Messy Jesus Business

Episode 85 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.

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"Sometimes [conversion] just felt so hard to do. I had so many questions and I had so many doubts and it was conveyed to me by more than one person that It shouldn't be this hard, but I look back and I'm actually really grateful for it, for how much I had to wrestle with my adoption and my parents language and what liturgy means now and with our embrace of death.

All these things that I carried with me culturally as the daughter of Chinese immigrants had to be reexamined in my conversion. They didn't fit into what my life as a Catholic was turning into. I would do these things that felt antithetical to the way my parents raised me...And I had to maybe not revise those things of my past and those things of how I grew up, but I had to, I guess just reconcile them in a different way and say, yes, where I come from makes me who I am today.

It all comes with me, but I can look at it differently."

-Melody Gee

Topics Discussed:

* Immigration experience

* Conversion to Catholicism

* Ritual, routine, and liturgy

* Discomfort

* The messiness of prayer and community

* Embodiment of faith

* Balancing different cultures

* Embracing conflict

* Resisting perfectionism

Name Drops:

* Jesus

* Thomas Merton

* Ronald Rolheiser

* Oliver Burkeman

* Greg Boyle

* Saul/Paul

Books Mentioned:

* the Bible

* We Carry Smoke and Paper

* New Seeds of Contemplation...