The book I hope lands under your Christmas tree
(And other reasons why you should pick up a copy of The Modern Saints)
I don’t usually respond to emails from strangers on the Internet.
I mean, no offense, Stranger, but I usually send your words straight to the trash. It’s not that I don’t want to engage in conversation with you, but I don’t always want to engage in conversation with you. Sometimes you’re spammy, other times (most of the time), you’re just want me to buy something.
When I do read your emails, you do occasionally put a slight smile on my face, but I can barely keep up with real-life friends and colleagues, let alone names I don’t recognize. It’s not that I don’t mean to ignore you, but when a month, two months, three months goes by and I still haven’t responded, well, by then I find it’s a little too late.
But when someone named Gracie Morbitzer popped into my inbox, I did write back.
I realize this reaction goes against everything I just said, but when Gracie started working on a collection called The Saints, she started re-imagining ancient icons of saints - you know, the ones everyone portrays as “old, white, expressionless, and hard to tell apart.” She saw something different in these “extraordinary people as modern, everyday humans …because that is exactly what they were.” Maybe they were kind of like us, Gracie thought — kind of “hopeless, spunky, terrified, lonely, individualistic, rebellious, progressive, loving, ambitious, counter-cultural, or boisterous outcasts and sinners who reached beyond themselves and made the world and themselves so much better.”1 And maybe these saints had modern-day stories the rest of us needed to hear.
I’m slightly projecting here. After all, there’s only so much I can add to the conversation when I do not live in Gracie’s head, but if you’ll allow me one more projection, I’ll say this: At some point along the way, Gracie realized that the images she was creating needed stories to go along with them.
What better an invitation than to invite fifty writers to pen personal stories of the saints, as a saint intersects with their lives?
As one of the writers included in this collection, it was an honor to work with Gracie2 and the Convergent team. But it was also an honor to get to know St. Zoe of Pamphylia, my chosen saint.
As I wrote in the essay, I chose St. Zoe entirely because I knew her name means “life.” I didn’t grow up learning or knowing a whole lot about the saints; they weren’t a part of my religious tradition and are only something I’m just starting to learn about now. There’s certainly a better way to choose a saint (especially if you’re penning a 1000-word essay about her), but this choosing also seemed rather fitting in the end — and as I’m also learning, sometimes there’s a little more to the choosing than we realize.
Sometimes the saint is exactly who we were supposed to find all along, which is exactly what happened with St. Zoe. As I later wrote, “I pick a saint at random. I take not the tragedy and sacrifice of her story, but I flip it and twist it. I turn her into something she is not, caught up in my dreams of what could have been and should have been and very well might someday be in the future.”
I forget about the beauty of the present and of what she might have to offer me right here, right now — which is to say, exactly why I needed her as my saint in the first place.
Regardless of whether or not you have a saint to call your own, here’s the deal: the holiday season is upon us. If you’re looking for something gorgeous to put under the tree, this is it. Each essay is accompanied by an original painting by Gracie,3 along with an artist’s statement. The authors are diverse, as are the paintings of the saints. The accompanying stories are as unique and original as the writers themselves, so in addition to spiritual memoir (like I offer), you’ll also find poetry and historical essays.
Find the book here: Amazon | Bookshop | or wherever books are sold!
Love, c.
P.S. After you read my essay, send me an email and tell me what you think. But please, let’s not place any bets on whether or not I’ll actually write back.
All quotes from Gracie’s website. Check it out!
If you’re on Instagram, do follow Gracie over there as well.
Speaking of paints, you can also buy prints of your favorite saints at Gracie’s website. They’re breathtaking.