Melody Gee: Conversion and Community

Episode 85 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh. Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe:  Email | RSS | More "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...