Creative Pilgrimage

About Creative Pilgrimage

I’m exploring what it means to pray, create, and believe without pretending to have it all figured out. libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com/s/creative-pilgrimage?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Libby Clarke

Category

arts · religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

29 Mar 2024

Latest episode

26 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

18 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   26 Aug 2026

   Heading to Seminary

   For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Libby Clarke. I’ve been a member here for nine years. Tomorrow, or no, actually Friday, not tomorrow, I fly off to start seminary. And that’s because of all of you. I’m so grateful to this church, to the choir, of course, my family, to Dr. Moore, Reverend Bowie—and Reverend George, Reverend Paul, Reverend Robert, Reverend Tim, Buildings and Grounds, Vestry, Altar Guild, Flower Guild—all of you. But one person in particular—who is watching via our lovely video feed—I wanted to thank in front of all of you because it’s an object lesson in the power of living in the Word. Ten years ago, I moved to New Jersey for a job. And at that job, I met someone who became a dear friend very quickly, a person who lived openly in her faith. She never proselytized. She never, well, she didn’t judge me for that (laughs)… We got on like a house on fire. I learned from this person, after many dings and bangs in my personal life when it came to other people of faith and other faith practices. I learned that this person—who lived very openly in the word of God, in the teachings of Christ—could love me and I was safe with her. And so a year into our friendship when I hit a hard time and she said, maybe come to choir, make some friends, I knew I could possibly be safe and accepted here. It’s an example to all of us of the power of you as lay people, as living in the Word openly and lovingly, applying the teachings of Jesus to our own lives first and living through that matrix out in the world can change someone’s life entirely. The trajectory of my life if I make ordination, God willing, or if I don’t—if that is how it works out, either way, I am transformed. My family’s life is transformed. Our church is a little different... a lot different depending on what you think of me. (laughs) So please remember radical welcome, as people of faith, is a mustard seed and it can change the world one way or another for the better. Cynthia McChesney, you’re not here right now, you’re at home watching this. I claim you as my dearest friend and as chosen family, but I am proudest to claim you as my sister in Christ. And I hope I do you—and all of the rest of you—proud as I head forth into formation. I won’t be here very much. I’m going to be worshiping all over, doing work, learning the, well, learning the ropes of priest-er-li-ness… It’s jargon (laughs). But I will come every once in a while to report in and to, of course, harangue my beloved choir. Again, I hope I do you proud and I hope to live into the Word with the utmost of my being because you taught me to do so. Thank you so much and God bless you and keep you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   8 Jun 2026

   A Prayer for a Busted Dollar

   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 now while money is scarce and times are hard. So I hope you like it. From June 1st, 2026. A Prayer for a Busted Dollar. Dear Lord, I was walking the dog (BLESSING) on a beautiful day (BLESSING)when I spotted the distinct color of money, strewn in bits along the way. Someone mowed over cash. For a fevered minute, I collected each tiny part, hopeful for what? A dollar? My dog (BLESSING) was nonplussed and pulled me back into the day (BLESSING). We wandered home and I have assembled my treasure (see attached). No luck on the found booty — but it made me think how lovely the new whole of it is. (BLESSING).I am peeled anew (BLESSING). God, forgive my rush to reward in the face of your creation. Thank you for helping me see this busted dollar as a gift. I am humbled before your Grace (BLESSING). I am made aware and renewed (BLESSING). I am loved now (BLESSING). And able to share the treasure of this life (BLESSING). Thank you. AMEN This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   11 May 2026

   Walking Back Down the Mountain

   The last thing I wrote here was a poem about the Transfiguration (https://libbyclarke.substack.com/p/the-light-we-make). 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 (https://bexleyseabury.edu/). Two weeks later, I was given a scholarship by Bexley that means I have a lot of pressure taken off myself and my diocese. Three weeks after that, I launched Everloving Pride (https://everlovingpride.com/), a toolkit for churches that want to practice genuine, sustained welcome for LGBTQIA+ people. I’m tired. (laughs) The reading list I had so carefully constructed last April has become firmly moot. I started reading in response to a call because I had no map yet. The territory of discernment was unknown. I am so pleased to report that the pilgrimage of last year did not fail its plan. It has outgrown it in ways I never saw coming. The world before me is coming into focus, although this new vista is filled with mystery and a lot of things I have to learn. While I was reeling in my paralysis after Lent, I went into my conference with the Commission on Ministry so they might interview me, review my progress, and decide if they recommended me to the bishop for postulancy. I did not at all expect to experience such multidimensional support. I was challenged lovingly, given a chance to speak frankly, and held in real love at a time of truly treading air. It healed something in me I did not yet know how to name until after it had healed. The bishop’s support, when she made me a postulant formally, has made me feel genuinely part of the church in ways I did not know I was allowed to feel. I carry a little shame that it took so long. I was assured many, many times that this was always the case, whether I was made a postulant or not. But old trauma feels like truth until it’s truly flouted by experience. So what do I do? Live in regret? Repentance means turning, not groveling. You face a different direction, towards God hopefully, and you move your body. Trauma takes what it takes. The arrival is not diminished by whatever long road I took. I did the readings I could fit in the few slow times during all of this change. I finished Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. His fire is disciplined and brilliant and fiercely hot. bell hooks is a patron saint of this whole endeavor, and her company is ongoing. I have ordered a few more of her books. Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy, and Fujimura are waiting for the work they belong to as I create the map for this coming year. This map is already being overlaid by liturgy, classes, and seminarian concerns, so none of it is wasted. Year Two looks very different from Year One. I am writing each week in shorter, more immediate bursts. You’ll be hearing from me more, but not for such long stretches. I am pacing myself by what the early church actually did in each season — the embodied ancient logic of Advent, Lent, and Ordinary Time. I read in response to where I am being called, not to what I had scheduled. I carry no fixed list beyond books of the Bible, and I have my curation as my guide. I am still me, but I need to listen to the season, the work, and the community to which I am now accountable, and I have to practice showing up. My pilgrimage year began at Easter, a couple of weeks ago now, but I am letting myself flow instead of berating myself over a deadline I thought up. The church year is now my river. I am in Eastertide — the season of recognition, of gathering at table, and of being sent. I walked down the mountain of Lent not knowing any of this was coming. I am alight and pressing on. The Creative Pilgrimage continues. My destination is no longer self-authored, and that turns out to be the point. Thank you for accompanying me on this first year’s journey. God bless you and keep you. And I hope to see you as we leave the road and hit the river together. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

4. 

