77 episodes

A blog and podcast about radical Gospel living, nonviolence, simple living, social justice, service, community and contemplation.

Messy Jesus Business Sister Julia Walsh

    • Religion & Spirituality
    • 4.9 • 32 Ratings

A blog and podcast about radical Gospel living, nonviolence, simple living, social justice, service, community and contemplation.

    Lenten Contemplation: Breath and Bread

    Lenten Contemplation: Breath and Bread

    A Special Episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.







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    Photo by Ryan Cheng on Unsplash







    IN THIS EPISODE







    During this sacred season of Lent, we invite you to pause and contemplate God's loving presence in the midst of the mess. As we offer our breath and our bodies to God, as we pray, fast and give alms — how might our Lenten practices allow others to be fed?







    The Scripture in the mediation is Isaiah 58:5-12.







    MESSY JESUS BUSINESS is hosted by Sister Julia Walsh. 







    Produced and edited by Colin Wambsgans.







    Original music and sound design by Colin Wambsgans.







    Email us at messyjesusbusiness@gmail.com







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    • 5 min
    Molly Burhans: Mapping power and justice

    Molly Burhans: Mapping power and justice

    Episode 72 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.







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    “We have to understand the environment and appreciate it, both aesthetically and scientifically --as well as historically. And so it means taking all of the modalities of exploration and understanding that God has given us and bringing those together.” -Molly Burhans









    IN THIS EPISODE







    This episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast is the second of two featuring Sister Julia Walsh’s conversation with Catholic cartographer Molly Burhans.







    In this episode, Burhans and Sister Julia explore the mess of restorative land practices and using data for good. Burhans shares how her team was the first to make a global projection map of Catholic Church jurisdictions since 1801. Sister Julia asks Burhans to comment on what stewardship means to her and what Catholics are meant to be doing in movement spaces related to land justice. They also discuss the complexities of Catholic identity and devotion in a messy Church whose structural sins have caused injustice and abuse. Regarding persisting in faith, Burhans encourages, "we have to be brave.  And if we are the kingdom of God, we can build it. And I'll map it, if you need any help."







    ABOUT THE GUEST







    Molly Burhans is an award-winning Catholic environmentalist, cartographer and social entrepreneur. She is the founder of GoodLands, an organization whose mission is to mobilize the Catholic Church to use its landholdings for environmental and humanitarian good. Burhans was the chief cartographer for the first unified global map of the Church, which premiered at the Vatican in 2016. She was named one of Encyclopedia Britannica's 2022 “20 Under 40,” is a winner of the Sierra Club’s EarthCare Award, a U.N. Young Champion of the Earth, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and an Ashoka Fellow. Molly is a visiting professor at Canisius College and adjunct professor of urban design at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. In 2021 The New Yorker published a profile of her entitled How a Young Activist Is Helping Pope Francis Battle Climate Change.







    MESSY JESUS BUSINESS is hosted by Sister Julia Walsh. 







    Produced and edited by Colin Wambsgans.







    Email us at messyjesusbusiness@gmail.com







    BE SOCIAL:https://www.facebook.com/MessyJesusBusiness







    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MessyJesusBusiness







    Twitter: @messyjesusbiz

    • 44 min
    Molly Burhans: Rejoicing in the God of Surprises

    Molly Burhans: Rejoicing in the God of Surprises

    Episode 71 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.







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    “There's always a freedom, though, that I feel... even if I was totally wrong about everything, I have full faith that Christ and God still love me and are still there.” -Molly Burhans









    IN THIS EPISODE







    This episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast is the first of two featuring Sister Julia Walsh’s conversation with Molly Burhans.







    In this episode Burhans, a cartographer, shares the intertwined stories of how she came to find her Catholic faith in her twenties while developing a love for maps and the power they hold for social and environmental change.







    Together Burhans and Sister Julia explore how Burhans' appreciation for life and living brought her to environmentalism through a passion for regenerative land usage. Her love for the planet and devotion to the Catholic Church led her to look for something that wasn’t yet there — institutions devoted to conservation within the global Catholic Church. She then tells the incredible story of how all these interests — her faith, cartography and environmentalism — brought her into what was almost a cold-call to the Vatican in an attempt to inspire the usage of the Church’s landholdings for good.







    ABOUT THE GUEST







    Molly Burhans is an award-winning Catholic environmentalist, cartographer and social entrepreneur. She is the founder of GoodLands, an organization whose mission is to mobilize the Catholic Church to use its landholdings for environmental and humanitarian good. Burhans was the chief cartographer for the first unified global map of the Church, which premiered at the Vatican in 2016. She was named one of Encyclopedia Britannica's 2022 “20 Under 40,” is a winner of the Sierra Club’s EarthCare Award, a U.N. Young Champion of the Earth, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and an Ashoka Fellow. Molly is a visiting professor at Canisius College and adjunct professor of urban design at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. In 2021 The New Yorker published a profile of her entitled How a Young Activist Is Helping Pope Francis Battle Climate Change.







    MESSY JESUS BUSINESS is hosted by Sister Julia Walsh. 







