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

Melody Gee

ABOUT THE GUEST

Melody S. Gee is the author of We Carry Smoke and Paper: Essays on the Grief and Hope of Conversion (University of Iowa Press, October 2024), which explores the cultural costs of religious conversion. She is also the author of three books of poetry: The Convert’s Heart is Good to Eat, The Dead in Daylight, and Each Crumbling House. She is the recipient of Kundiman fellowships in poetry and fiction, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and an Artist Support Grant from the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis. Born in Taiwan and raised in Cerritos, California, Melody is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of New Mexico. She has taught writing at Purdue University, Southwestern Illinois College, and St. Louis Community College, and currently works in renewable energy communications. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband and daughters.

MESSY JESUS BUSINESS is hosted by Sister Julia Walsh. 

Produced and edited by Colin Wambsgans.

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