   4 May 2026

   Many Dwelling Places

   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 Brooklyn, and my first few years were rough. One class, Introduction to Drawing, comes to mind. The school where I taught served primarily first-generation, low-income students from across New York City. Many had come through underfunded public schools, and most were immigrants. They faced a lot of obstacles, and they came raw. I was going through a difficult stretch in my own life and needed to prove something. So I picked up the syllabus the school gave me and followed it with an iron grip. Students were expected to arrive with their materials. If they did not, they were marked absent, given a zero, and sent home. Three weeks in, one student came to class again without her supplies. She was waiting for her paycheck. I reprimanded her in front of everyone and told her she needed to leave. Then I turned my back and started writing on the board. I heard rustling behind me. When I turned around, every other student in that room had given something from their own kit so she could stay. They already understood something I had not yet figured out. I hadn’t taught them that. They brought it with them. That was my first lesson in welcome, and I still didn’t learn enough. Nearly 40% withdrew before the semester ended. The following semester I overcorrected, accepted incomplete work, let lessons dissolve into socializing, and it was a shambles. Again, my students left in droves–why would they stay? That summer I finally sat with the question I had been avoiding. I had grown up inside drawing, never knowing what it felt like to stand in front of a blank page and feel like a trespasser. I had no idea how my students felt. As it happened, I was trying to learn yoga, failing badly, and getting ready to quit. I understood, in my body, what it felt like to be a beginner in a room where everyone else seemed to belong. My teacher had led us through a meditation I couldn’t stop thinking about. I quit yoga and kept the meditation. The night before class started my second year, I realized what I had to do. On the first day, instead of drilling through the syllabus, I asked my students about themselves. We talked about their memories of art class, the teachers who told them they couldn’t draw, the friends who were better and said so without thinking. I noticed something else I had seen every semester. When I went through the supply list, I would hear them quietly working out who could share what. And yet when it came to their own materials, they held back, trying to complete entire semesters with one pencil worn to a nub. Using up supplies felt like a transgression. These were students who had not yet learned that they were allowed to take up room. My job was not to teach them something to draw. I had to help them find what was already there. Improvising, I dimmed the lights and led them through that borrowed meditation. I had them close their eyes and imagine a ball of light right at their hearts, pulsing steady with their own heartbeat. Then we sent that light down through their bodies, through the floor, all the way to the center of the earth. Then back up, through their hearts, through the tops of their heads, out past the ceiling, past the atmosphere, to the edge of the known universe, and then beyond that, to the edge of all creation. While they sat with that line, I asked them to look around in their minds and see the same lines of light coming out of every other person in the room, then outward, city by city, country by country, all those lines of light, every person connected from the center of the earth to the edge of everything. Then I brought them back down into themselves. That line, I told them, comes out of you in every direction. The way you speak. The people whose lives you have changed. The memories you have made. And now we are going to spend time with its most humble expression. We are going to pick up a pencil, and we are going to take our lines for a walk. I placed paper and pencils on each desk and opened the shades and told the students to open their eyes. Whatever line you make today is as valid and as connected as any other line in this room, on this planet, in all of creation. Learn to love your line, because if you trust this process, you will learn to use it to articulate the world around you in ways that help you understand it more fully. Then we began to draw, no longer a group of strangers assigned to the same room. We were a community of people who had just gone through something together. That was the most frightening thing I had done in a classroom, and it was the only thing that worked. I had to make room in myself before I could help make room for them. Jesus tells us that the Father’s house has many dwelling places. I used to hear that as a promise about what is waiting for us, rooms already built, already assigned, already ours. But I think it means something more active than that. When we genuinely welcome each other, when we enter the work of loving someone as they actually are, we discover more of the house. Welcome is not the management of existing space — it’s how the house grows. Jesus says this plainly. The one who believes will do the works that he does, and greater works than these. The house does not stay the same size. It grows through us. This means that the people beyond our doors are not waiting to be let in. They are already part of what God has made. Walking through an unfamiliar door takes courage. The question is whether we meet that courage with equal openness. And this is where I want to ask something honest of us. If welcome always feels comfortable, that is worth examining. Comfort, in this context, can be a sign that we are extending ourselves only toward people whose presence costs us nothing, people who confirm what we already know and ask nothing of us we aren’t already prepared to give. That is a warm feeling, but it is not entering any where new in the house with many dwelling places. Real welcome has give in it. It asks us to be moved, to be changed by the encounter, to make room in ourselves before we make room in our sanctuary. A few weeks ago I led a workshop about how we talk about St. John’s to people who have never come here. I asked the group what you would put on a T-shirt? And what you gave me was not a tagline or a campaign. What you gave me was testimony: A beacon of welcome. A dose of sanity every Sunday. Lapsed atheist. A place called home. Come for the community, stay for the faith. Experience acceptance. One person’s story stayed with me. While going through a serious illness, they found real solace in faith, learned to ask for help and actually let community hold them. But when they spoke of this faith with friends facing something similar, they were met with resistance. People carry a great deal of baggage when it comes to houses of faith, and those friends were carrying theirs. What moved me was how this person held both truths at once, their own solace and their friends’ resistance, without needing to resolve the tension or win the argument. That poise in the face of discomfort is not a small thing. Philip asks Jesus to show him the Father, and Jesus says: you have already seen him. You have been looking at him this whole time. That is what I want to say about that story, and about those phrases, and about a room full of students with very little who gave everything anyway. When someone stays poised in the face of discomfort, when someone holds another person’s pain without needing to fix it or win, when a community keeps discovering how much more room there is — that is not simply a nice thing that happened. That is the Father, made visible, in the works we do for one another. Those are the greater works Jesus is talking about. That is the house with many dwelling places, not a building that controls who enters, but a community that keeps finding, together, how much more room there is. The promise Jesus makes is already true. Meeting it with our whole selves, as a living, feeling body of Christ, is how we make it real for everyone who walks through that door. Amen. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

5. 

   20 Mar 2026

   The Light We Make

   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 room,surrounded by what you do not perceive. I did not tell her thenhow we grow up wanting glory on demand—bargaining with life,trying to pin the sacred in place,a scrap of sun we can hold. Peter is no different.He climbs a mountain with Jesus. For a moment, Christ breaks through—an unbearable, searing glimpse. Moses, Elijah appear—The impossible, solid in the glare. And Peter, terrified, scrambles.He offers to build shelters,to nail the holy down. A cloud covers them. A voice calls:This is my beloved Son. Listen to him. And in a moment, it’s over.No prophets, no radiance,only Jesus again,ordinary as your own hands. They walk back downwith the same feet they climbed with,kicking up dust,the long work waiting below. They do not get to keep the lightor speak of what they saw.They get the world as it is—the world my daughter, now thirteen, is learning to see. She asks harder questions now:If there is a God, why do we suffer?How can you believe in something you cannot see? Cast rainbows don’t answer this.The mountain is far away.The blank wall, the crystal—none of it is enough. I tell her I cannot know, not fully.I cannot shrink Godinto something I can clutch.I believe only becauseI have known love. Love is no theory.It quickens our pulse without a touch,it tethers us to strangers,it carries us through pain, and cuts the din of life with a single note. So I go find love, here, in the work, in the dust,in the turning toward each otherwhen the wall is blank. I take the next step.I walk back down,not because I understand,but because I am lookingwithin this narrow band of color,for the light we make,until we find ourselves climbing the mountain again. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

6. 

