Contributors
Messy Jesus Business radical disciples/contributors
Our host is Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration Julia Walsh: co-founder of The Fireplace Community, a former waitress, a scribbler of words and Catholic sister.
Our guests and contributors are spiritual teachers, social justice activists, artists, Catholic sisters, community organizers, servant leaders, theologians, ministers and authors; mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and neighbors.
Together we are people of a variety of Christian faith traditions seeking inspiration, wholeness and reflection upon what it means to practice radical Gospel living.
Jen Pick
A professional and freelance journalist and communicator for several nonprofit organizations since 1994, Jen Pick serves the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration as a partner in mission and member of the organization’s communications team. Through writing and editing, Jen crafts FSPA ministerial stories for print and web publications, shares the goodness of the congregation via social media and media relations and edits the Messy Jesus Business blog. Her collaboration with FSPA sisters, affiliates and partners in mission has reached around the world. And she finds renewed energy and inspiration in her relationships with those who write and share the messy truth of Gospel living.
Annemarie Barrett
Annemarie Barrett grew up in Minnesota, becoming a dual citizen of the United States and Bolivia after moving, originally as a Franciscan lay missioner, to the South American country in 2013. Her spiritual journey has been greatly influenced by the Catholic Worker Movement and the Franciscan charism of humble availability and solidarity. She is also learning everyday from the experience of growing up in Western, capitalist culture in the U.S. and becoming an adult in the much more communal culture of the Andean region of Bolivia. Today she lives with her partner and young daughter and works as a watercolor artist, selling prints of her original art online under the name AEB Art.
Cassidy Klein
Cassidy Klein is a journalist and essayist based in Chicago, Illinois. She lives at The Fireplace, an intentional community of artists, activists and Catholic sisters. She is a freelance writer and editorial assistant at U.S. Catholic magazine. She grew up in Denver, Colorado. Find more of her work at cassidyrklein.weebly.com.
Rebecca Bratten Weiss
Rebecca Bratten Weiss is a writer and academic residing in rural Ohio. She is the digital editor for U.S. Catholic magazine, and can be found at rebeccabrattenweiss.com.
Angela Paviglianiti
Angela Paviglianiti practices social work in Chicago where she also completed seminary; however, she has not yet mastered divinity. On Tuesday and Thursday evenings, you can find her at The Fireplace Community, and on other days, you can usually find something she forgot there.
Emily Cortina
Emily Cortina is a mother raising three bilingual, bicultural children alongside her Mexican husband. She is an advocate for transformative and restorative justice and believes strongly in parishes as mostly untapped sources of radical community. She works at Kolbe House Jail Ministry in Chicago, Illinois.
Abby Rampone
Abby Rampone is a writer from Vermont. She has lived at two Catholic Worker houses, an intentional community called the Women’s Interfaith Residency Program and the Fireplace Community in Chicago. Abby writes poetry, rescues cats, cross-stitches and supports climate justice movements like the fight against Line 3. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in comparative literature from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and a Master of Divinity in interreligious engagement from Union Theological Seminary.
Amy Nee-Walker
Amy Nee-Walker grew up in the middle of a large and lovely family in Central Florida. Living into questions about truth and love has led her to the Catholic Worker Movement, the Catholic Church, her incredible husband, three audacious, adorable children and (for the time being) a home in the hills of Appalachia.
Sarah Hennessey, FSPA
Sarah Hennessey is a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration based in La Crosse, Wisconsin. She grew up in North Carolina as an active Quaker and became Catholic in 2000. For her, Jesus’ messy business includes falling in love with Christ AND with the People of God! Her heart is on fire for her Franciscan community, poetry and singing and accompanying people through birth, death and the living that comes in between. She currently ministers as a spiritual director at Franciscan Spirituality Center in La Crosse.
Greg Little
Writer
Greg Little is a husband to Janice and father to JoyAna and Elias “Eli,” and he has a home at Corner House in Durham, North Carolina. He has learned from various schools, including several Christian communities seeking justice and peace (a Catholic Worker home inspired by St. Francis, Durham’s Friendship House and Haiti’s Wings of Hope), and is committed to a life ordered by daily communal prayer and littleness. He works at Reality Ministries, a place proclaiming that we all belong to God in Jesus through fostering friendship among people with and without developmental disabilities. Greg and Sister Julia met in the wonder of interfaith dialogue about monasticism and the contemplative life at Mepkin Abbey in Moncks Corner, South Carolina.
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