Sister Julia Walsh fell off a cliff.
Her book “For Love of the Broken Body” begins as a bloody thriller:
I’m alone, face down in a stream on the farm in Iowa where I grew up. My body is soaked. I taste blood in my mouth. What happened? Oh my God. I fell off the cliff, twenty feet onto the rocks. And I’m not dead.
Walsh guides the reader through that traumatic event and the aftermath: her time in the ICU, her broken jaw, facial reconstruction and recovery, the pureed food that her mother makes her, and the dedicated visits that her Franciscan sisters make to the hospital. But fairly soon after the first chapter, the real thrill of the book sets in, which is Julia’s vocational call to sisterhood (Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration). The book is a spiritual quest told through the tale of a near-death experience.
In this interview, I speak with Sister Julia about her book, her recovery from the traumatic fall, her call to the sisterhood, and how her recovery process helped bring her to an acceptance of her own broken body as an entrance into true solidarity and community. She writes,
This broken body I love is also Jesus… [and also] every human who held me in my misery, who tended to my wounds, who held my hand during surgery or sickness. It is the people of God.
Sister Julia’s authentic, broken quest invites all of us to embrace our own authentic, broken quest wherever we are. I am inspired by Sister Julia’s infectious joy, her journey and ministry, and I hope you are, too.
P.S. To learn more about Sister Julia’s writing, podcast, and ministry, check out her Messy Jesus site here. You can read a book review of Sister Julia’s book that I wrote here. Have a wonderful week, everyone.
Image credit: Passion of Jesus; sculpture of Crucifixion of Jesus observing Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus (known as Pieta). National Gallery of Slovenia. 14th and 15th century. Wikimedia Commons, CC By-SA 4.0
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