   18 Mar 2026

   Touch My Eyes Again: Mark 8:11–26

   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 you'd expect, but the counting makes ancient sense. You can make one from cord and cheap beads, or just knots. The point is not beauty or perfection, but touch. The beads steady the hands while the heart learns to return to God. I’ve started making rosaries from rose petals, cooking and pressing, and rolling saved flowers into beads. The work is slow. Some crack, others hold—I’m learning as I go. Making a tool for prayer from something that was alive and then saved feels so right. I find such peace having a physical way to tie my words and prayers to the world around me. In Mark 8, people demand a sign, and Jesus refuses. The disciples panic over the lack of bread, forgetting the abundance they have already witnessed. Then a blind man is healed in stages: first blurry, then clear. This is Lent: releasing control, remembering what we keep forgetting, and asking for sight that comes slowly. The blind man doesn’t see clearly the first time. He needs Jesus to touch him again. I keep thinking about that: prayer, too, can be in stages—not instant, not clean. Just ask, return, ask again. In that spirit, this is how I am using Mark 8:11–26 to pray the rosary: The Cross Jesus Christ, deliver me from the hunger to be convinced. Teach me to trust. The Invitatory Bead Lord Jesus, touch my eyes again. The Circle (Repeat this cycle three times) The Cruciform Beads (Pray one line for each of the four large beads) * Free me from demanding signs; make me faithful. * Save me from the yeast of pride and power; make me humble. * Quiet my fear of scarcity; teach me to remember. * Soften what is hardened in me; open what is closed. The Weeks (Pray one line for each of the seven small beads between the Cruciform beads) * Lord Jesus, touch my eyes again. * Touch my fear. * Touch my hurry. * Touch my cynicism. * Touch my hunger to be right. * Touch my forgetfulness. * Touch my heart. Closing (After the third time around, exit the circle) The Invitatory Bead: Lord Jesus, touch my eyes again. The Cross:Christ, let me return to You, blinking in the light. Amen. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

7. 

   9 Mar 2026

   The Lights Are On, and They are Blinding

   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 revelation. Fine. Let us have some revelation. Amos is not subtle. He addresses a nation of devout, prosperous, festival-attending people who believe God is pleased with them. The music is excellent. The offerings are on time. The courts are corrupt, the poor are being ground into dust, and God, who is apparently not as manageable as previously assumed, rejects the whole operation, the entire shebang. Take your songs away from me, God says. I will not listen to the melody of your harps. Let justice roll down like waters. Not trickle. Roll. Reading Amos in January 2026 is not theoretical. It is a mirror held up to a country where immigration enforcement has become a killing operation. Say their names like what they are: a list that should not exist, a list that actually has thousands of entries of non-violent, law-abiding people being ground to dust. Renée Nicole Good. Alex Pretti. Keith Porter Jr. Ruben Ray Martinez. Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres. Geraldo Lunas Campos. Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz. Parady La. Victor Manuel Diaz. Heber Sánchez Domínguez. Nurul Amin Shah Alam. Aliya Rahman. Kaden Rummler. Britain Rodriguez. D’Iris Jackson, six months old. Liam Conejo Ramos, five years old. (Apologies for any mispronunciations.) This list is in no way comprehensive and does not count all of the people taken, killed, injured, or terrorized by forces working outside of due process. The latest data indicates almost 70,000 people are in custody, 73% of whom have no criminal convictions. The government has language for all of this. Enforcement operations. Presumed suicide. Courtesy ride. Targeted stops. Less-lethal methods. Amos has different language. In chapter five alone: I hate, I despise your festivals. Your solemn assemblies are a stench to me. That is not a measured man. That is barely contained fury, disciplined into prophecy, aimed with precision at the people doing the harm and the people calling themselves faithful while it happens. I have been sitting with fury for months. I have also been making signs for twenty-five years — ink and brushes, cardboard, bedsheets when someone needs a banner. You work with what you have, as the flawed person you are right now. The rage and the work are not separate things. James Cone refuses distance as well. In The Cross and the Lynching Tree, he forces Christian readers to confront what crucifixion was: state execution, public and humiliating, meant to terrorize. He places the cross alongside the lynching tree and refuses the comfort of metaphor. If we, as Christians, follow someone executed by the state as a threat to order, then we cannot feign shock when the state defines new threats and acts accordingly. Neutrality becomes a choice. Wendell Berry writes from the soil rather than the scaffold, but the logic is similar. In Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, he traces how extraction becomes a governing ethic: land reduced to yield, labor reduced to cost, community reduced to inefficiency. Once efficiency outranks relationship, harm becomes administrative. The damage is filed, processed, absorbed. Violence rarely begins as spectacle. It begins as paperwork. Taken together, Amos and Cone and Berry leave very little room for moral insulation. And yet insulation is exactly what I practiced in January. This is the part I would rather omit. The lights were on and I could see clearly, and I did not move. I went to work. I came home. I read the news, which arrives filtered more and more through the concerns of billionaires who have already made their arrangements. I scrolled platforms engineered for outrage and drift. I felt a rage so large it had no shape, and it did not translate into action. It translated into paralysis. That is where Lent found me. Coming Next FEBRUARY | Lent: Repentance & Repair * Book of Mark * The Fire Next Timeby James Baldwin * Art on My Mind: Visual Politicsby bell hooks Notes on the names above, absolutely incomplete: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

8. 

