with this 1991 film, it stars Jeff Bridges as a Howard Stern-esque shock jock who tells people “how it is.” One day a man called Edwin phones in. He is a repeat caller and a bit of a loser. Today he
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Carmen Acevedo Butcher: Healed by Translation
Episode 53 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh. Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Stitcher | Email | RSS | More IN THIS EPISODE: In this episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh talks with author, scholar, and translator of spiritual texts Carmen Acevedo Butcher about the messiness of spirituality, healing and relationship. Together they discuss the wisdom Brother
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Embracing the Dead
After my father died in 2020, I began to have dreams about him returning from the dead. Sometimes we found a way to revive him. Sometimes it turned out he hadn’t been dead at all. I once dreamed we had buried him by mistake, and I had to dig him up again. My brother and
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Sister Eileen McKenzie: The Complexity of the Call to the Way of Christ
Episode 52 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh. Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Stitcher | Email | RSS | More “Christ is The Way and whatever is in the way is The Way.” – Sister Eileen McKenzie IN THIS EPISODE: In this episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh talks with another Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration,
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Discipleship and Decay: Why I Resist Greatness
In this part of the world (here in the Upper Midwest, in the United States of America), it’s the season of decay. Decay is colorful, creative, expansive. Alive. When one walks through the woods in the crisp autumn air, one may notice a full rainbow of fungus speckling the path, the rotting logs and devouring
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