Sin Eaters in a Sacramental Cosmos

A burgeoning population of house finches in the neighborhood has been a slender grace in this wretched year. Their distinctive song became a trill for my soul.

You pray for something quick. Murderous. And in the long, drawn-out seconds of, well, is it joy? Awe? Something more? In those long, long seconds there are these quick rapid instants, between the blink of an eye, when your instincts, honed predator instincts, they give way to a different kind of alertness. to the alertness of prey. To the knowledge

We gradually became more and more attuned to our neighborhood cohabitants, and for years we have looked to the pair of cardinals in our yard as sacramental reminders of fidelity. Their flash of red in the dull grey of winter is like the Creator splashing color on a dreary canvas.

In my own personal spiritual geography, it is one of a handful of high holy places, not only because of its geographical sense of sanctuary, but also because Steven Purcell and his team know how to make room for a spiritual encounter without having to “manage” it. The rhythms of the place reflect deep intentionality but also a deeper trust that eff

The history of sin eaters is hazy, but we have evidence of the funereal practice from the 18th century in Wales and its border region. Grieving families would place bread on the chest of the deceased, the corpse an altar of sorts. Believing the bread absorbed the sins of the deceased, the family would hire a professional sin eater to consume the br

Like Fowler at the end of The Quiet American, she is looking for someone to whom she can confess her guilt, own her complicity. But when she admits her deed to her father, Juan Pablo, she gets adulation in return. Klay’s prose is stirring and precise:

While he spoke, she stared silently out at the same city and mountains he did, but saw a different

One of them, “Wild Mood Swings,” is pictured above. I suppose it’s because I can’t help but “read” them theologically, as it were—the way the detritus and flotsam of our lives is transformed when light is cast upon it, projecting a wholeness we could never imagine up close.

There’s a hopefulness and poignancy to the lyrics here that, to be honest, doesn’t feel like Jeff Tweedy, as if something has been born anew in him. I don’t know, but a line like this is the truth: It’s hard to see reality / when you’ve got no love at all.

All the writing that I’ve done has involved an element of wanting to sustain that ghost career, or find a position somewhere between ‘journalism’ and ‘scholarship.’ I don’t feel that there’s a total difference between these kinds of writing. They’re not different species. There is so much that lies in between.