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Creative Pilgrimage
Read for free on Bible Gateway
Revelations of Divine Love
by Julian of Norwich
Read for free on Project Gutenberg
Devotion: Why I Write
by Patti Smith
Purchase from Yale University Press
Framing Text: The Book of Ruth
This first movement in my creative pilgrimage begins with Ruth. Her journey is not a spiritual vision or a cultural tour. It is a walk of loyalty. She goes not to seek greatness but to accompany grief. Her vow to Naomi, "Where you go, I will go," is a declaration of surrender and alignment. She does not name herself prophet or artist. And yet, through her quiet fidelity, she becomes the matriarch of a line that shapes history.
Ruth’s story has often been queered, especially in contexts of chosen family and covenantal love between women. I’ve heard her words in same-sex wedding vows and seen her invoked in ceremonies of solidarity. Though the text is not explicitly queer, it resonates deeply with queer values: faithfulness beyond bloodlines, bonds formed in exile, the power of shared survival. Her presence within scripture invites a radical reimagining of kinship and belonging—one that reaches beyond her companionship with Naomi. Ruth redefines family not through bloodlines or law, but through chosen loyalty, mutual care, and steadfast presence in a world dominated by patriarchal norms.
Julian of Norwich: Devotion as Offering
If Ruth gives us pilgrimage as embodied loyalty, Julian of Norwich gives us pilgrimage as interior vision. She anchors herself—literally—so she can voyage more fully into the divine. Her stillness is not passive; it is profoundly active. Julian receives visions for the comfort and edification of her "even-Christians," not for her own glory. She learns to write not to mythologize herself, but to make her revelations accessible. Hers is a devotion of offering.
Julian speaks of reverent dread and the sadness that punctuates all joy. She reminds us that to expect only contentment is to misunderstand the fullness of God’s creation. Her visions do not promise clarity, but participation. For Julian, seeking is not failure but communion—an act of grace in itself, even without resolution.
Her writing dazzles in moments, especially when she holds a small object, the size of a hazelnut, in her palm and perceives, in that fragile thing, the entire cosmos sustained by love. That image suggests the edge of quantum entanglement—the mysterious reality that things, once joined, remain connected across space and time. It evokes abstract thought and sacred imagination: a vision of stunning compression, both intimate and vast.
This, too, gestures toward a sacred expansiveness—a holiness that welcomes rather than sorts, rooted not in the steady trust that God's love can contain all of us without exception. In her time, Julian’s vision was radical. Others had been condemned for far less. Still, she recorded it clearly, humbly, with complete trust in its grace. Her radical hospitality of spirit parallels the chosen kinship Ruth enacts—the kind of fierce loyalty and mutual care that disenfranchised communities have long relied on to survive.
Patti Smith: Devotion as Persona
And then there is Patti Smith. Her book Devotion sets out to explore why she writes, but the answer it offers is simply: because she is Patti Smith. The pages lean heavily on name-dropping, self-reference, and curated suffering. She stacks evidence of her cool like kids once collected Pokémon cards—moody photos of cemeteries, stiffly framed gardens, and reverent mentions of literary greats. The fictional tale she includes is bloated with Western tropes: lone genius as divine right, cruelty excused by exceptionality, sex as transcendence, and death as drama. These moves don’t open meaning—they posture toward it.
My reaction wasn’t just critical—it was personal. This brand of charisma is one I knew well. I chased it through art school: the cultivated distance, the cloaked vulnerability, the worship of genius. I recoiled, not because I didn’t understand it, but because I did. I had built altars to this very aesthetic.
Smith writes like someone who believes in her own myth. She doesn’t speak the language of the place she romanticizes. She remains the mythmaker abroad, untouched and deaf to input. Her fictional character, Eugenia, echoes Ruth’s pilgrimage but without fidelity, and Julian’s solitude but without vision. She doesn’t transform; she performs. Her solitude is a stage, not a sanctuary.