   27 Feb 2026

   Instruments in the Waiting

   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 for help, directing attention towards God. Lately, it feels more like a practice that slowly rearranges my interior life, often without my noticing until I’m already different. This shift has become more visible to me as I continue discerning priesthood. I have found myself asking, sometimes with discomfort, what this practice actually does. The phrase thoughts and prayers has grown thin in our culture, and I understand why. It can sound like retreat or avoidance, like a polite murmur offered in place of engagement. Yet the thinness may say more about how casually we treat the discipline than about the discipline itself. If it has any integrity, prayer seems to work gradually. It does not resolve the crisis in front of me. It does not guarantee the outcomes. Prayer, instead, shapes the person who must live through whatever unfolds. Advent has sharpened this awareness. Waiting has a way of revealing where I’m impatient, where I want visible reassurance, where I confuse movement with faithfulness. In the book of Exodus, God hears the cry of a suffering people and moves toward them, but the story does not accelerate after that. Liberation is promised, and then the long middle begins. There is wandering, complaint, fatigue, doubt. The danger is not only the power of the oppressor — it is the erosion that happens when hope stretches thin. I recognize that erosion in myself more easily than I would like to admit. The Exodus story does not romanticize endurance. It shows how easily people lose orientation when time passes and nothing looks resolved. Yet again and again, there is a return to trust, obedience, and to the presence that does not withdraw even when confidence does. Julian of Norwich (https://julianofnorwich.org/pages/who-is-julian-of-norwich) steadied me early in this pilgrimage with her insistence that all shall be well, even when the evidence is not visible. Howard Thurman deepens that steadiness in a different register. In Jesus and the Disinherited, he writes for those living with their backs against the wall and names fear, deception, and hatred as forces that quietly deform the soul under sustained pressure. I do not read him as offering inspiration in the thin sense. I read him as taking Jesus at his word, as if those teachings were meant to be lived right here under pressure. What strikes me is how concrete that reading feels. The work is interior, but it is not abstract. It has to do with what happens when fear begins to dictate behavior, when bitterness feels energizing, when compromise seems practical. It asks whether the inward life can remain intact long enough for love to remain credible. Robin Wall Kimmerer, in Braiding Sweetgrass, speaks about tending land over seasons — about attention practiced daily, about gratitude that is enacted rather than felt. Healing, in her telling, unfolds through consistent care rather than urgency. That language of tending has begun to shape how I understand devotion. It’s not confined to spoken words. It can be carried in the body, in repetition, in the making of something offered to others. Earlier this month, I began making an Anglican rosary from rose petals saved across the year. It was for a friend whose child is currently ill. I cannot secure the outcome anyone would want. I cannot shorten the waiting or absorb the fear. What I can do is sit at my table and work, allowing my hands to gather what time has given. There is a quiet joy in that — not because the circumstances are light, but because the act itself resists helplessness. The rosary gathers days that held both dread and small mercies. It gathers breath and repetition. It becomes a way of staying present rather than drifting into abstraction. I find that I am less interested in persuading God to intervene and more concerned with becoming someone who can remain attentive and steady for the long haul. The work of shaping beads from petals mirrors the shaping happening within me. It’s slow and imperfect. It’s sometimes tedious and unexpectedly sustaining. Advent insists that God does not remain distant from suffering, but enters it and remains. That claim carries more weight for me this year than any explanation could. I’m trying, in smaller ways, to practice remaining as well. Hope, as I am coming to know it, is less a feeling than a posture. It shows itself in the decision to continue showing up, to listen longer than is comfortable, to keep tending what has been entrusted to me. There is joy in discovering that love can be practiced in tangible ways, that attention can be trained, and even in uncertainty, there is meaningful work to be done. Nothing triumphant or dramatic, but steady. And more often than I expected, it’s quietly alive. Next EssayJANUARY | Epiphany: Liberation & Migration Next week, I’ll be releasing the January essay on epiphany, liberation, and migration. I read texts that move from waiting into confrontation, beginning with the Book of Amos, which I had never read before and found astonishing. I’ll also be writing about The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone, and Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community by one of my very favorite authors, Wendell Berry. If Advent has been teaching me how to remain present over time, Epiphany may press further — asking what that presence demands when injustice is named without euphemism. Thank you so much for journeying with me as I continue my creative pilgrimage. Your support and engagement have meant more than I can say. God bless you and keep you. Be well. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

9. 

   24 Feb 2026

   Minimum Viable Practice of Peace

   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 Jesus to love me through the day to come, keeping me sober and connected. It’s worked all this time, so I do it every morning. Since the first AA meeting I ever attended, I rock back and forth gently as I say the first four phrases of the Lord’s Prayer. The first time I did it, it was because I was hungover and not steady. And now I do it to thank God for my sobriety 17 years in. I don’t revisit that moment to admire it, but to remember where I began and who brought me here. My body understands something my mind often overcomplicates. As I rock back and forth and then settle just as we say “…your will be done,” my peace surrounds me. When I walk my dog, I find myself helplessly falling into happiness just matching her pace. I follow that pup all over my neighborhood, grinning like a fool and spotting squirrels. We’ve carved several routes over the years, each one tuned to alleviate different levels of angst. I keep returning to the line from Micah: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. It strikes me that this might be the minimum viable practice of Christianity. It doesn’t require explanation or expansion. It asks for something that can be lived even in a difficult and interrupted day. Life doesn’t cooperate with our best intentions. It interrupts, it crowds, it exhausts. Because of that, peace is not something I arrive at. It’s something I tend. This understanding came slowly, through years of being sober. I think of my sobriety as an elliptical orbit — literally the length of my arm, and at the end of it, the next possible drink. If I live with love, that drink stays far away. If I live in fear, it moves closer. Addiction is a practice of isolation — from community, from family, from self, from God. What sobriety asks of me is the opposite: to stay in relationship with all of Creation, to keep the orbit wide, to notice every day what I am letting draw near. To do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God — this is what keeping the orbit wide looks like in practice. To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God is not a large or abstract instruction. It’s small enough to attempt in a real and lived day. Now that we’re living through such constant tumult, I find that when I tend my own peace, I’m better able to see where and when justice asks something of me. That brings me incredible comfort. This is what I’m considering a minimum viable practice of peace for me right now. And it is easy enough and enough of enough to begin again tomorrow. What are some ways that help you find that instant reset and grounding throughout your day? Let me know in the comments. Thank you so much for listening, and God bless you and keep you. Be well. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

10. 

    22 Dec 2025

    The Thinnest Season

    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 hidden dark where a seed breaks open. The first Isaiah knew a shoot from the stump, a green insistence rising through ruin. He spoke to people aching for deliverance; I kneel in my garden, hands burning in the chill, listening for that promise in this stubborn earth. On the deck, the tomato vines still tangle, pale fruit summoned by a warm spell too close to frost. They look like hope, but the fading light says otherwise. Still, beneath the surface, the earth draws in, gathering strength for the next beginning. I clear around the horseradish, stern, unmoved, its white fingers driving through clay. A root like this knows endurance. What is planted deep outlasts the winter. I pull down tired growth, lay leaves back into soil, edges curling like paper. I set hard tomatoes on the sill, the last light warming their shoulders. In this thinnest season I trust the slow work of God — hope rooting itself quietly, the first small promise clinging to the cold. For now, the garden lies still, each low thing resting easy beside the next. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

11. 

