Creative Pilgrimage

A few years ago, I started doing what I call daily prayers. Almost every day, I write a prayer. I use a typewriter, I give myself up to two minutes to write and then maybe three minutes to edit, if even. I actually am keeping a visual component now. It’s developed into a visual diary. I figured I’d share one from last week because it was a nice moment. I thought it might be useful to people right...

The last thing I wrote here was a poem about the Transfiguration . I have been living in the time after a transformative moment ever since. In February, I became a postulant in the Episcopal Diocese of Newark after two years of discernment. Three weeks later, I was accepted into Bexley Seabury Seminary . Two weeks later, I was given a scholarship by Bexley that means I have a lot of pressure taken...

In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places is one of the most radical statements of welcome in all of scripture. There is room for every single one of us, through Jesus, in God’s kingdom. It sounds too good to be true. And yet there it is, in Jesus’s own words, this profound statement of jubilant welcome. Before I moved to New Jersey, I spent years teaching art & design at a college in Br...

Years ago, my child asked me, How big is God? I pointed to the rainbows on her wall,thrown by a crystal in the window. I told her we cannot see all of light—only this narrow band,only when things are just so. I told herLight is bigger than our eyes can see,and God is bigger than that. I did not tell her thenhow colors vanishand the wall goes blank again, how you can stand, emptied, in the same roo...

An Anglican rosary is a loop of thirty-three beads, one for each of Christ's years of life. The four larger beads are called cruciform beads — they mark the compass points of the circle. Between each pair sits a "week" of seven smaller beads. One more large bead, the invitatory, leads back out to the attached cross. This type of rosary was developed in the 1980s by an Episcopal priest — newer than...

Quick Note: This essay is late, but I’m catching up and will be following up with February’s essay very soon, and then finally March’s essay. Thank you for hanging in there with me. This Epiphany, the lights are not gentle. They are the overhead fluorescents snapping on in a private prison where there are people crowded in cages on the floor. The church calendar says this is the season of revelati...

A Quick Note: This was meant to be the December essay, published in January. It is now mid-February. I have a few other essays coming out over the next week to catch up. Over the past year, I’ve been discovering that what I have long called prayer is less about speaking upward and more about allowing myself to be worked on. I used to understand it primarily as language — naming what hurts, asking...

In product development, a minimum viable product is the simplest version of something that still functions. I’ve been thinking about what a minimum viable practice of peace actually looks like right now — the smallest set of actions that still holds together when everything in life is pulling at you. When I open my eyes, I thank God for the previous sober day. When my feet hit the floor, I ask Jes...

Here in the potato bed, the soil is colder than the air and damp as held breath. I dig, and the ground remembers: worm twisting, a weathered button, my daughter’s lost toy... the past rising in clumps of soil. Roots outlast what’s left above. Cut-back things keep reaching. I turn the soil; winter presses in. There’s work to finish before the earth locks itself in frost. Hope begins like this — the...

This month’s work asked for a different kind of attention. For November, I carried three texts with me—Hebrews, Cole Arthur Riley’s This Here Flesh , and John O’Donohue’s Beauty: The Invisible Embrace . They became companions rather than assignments, each shaping how I thought about power, servanthood, and the work of my hands as I moved through the days. November needed room to take root. Hebrews...

You know those moments. The ones where you laugh so hard you cry. The ones where the air in the room shifts. The ones where you almost pull out your phone to film it. And thank God you don’t. This month, I learned that the holiest work, the truest connections, can’t be documented. You just had to be there. October was supposed to be a month of reading and reflection. Instead, it became a month of...

I’m still writing the October essay—the month ran right over me. I’ve been living the material in a tumult: teaching, printing, marching, burning out, and starting again. Early in the month I built a collapsible poster-making cart for the No Kings Day protest and, instead of taking it to the larger protest, I wheeled it to the end of my driveway. What began as a quiet gesture turned into long, sur...

When I was teaching full-time, over the years I had hundreds of students come for office hours just to off-gas about the mess they were wading through. After early missteps, I learned that as a low-power representative of an institution, my real job wasn’t to fix anything. It was to witness—to give full attention—to walk beside that fellow soul and acknowledge their pain. There were students getti...

In this season of my Creative Pilgrimage , I have journeyed with three guiding voices: the ancient poetry of Isaiah, Annie Dillard’s sharp meditations in Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek , and Mary Oliver’s prayerful verse in Devotions . Each writer has shaped how I see my place and survival in a world filled with dread, renewal, and glimpses of the Divine. Isaiah’s writing commands with the authority of...

I published the written text of this sermon with a link to the actual video from my church’s Youtube channel. A friend said it was hard for her to hear, given her particular hearing issues. I have cleaned up the sound a bit to make things a bit easier, but I do find this a little lonely—the sounds of the church were really so nice for me. In case this version works better for you, enjoy! This serm...

Hello, I'm Libby Clarke, and this is these are Prayers from an (Im)Perfect Soul. I'm in the process of discernment to become an Episcopal priest. Much of this process isn't in my control, but I'm working on the parts that are. I'm honing my ability to pray spontaneously and deepening my connection with God. As I grow more assured, my prayers are beginning to encompass others out in the world. I'm...

Hi, I'm Libby Clarke. Welcome to Daily Prayers from an (Im)Perfect Soul. (Note: working title…) I'm in the process of discernment to become an Episcopal priest. I've been honing my ability to pray extemporaneously, inspired by my bishop who effortlessly prays for people on the spot. I've set up some simple rules. * I use an old typewriter and limit myself to a three by five five by seven index car...