You could say she moves, but she never journeys. She gestures toward transcendence without ever seeking communion. In contrast, Ruth’s faithfulness makes family. Julian’s stillness births vision. Eugenia remains closed. Her story invites no one in. This opens a window into inclusive holiness—not the aloof pose of removal, but the radical act of presence: to show up not to be seen, but to see and to serve. She throws herself onto thawing ice in an empty final flourish. Her arc isn’t built for communion—it’s shaped for spectacle.
Smith ends Devotion insisting she wants to write something profound, not clever. But the book reads as performance, not offering. It is a mirror polished for display, not a gift laid down with humility.
I chose Devotion hoping to encounter the divine. This was a voice my peers and I once revered, nearly worshipped. But now, alongside Ruth and Julian, I find myself responding with judgment—not from a place of superiority, but as a defense mechanism. I recognize it because I’ve participated in the same performance. Maybe I still am. That discomfort is part of this pilgrimage, too.
Toward a Creative Ethic
This first pilgrimage has brought me to a threshold. I have walked with Ruth, anchored with Julian, and wandered with Patti. And what I have learned is this: True creative devotion is not self-mythology, cleverness, or aestheticized despair. It is offering.
My work going forward must be rooted in that ethic, not to impress or self-justify, but to give something that might matter. I need to begin formulating a methodology of offering. That may start with a set of questions: Who is this for? What are they carrying? What do they need? What will linger after the text or image or service is done? It also means creating habits of attentiveness—reading with humility, walking without purpose, listening without the urge to reply.
I want to make work with hospitality as its compass—work that privileges usefulness over novelty, dignity over cleverness, resonance over polish. I’m not interested in creating artifacts that shut doors behind them, but in crafting invitations that set tables before them. I want to make work that remembers people’s names. Travel should be an act of solidarity, not display. Stillness should make room for listening, not serve as retreat. I want to make work that helps others see—clearly, kindly, and together.
Because this vision of holiness is not about visibility alone. Coming from an LGBTQIA+ perspective isn’t incidental for me—it’s the lens through which I’ve come to see God anew. The outsider status I once held close might now becomes a fulcrum, lifting others into a spirit of connection and shared belonging.
This kind of holiness begins with seeing one’s own path not as a detour, but as a doorway—a way of reencountering the divine beyond what we’ve inherited. It’s not a performance. It’s fidelity—not the kind tethered to purity or piety, but the grounded, everyday courage to return to one another again and again. To claim, and to be claimed. To show up in love even when no one applauds. This holiness is presence. It is grace. It takes shape when we choose one another—in exile, in silence, and in the quiet, unlit corners—because we see each other as lovable, redeemable, and worthy. In that seeing, we catch a glimpse of God.
This is not abstract righteousness or detached sanctity; it is the embodiment of covenant here on earth. We realize holiness not through doctrine but through practice, through how we treat each other. Holy texts, then, are not the possession of those who use them to wound. They are doorways to belonging, to sacred mutuality, to the divine possibility of being known and still loved.
That is the devotion I seek. And as I continue toward priesthood, I hold that devotion in tension with tradition. Reverence does not mean erasing the self. It means bringing the full, honest self before God and community, and allowing that presence to be shaped by scripture, by service, and by story. My task is not to perform sanctity but to live truthfully into it—to show how faith can be both ancient and alive. If I am to be a priest, let me be a porch light in the dark—something steady, quietly offered, not guarding the threshold but welcoming the traveler.
These essays aren’t declarations or demands. They’re invitations, part of a longer creative pilgrimage. I hope you’ll walk with me into what’s next: July’s reflections on growth, with Barbara Brown Taylor and adrienne maree brown as guides into rootedness, change, and the sacred practice of staying present. This first offering was written in the hope of loosening the grip of gatekeeping and making more room around the fire. The path continues, and I’d be glad for your company.
Next Month:
JULY | Season After Pentecost: Ongoing Growth
- Book of Acts
- An Altar in the World
by Barbara Brown Taylor
Available at HarperCollins
- Emergent Strategy
by adrienne maree brown
Available at AK Press