    10 Dec 2025

    From Monstress to Ministry

    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 (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/673836/this-here-flesh-by-cole-arthur-riley/), and John O’Donohue’s Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (https://inkwellmanagement.com/books/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 opened new paths each time I returned to it, while This Here Flesh asked for a depth of attention that refused to be hurried. O’Donohue’s language of beauty as restoration helped me see how making can return people to themselves and how these texts might speak to one another.For weeks the readings orbited each other without quite touching; I could feel their shared center but could not yet name it. Clarity came when I remembered the first manifesto* I wrote in art school, the document that held me through rejection and gave shape to Monstress Productions (https://libbyclarke.com/monstress). The work I made under that name became my first sustained exploration of themes that still ground my practice: identity, consumer culture, activism, and the desire to help others heal with the tools the Creator has placed in their hands. Monstress began as my attempt to claim space when institutions refused to make room for me. I named myself, I claimed my Otherness — or what I thought was my difference at the time. It was never a closed chapter or a failed experiment; it remains an active part of my practice, albeit on the back burner these days. Those early projects taught me that small, handmade interventions can shift how someone inhabits their life. The Portrait Products revealed how care can take material form. The annual valentines showed that art can act as distributed affection. The Here & Now kit demonstrated that presence can be designed for. The Ennui-Free project invited people to notice the days that held even a trace of light. This mode of making still informs how creativity becomes service for me. My early practice cannot be equated with the profound disenfranchisement many communities endure, yet it let me feel the contour of exclusion’s edge. That awareness shaped how Riley’s writing landed within me. Her reflections on embodiment and dignity—the right to inhabit one’s full presence in a world that has tried to diminish it—asked for a quiet, focused attention. In recognizing the distance between our experiences, I also saw a shared instinct: to protect space, repair damage, and resist the forces that narrow human possibility.Hebrews brought that instinct into the language of priesthood and service. Christ as High Priest moves toward the world’s wounds rather than away from them, holding together authority and intimacy, power and mercy. Under that gaze, my old insistence on autonomy began to look incomplete; what once held me together now calls me toward a practice offered more deliberately to others.To step into that with integrity, I must begin again. I must enter ministry with the posture of an apprentice: willing to be unsteady, willing to learn aloud, and willing to let unfamiliar work reshape me. I expect mistakes and awkwardness; that is part of beginning. I am not entering ministry from mastery but as someone who wants to be shaped by service. If the High Priest sets the pattern by offering his own life for the healing of others, then vulnerability—not polish—must guide my steps.This understanding reframes my studio practice as well. The manifesto I am rewriting is not an abandonment of Monstress but its evolution. The early work met the needs of its moment; the new manifesto speaks to what is needed now. It affirms my commitment to reclaimed materials, embodied worship, and a refusal to participate in systems of exclusion. It ties my creative life to Hebrews’ call to servanthood, to O’Donohue’s vision of beauty as a homecoming of the human spirit, and to Riley’s insistence that liberation must be lived in the body.This is my creative pilgrimage for November: a return to the earliest truths of my work, a renewed embrace of apprenticeship, and a deepening rule of making shaped by justice, humility, and the labor of the hands. I am preparing for a more deliberate phase of my studio life, guided by the example of the Tekton, the artisan-builder Christ, whose life embodies the truth Hebrews names: authority rooted in service, not dominance. The path is not tidy, but it is clear enough to walk. A Litany of Making Before naming this litany, I acknowledge that proclamation is part of my practice. I have carried a Pocket Manifesto (https://freight.cargo.site/m/Z2689704112024364137125274016289/manifesto99_card_01.pdf) in my wallet since my days at Cranbrook Academy of Art, a small reminder of what grounded me when I first learned to fight back with my work. I keep it with me still, and I suspect I will need to make a new one for this next season of apprenticeship. Speaking a rule aloud—in the studio or in prayer—becomes a way of inhabiting the truth I seek to live. What follows is not separate from the essay but its natural extension: the language of conviction becoming the rhythm of work.The Revised Monstress Manifesto First Issued December 2025 Repeat each morning you choose to make anything at all. Speak what is true.If I lose the fire, I stop. Work without conviction cannot heal, question, or serve.The person I welcome is my equal. I honor their intelligence, experience, and agency.I work in solidarity with those institutions have excluded. I keep myself decentered. I examine the systems I move through and ask how my work might loosen, rather than reinforce, structures that privilege me. I pray to remain teachable and welcome discomfort as a sign that I am learning what I once could not see.I remember whose labor, suffering, and brilliance built the structures we inhabit. I refuse to replicate patterns of erasure.I make from what the world has already discarded. Found, reclaimed, repaired, and repurposed materials ground my practice. I reject conspicuous consumption so I can see the value that remains in all things, not only in what is newly made or culturally celebrated. Worth is inherent; it does not depend on shine or scarcity.I choose embodied worship. The work of my hands becomes prayer, drawing me toward the Lord. Shared making becomes community.I refuse narratives that glorify consumption. Satisfaction is cultivated, not bought. Bread is to be broken and shared, not hoarded.I design with people, not at them. My work invites participation, critique, and connection.I fight the fights I am built for. My creative labor is resistance and repair, guided first by the tools I inherited rather than the ones I purchase.I begin again as an apprentice. I take risks, make mistakes, and learn in full view.I walk the path of the Tekton. I honor Christ the Maker whose authority is rooted in service.I believe, and I act like I believe. Appendix: *The Original Monstress Manifesto (Abridged) First issued May 1999; reissued January 2002Repeat every morning you are a designer or an artist. State the (personally) obvious.By obvious I mean the most profoundly true, most terribly important statements you can summon. Certainly this cannot happen every day but I will consider it a viable daily goal in designing...IF I AM WITHOUT PASSION, I WILL FIND A DIFFERENT JOB.Why torture myself and others with treacle? Remember the viewer has as much intelligence as I do. With all that latent elitism I pretend not to have cultivated, I need to remember the audience is assuredly capable of understanding. Why say I should be accessible to our viewers when I should be looking for ways to access the viewer, as an equal, on his or her terms?Remember people choose what they believe.There is a lot of in the world trying to convince everyone otherwise. I work restore Historical Memory by assuring the viewer that she can evaluate, that he has a past he can draw upon.Remind the audience of its power with respect and humility.Remember any person in my audience could be in my place tomorrow. Invite evaluation and interaction. Design with and for the audience.Remember Utopia, Perfection, Completion are possible only from within our selves.No selling empty dreams of perfection and endless desire to people who have much better things to be doing. The point is that we can find peace and completion on our own without mass consumption or such crap. That is the only Utopia possible in this life the way I see it. We choose to pursue satisfaction at the mall or to realize it is very much within our very being.CHANGE THE WORLD.Pick your battle and fight it. Use the training you have gotten from your entire life, not just that you received from school. Use the tools you were born with before you go to the ones you bought.Believe and believe. DECEMBER | Advent & Christmas: Hope and Incarnation Book of Exodus Jesus and the Disinheritedby Howard ThurmanRead for free on Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.260684) Braiding Sweetgrassby Robin Wall KimmererAvailable at Milkweed Editions (https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

12. 

    14 Nov 2025

    You Just Had to Be There

    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 doing. The Creative Pilgrimage (https://libbyclarke.com/creative-pilgrimage)—my yearlong practice of exploring faith through art, teaching, and service—kept pulling me out of study and into action. By the time I sat down to write, I realized I’d lived the material more than I’d analyzed it. This is the record of that living—the work, the conversations, the mistakes, and the small revelations that rose out of it. I’d planned to spend the month with Luke’s Gospel, tracing how Jesus keeps showing up in motion and in company—on roadsides, in kitchens, among the anxious and the ordinary. I didn’t expect that to become a field guide for my own life, but it did. Like the disciples on the road, I found myself walking the lesson rather than reading it. Luke’s Jesus moves toward people; that became my pattern, too. The Cart at the End of the Driveway It began with the Collective Outcry Starter Kit (https://stonerollercoop.com/collective-outcry-starter-kit), a tool I fully launched at the start of October to help people find words for their convictions. I made it out of the same restless mix of faith and alarm that’s followed me since 2016: if I can’t stop the chaos, I can at least help people speak truth clearly. The response was immediate—emails, messages, and in-person conversations from people who had used it or shared it with others. The reach wasn’t abstract; it felt close and personal, like the tool had landed where it was needed. For No Kings Day, I took a day off from work the day before to build a rough collapsible poster-making cart and planned to roll it to the larger protest. At the last minute the morning of the protest, something in me balked. Instead of going to the protest, I wheeled the cart to the end of my driveway. I was out there for a couple hours, painting and talking with passersby. There was one stretch—maybe half an hour—when my immediate neighbors lingered, and something shifted. Neighbors who hadn’t spoken deeply in years stood together, sharing stories, worries, laughter. One neighbor, a Haitian immigrant, feared deportation after raising his daughters here and putting them through medical school. Another, from Colombia, wept that her parents wouldn’t be able to come to her wedding. My friend next door, who is on EBT, worried about Thanksgiving. Every person I spoke to that day carried a fear. Another neighbor came by with her young daughter to make signs, and everything clicked. My prototype cart worked, but it needed space for others to create alongside me. The next version will make room for community, not just output. I’m already sketching it, scavenging materials again. I also need to make sure I have a way for folks to see the Starter kit if they don’t have a phone. When it was over, I realized what success felt like: peace. Not adrenaline, not pride, not the self-conscious satisfaction of being “useful.” Just peace. Watching people talk and laugh with each other, I didn’t feel like a put-upon short-order cook cranking out clever signs. I felt like someone who had created a space for connection—a small clearing where strangers could breathe together. Presence and Vocation That moment reset my thinking. My work as an artist and teacher had always centered on showing people they could make beauty. Now it reminded me that ministry happens face-to-face, shoulder-to-shoulder. Confronting people’s fear of expression parallels welcoming them into God’s work. Thomas Merton wrote that vocation is the meeting of two freedoms—ours and God’s. That line haunted me all month. Freedom doesn’t always look like expansion; sometimes it means staying put and making space for others. The Workshops Next, I taught my Holy Ghost, Printed Form (https://stonerollercoop.com/holy-ghost-printed-form) workshop—ten students, an etching press that refused to cooperate, and a pasta maker press that saved the day. We talked about the presence of the Spirit in out lives amidst the mess of making, and we all left smudged and glowing. Even the misprints and misunderstandings became lessons in patience. We were joyful simply being there together. The month ended with my Signs of Praise (https://stonerollercoop.com/signs-of-praise) workshop—six women, tables full of poster board and paint sticks. I rewrote the class to slow things down, to make the act of lettering itself contemplative. To calm people’s fears about big paper, I give them permission to be bad at it: live in the yellow. Start with the lightest color, work out spacing and rhythm, then finish boldly. Mistakes become texture and accent. By the end, we were dancing to Louis Armstrong’s “When the Saints Go Marching In,” holding up our signs in laughter and pride. I almost filmed it, but thank God I didn’t. The holiness was in the moment, not the documentation. “Live in the yellow” really helped my students, helping them fast track to a wee bit of grace for themselves. It’s one of my favorite tools for class culture building. Here is the rough handout (https://freight.cargo.site/m/B2645136921433679077998092704289/Signs-of-Praise.pdf) I wrote for this–I will be refining it much further, but it is a start! Lessons from the Work In my twenties I made signs shoulder to shoulder with strangers, on our way to marches. In my thirties I taught others to make them in carefully constructed settings. In my forties, terrified by the rise of Trump-ism, I took the work online (https://gohighsigns.com/). Now in my fifties, I’m finding where I can be of best use—teaching in person, helping people make something real with their own hands within a short time. The circle has closed without fanfare, but the work feels deeper. It’s not about volume; it’s about presence. When I moved Go High Signs online, the audience exploded. The numbers were thrilling, the comments affirming, the reach bigger than I ever had before—and yet it was hollow. Performative. Unsustainable. What passed for community was a simulacrum of it, sweet and thin, the saccharine illusion of connection social media sells back to us. Let me be clear–I made friends, went a lot of places, did some great work, but I was left depleted. It looked like impact, but it didn’t feed me or anyone else for the long run. Having to mine the news every day for ideas burned me out to an extreme. I can't live in a reactive space like that, I have to be somewhere growing and kind. The church world is the opposite: gratitude is genuine, interactions slow and personal, connection real—but the structures to support longterm creative work aren’t quite what they could be. Church communicators and designers are valued for their gifts, yet the system can assume creative labor is cheap or free (https://stonerollercoop.com/the-workman-is-worthy). That gap isn’t cruelty; it’s confusion. As churches struggle under the weight of needs the state has abandoned, we’re all stretching what little we have to keep serving. I’m starting to see my future vision come into focus. I get what I need from working face-to-face with people—the teaching, the hands-on creative ministry—and then I can apply all of my professional skills: the branding, the strategy, the coding, the tool-making. I can offer those at a meta-level, maybe serving the national Church and other faith communities, definitely collaborating with makers and thinkers out in the world. That dual rhythm feels right. The immediate work feeds my soul; the higher-level work builds capacity for others. I’m learning to serve without resentment—to hold the tension between providing for my family and giving myself to God’s work. Stability isn’t greed; it’s stewardship. My harvest has to be large enough for me to give back to my Church in a sustainable way while I raise my family and lead my life. In this season, I’ve let go a little bit. I am trusting God with my future while I do the work, every day. That’s the balance I carried into the last part of the month—less about proving, more about building. I wanted to see whether I could translate all this reflection on vocation and presence into something concrete, something that would meet real needs in real time. Tools, Texts, and Grace Towards the end of the month, I built the SNAP Resource Flyer Generator (https://stonerollercoop.com/snap-resource-flyer-generator) to help churches respond to the federal shutdown and the suspension of food assistance. Within a moment, a congregation could generate a concise flyer with state resources and food-bank links. The responses came fast—from small-church users who found it simple and clear, and from diocesan communications leaders in places like Chicago and California who praised it as a model. I am really thrilled to hear positive feedback from such a range of folks. That breadth tells me it was usable and good. I think such digital tools could serve the entire house of faith—that sort of design can be ministry when it helps people care for one another. The work doesn’t need to be grand; it needs to be useful and loving, right here and right now. It may not shock you to hear that I didn’t finish everything I meant to read this month. I read Luke several times but only managed to read parts of the Merton and Wiman texts. What I did read stayed with me. Merton reminded me that vocation is a dialogue, not a decree—a meeting of two freedoms that keeps unfolding. Wiman taught me that grace has a strange sense of direction; it moves backward as well as forward, transforming what came before. And Luke kept bringing me back to the table—to the places where people meet, eat, talk, and try again. Together, they offered a map: Merton gave me a theology of vocation, Wiman a theology of grace, Luke a theology of presence. The Ongoing Pilgrimage I always knew this pilgrimage wouldn’t be about checking off books or making perfect essays. I feel a momentum building—a chance to experience grace in real time with all my facets engaged, even when things get messy or half-finished. Maybe especially then. I can give myself that grace—the same grace I’ve been trying to teach others to claim. Faith doesn’t happen in theory. It happens in action.You just have to be there. As I turn to the flow of November, the theme is Christ the King: Power and Servanthood. I’ll be reading the Book of Hebrews. I will also read from Beauty: The Invisible Embrace by John O’Donohue, and This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley. These will carry the conversation forward—how beauty, embodiment, and power intersect when faith calls us to serve rather than to shine. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

13. 

    11 Nov 2025

    Love Practiced in the Ruins

    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, surprising conversations with neighbors as we made signs together—people who shared their worries and hopes in the cool October air. I kept trying to finish my readings beyond the Book of Luke—Merton, Wiman—but the month itself became the main text. I’m pulling some key essays from both that I found helpful and moving with the swift current pulling me forward. So consider this a shorter dispatch from the field, written after the ink dried and the noise settled. The larger essay is coming, but for now, here’s where my head and heart have been. What has stayed with me from October weren’t the things I posted, but the ones I couldn’t. The driveway, the laughter, the neighbors talking for the first time—those moments were the real work. They reminded me that vocation isn’t a job description or a brand. It’s what happens when my freedom meets God’s. Merton says that’s how we become fully ourselves, and I believe him. I didn’t think my vocation into being; it’s been forged through years of showing up and doing the work placed in front of me with the gifts God gave me. What I’m wrestling with now isn’t how to find it, but how to live it in a world that demands everything be turned into content—consumable, forgettable, and flat. There were moments this month that would have made great posts, and I’m grateful I didn’t capture them. They were sacred precisely because they stayed off camera. The wrong turns, the plans that fell apart, the things that never made it to Instagram—those were the places where love showed up. The work that matters isn’t prominent; it’s hidden, and that hiddenness feels holy to me right now. Wiman calls that kind of transformation grace that works backward. You don’t see it in real time; it reveals itself later, after the noise dies down. That’s how I see October now—the exhaustion, the conversation I didn’t want to have, even the moments that felt like failure. They were grace in progress. Faith, as Wiman puts it, isn’t a mood; it’s action. And that’s what I saw at the end of my driveway, in the workshops I held, in the interactions with people who worked with the tools I built last month, in the faces of the people I met. It was love practiced in the ruins (as Wiman says) and you just had to be there. I’ll be finishing up my full essay soon and sending the longer story of October in the coming days. Then I’ll weave my way into November, which has already been full. The creative pilgrimage is changing how I look at things—how I consume texts, face my daily tasks, and live my faith practice. Putting all of it together within a framework of faith is transforming how I move through my days. I’m so grateful. God bless you and keep you. I’ll be in touch . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

14. 

    23 Oct 2025

    Witness as a Base Unit of God's Love

    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 getting kicked out of their homes for being gay, students trying to finish degrees while holding down multiple jobs, students in the throes of depression. There were, of course, always students just tired as hell and worried about grades. I had no specialized expertise to offer other than being a human being who could hold space for another. Usually they’d talk until they were emptied out a bit, and then we’d just sit there with whatever truth had surfaced. I’d tell them plainly thatthe weight they were bearing was heavy. Above all, I ratified their experience. And if they were open to hearing it, I’d go ahead and share some things I’d observed about them. “You’re going through a lot, but it has never stopped you from being a voice of reason in critique…” “You figured out how to navigate a design app, even with your dyslexia!” Those small, honest reflections of their observable, provable traction in the world—of the fact that they were still moving under their terrible weight—it seemed to give them a moment of light. From there, we could usually talk about some next steps, maybe even a plan. Nobody left my office feeling like they’d been talking to a wall, and some even left with a path forward. I came later to realize that this was my first inroad to actual ministry—that soft skill of making sure someone is not alone in the face of a worldly worry. Having company is the base unit of God’s love. It was a delicate moment to keep alive, and I would often blow it by offering advice when no one asked for it. I would start diagnosing when I had no real grasp on the situation. I would sit in my position in my life and, as an observer, speak as if I were clinging to the same internal cliff that they were on. And this was when I meant so well! It wasn’t cruelty on my part—it was the urge to quickly ease someone’s pain, to help as swiftly as possible. It was taking on too much, and I had to forgive myself for all that. I tried to do better over the years for all of my students. Lately, I’ve been working hard to build a financial cushion for when I might attend seminary. It hasn’t happened yet. Despite the coordination and effort of my wife and I, people just aren’t hiring graphic designers like they used to. The segment of the world that I serve is under direct attack from many different sides, so it’s hard. Yesterday, after weeks of working before and after my day job and getting all worked up and not breathing, I spoke from my unprocessed anxiety in a setting where it wasn’t productive to do so. It wasn’t the time, it wasn’t the place. I know better. I have the tools, I just forgot to use them. So today I’m remembering. I am forgiving myself. On the one hand, no one has to ever solve someone else’s problems when people just need to be heard—when they just need to let it out. Listening itself is deep compassion. Bearing witness and walking alongside someone is part of God’s love—a massive part. And needing witness is not a weakness or a defect. It is the beginning of finding the next moment of light. I am granting myself that moment of light today, and I am wishing light for you as well. God bless you and keep you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

15. 

    3 Oct 2025

    Pilgrimage, Poetry, and the Stump

    In this season of my Creative Pilgrimage (https://libbyclarke.com/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 vision and prophecy, inviting awe at creation—a rhythm that binds community and Creator through urgent lyric and sacred metaphor. Isaiah declares, “The mountains and hills shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:12) This vivid imagery transforms the natural world into a chorus of praise, signaling hope and divine renewal. The verse invites us to see beyond the ordinary, to witness creation as alive with spiritual joy and possibility.Dillard’s prose, dazzling and intricate, unsettles with its mixture of description and philosophical provocation. She writes, “The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand.” (Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek) Her voice often stands apart, commanding attention with its sharpness and control, capturing both beauty and brutality. Yet as Dillard has admitted, her youthful writing sometimes tiptoed too close to overwriting—an exuberance that can overwhelm the reader with verbal brilliance rather than inviting stillness.Mary Oliver enters with humility. Her form is spare and her pace gentle. She writes, “To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” (from “Messenger”) Oliver crafts moments of quiet wonder, encouraging readers to slow down and pay attention to the simple miracles weaving through ordinary life. Her poetry invites connection and tenderness, sharing her vision rather than asserting mastery. Wonder and TeachingIsaiah and Oliver share a gift for pointing beyond themselves—each urging others to see the world anew and to listen for Divine presence, even in brokenness and rebirth. Dillard’s art often marvels at her own capacity for description, sometimes at the expense of shared wonder. Oliver—and Isaiah—work to make wonder visible and possible for everyone.The Stump: A Living ParableOn a recent walk, I found a beech stump surrounded by shoots, ringed with new life surging out of what seemed lost. It called to mind Isaiah’s prophetic image of hope—the shoot from the cut-off tree—and made me look again at resilience. In the spirit of this pilgrimage, I wrote these three poems—each an effort to meet the Divine under the tutelage of these authors, to survive these frightening days through connection and creation. In the Spirit of Isaiah:Isaiah’s poetry is urgent and collective, commanding the world into praise. Writing this way made me hear the shoots not just as survival, but as creation’s refusal to stay cut off.The stump wears a crown of shoots.The scar now a mouth,the wound proclaims.Shattered, axed, laid low,yet the root is not forsaken.The earth shall answer with green.The remnant shall thrive.The Holy One declares:See—I make all things new. In the Spirit of Annie Dillard: Dillard’s voice dazzles and unsettles. Writing in her spirit made me lean into the rough edge of the scene—how renewal feeds on loss, how persistence can feel both wondrous and harsh.The stump is a scar of last year’s storm.A tonsure of shoots explodes upward, ragged and insistent.The ants are still busy in the ribs.The soil chews the wreckage.I can’t decide if this is violence or mercy:growth feeding on its own ruin,sprouting like laughter from the split seam. In the Spirit of Mary Oliver:Oliver pares everything back. She teaches me to bless what is in front of me without overworking it. Writing this way gave me permission to let the stump speak simply, and to treat its return as prayer.Here is the stump,cut clean,yet cradled—a circle of new shoots,bright as blessing.You were broken.Now you return,many times over.I sit with you.This is enough. To write in the spirit of these poets is to search for a way through despair—finding lineage and companionship that make faith and survival possible. In Isaiah’s promise, Dillard’s challenge, and Oliver’s invitation, I learn how creation calls us to endure, connect, and remake meaning even in the broken places. Nothing can truly be broken in God’s creation–we name phenomena as ends, as forevers, and dones. No. God makes all things new, in God’s time. Looking Ahead September’s practice with Isaiah, Dillard, and Oliver has taught me how to stand before a broken thing and see its return as survival and as promise, witness, and blessing. The stump still holds, and its riot of shoots will keep me company as I move into October.This month the focus shifts: All Saints and All Souls — legacy, grief, and ancestry. My companions will be the Book of Luke, Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation, and Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss. Next Month: OCTOBER | All Saints/All Souls: Legacy, Grief, Ancestry * Book of Luke * New Seeds of Contemplationby Thomas MertonFree PDF from FishEaters (https://fisheaters.com/srpdf/xThomasMertonNewSeedsOfContemplation.pdf) * My Bright Abyssby Christian WimanAvailable at Macmillan Publishers (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374534370/mybrightabyss/) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

16. 

    20 Aug 2025

    Pushing Back the Empire in Our Hearts (isolated audio)

    I published the written text of this sermon (https://libbyclarke.substack.com/p/pushing-back-the-empire-in-our-hearts) with a link to the actual video (https://www.youtube.com/live/U8YunLIl6iA?t=1130s) 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 sermon is part of my ongoing creative pilgrimage—an attempt to weave together ministry, art, and justice. If you’d like to read more about that journey, you can explore my spiritual autobiography and ministry call (https://libbyclarke.com/discernment) or follow along with the projects I build through Stoneroller Cooperative (https://stonerollercoop.com/), where I work with churches and nonprofits to communicate their mission with clarity and care. Texts Read for this Sermon Book of Acts Book of Luke An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown TaylorAvailable at HarperCollins (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/an-altar-in-the-world-barbara-brown-taylor) Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brownAvailable at AK Press (https://www.akpress.org/emergentstrategy.html) Rank Stranger Albert E. Brumley, Sr.sung by the Stanley Brothers (https://youtu.be/I16YOPmmZbs?si=g3yzX3dRB7vJBA2v) Readings for August 17, 2025 Isaiah 5:1-7 Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18 Luke 12:49-56 Next Month: AUGUST | Season After Pentecost: Ongoing Growth Book of 1 Samuel The Shape of Content by Ben ShahnPurchase from Harvard University Press (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674805705) Beholding: Deepening Our Experience in God by Strahan ColemanAvailable at David C. Cook (https://shop.davidccook.org/products/beholding-deepening-our-experiences-in-god?srsltid=AfmBOoo1vVAS18xiLgh20v_BBR8G_QrvgBKe-1oPSVCS5tAxbZPeKZ4P&variant=39895711449123) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

17. 

    19 Apr 2024

    A Prayer for Blown Deadlines

    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 at an interesting time in my life, where my aspirations are still kind of cluttered up with old ideas about myself. I feel a distinct pull towards a serene and contemplative path that requires shedding many preconceived notions about my future. Surprisingly, this process has been liberating. I've been decluttering everything– my shed, my studio, digital files, discarding ambitions that are no longer resonating with me. Recently, my prayers have centered around seeking clarity. I'm sharing this one because it encapsulates the tension between my old patterns and the growing clarity of my call. It is getting louder each day, as if I am walking towards a beacon. A Prayer for Blown Deadlines Loving Creator– Lead me out of the morass of my tangled expectations.Reveal the expanse of your infinite possibilities that dance well beyond my to-do list. Forgive me for the promises I make and forget, the tasks I rush, and the craft I forsake for quick returns… I am part of Your world–I forget.I am measured only by Your Grace–I get distracted by status. I am bound first to You–I wander off. But in Your mercy, you remind me with every breath– Your love is seamless and constant, beyond ambition and conceit. I blink. I exhale. I reconnect with You and turn back to the world ready to do your work. Even if I am a day late. In Your name I pray. Amen. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

18. 

    29 Mar 2024

    Opening Salvo: Prayer of Gratitude

    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 card to keep it concise. * I get to go back afterwards and edit a little bit with old typesetter marks. But beyond that, I move on. This practice has helped me shed inhibitions about expressing my faith aloud, fostering a genuine dialogue with God. It's humbling. It reveals attitudes. It makes me confront half baked ideas, and it forces me to acknowledge skepticism I once held quite dear. Of course I'm starting this during the week I have had laryngitis and had to miss choir. But here we go. A Prayer of Gratitude Dear Lord, I thank you for these warmer days— I was walking the dog and enjoying the evening when I heard a TV audience cheer from someone's open window. The sound hit me just as I rounded the corner to see a blaze of forsythia. In a perfect moment of fusion, I gasped. Of course this is its sound! Of course I can love it unabashed! In a moment, I was given the gift of loving this shrub, one that I had hated since my mom had made me pull switches from it one when a child. In a moment, I was freed from an old, old pain and left basking in the roar of these glorious blossoms cheering from every direction. Thank you, Lord, for spring. Thank you for beginnings, and change, and renewal. And thank you for moments of teachability. Amen. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit libbyclarke.substack.com (https://libbyclarke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

Contact Creative Pilgrimage

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.