    Produced and edited by Colin Wambsgans.







    Email us at messyjesusbusiness@gmail.com







    BE SOCIAL:https://www.facebook.com/MessyJesusBusiness







    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MessyJesusBusiness







    Twitter: a href="https://twitter.com/messyjesusbiz" target="_blank" rel="norefer...

    • 44 min
    Shane Claiborne: Faith as Fuel for World Change (re-release)

    Shane Claiborne: Faith as Fuel for World Change (re-release)

    Revisiting Episode 17 from December 3, 2020.







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    Author Shane Claiborne



















    IN THIS EPISODE







    In this episode of Messy Jesus Business, originally released as episode 17 from Dec. 3, 2020, Sister Julia Walsh talks with Shane Claiborne, a best-selling author, speaker and activist. They discuss what it means to be a peacemaker while living in one of the world’s most heavily armed countries and a monumental gun death toll. “Violence is one of those demons that goes back to our very foundations in our country,” Claiborne says.







    Claiborne says the U.S. has 5% of the world’s population, but almost half of the world’s guns, and poses the question, “What would Jesus, the Prince of Peace, be saying right now?”







    Sister Julia and Shane Claiborne also discuss the importance of remaining joyful and hopeful, even when surrounded by the pain of the world.







    “I like how Karl Barth said we need to read the bible in one hand, but we need to hold the newspaper in the other… so that our faith doesn’t just become a ticket into heaven and a license to ignore the world we live in, but our faith should actually fuel us to want to change the world,” Claiborne says.







    In addition, they discuss the importance of community and the messiness that comes from the Christian veneer of perfection.







    “A lot of the times we sort of act like the church is a country club for saints, rather than a hospital for sinners.” Claiborne says honesty can help manage the resulting mess. He remembers walking into a church where greeters wore shirts that said, “No perfect people allowed.”







    “If that was greeting every person coming into every church, it would give you a sense of reality, like this is a home for you even if you don’t have it all together… our wounds are not our liabilities, they are our credentials.”







    He adds, “Honesty can show this Gospel is not for the Righteous, but for the sinner.”







    FOR MORE INFORMATION:







    Learn more about the Red Letter Christians movement, headed by Shane Claiborne, by exploring their website.







    To read more about how Shane Claiborne’s work influenced Sister Julia, see the 2015 Messy Jesus Business blog post: A Visit to The Simple Way.















    ABOUT THE GUEST







    Shane Claiborne is a prominent speaker, activist and best-selling author. He worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, and founded The Simple Way in Philadelphia. He leads Red Letter Christians,

    • 44 min
    Kerry Alys Robinson: Generous and Grateful Servant Leadership

    Kerry Alys Robinson: Generous and Grateful Servant Leadership

    Episode 70 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.







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    IN THIS EPISODE







    In this episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh, FSPA, enjoys a conversation with Kerry Alys Robinson, CEO and President of Catholic Charities USA, who shares that witnessing the joy and faith of Catholics serving others in her childhood sparked her own inspiration and desire to serve behind the scenes in pursuit of the common good. “True leadership is service,” says Kerry. “It is a disposition of other-centeredness.” Expressing her passion for Catholic Social Teaching, she addresses the realities of wealth gaps and classism and how injustice can divide the people of God. Responding to the needs of the people of God, Kerry emphasizes, requires not competition but charity and justice. “Generosity is humankind's birthright,” says Kerry about the call to kindness, both to oneself and to others. Together she and Sister Julia explore the messiness of diversity, polarization, judgment and how a life of service and prayer require openness to the other. Says Kerry, “Everything belongs and is interconnected.”







    ABOUT THE GUEST







    Catholic Charities USA President and CEO Kerry Alys Robinson is a noted expert in Catholic leadership and philanthropy and only the second woman and second layperson to lead the U.S. Catholic Church’s domestic humanitarian work. In the past year, the nationwide Catholic Charities network served more than 15 million people in need. For decades, Kerry has served the church and its mission to alleviate human suffering. Most recently, she was an executive partner at Leadership Roundtable, which since 2005 has promoted excellence and best practices in the management, finances and human resource development of the Catholic Church. She was the group’s founding executive director. Prior to that, Kerry served as director of development for Saint Thomas More Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale University, leading a $75 million fundraising campaign to expand and endow the chapel’s ministry and construct a Catholic student center. A member of the Raskob Foundation for Catholic Activities and FADICA (Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities), she has been an advisor to and trustee of more than 25 grantmaking foundations, charitable nonprofits and family philanthropies. She served for 15 years on the national committee for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Catholic Campaign for Human Development. Robinson is an accomplished writer and speaker and wrote the prize-winning Imagining Abundance: Fundraising, Philanthropy and a Spiritual Call to Service. A graduate of Georgetown University and Yale, Robinson is married to Dr. Michael Cappello, professor of medicine and public health at Yale University. They have two children, Christopher and Sophie.







    MESSY JESUS BUSINESS is hosted by Sister Julia Walsh. 

    • 44 min
    Mary J. Novak: The Messy, Necessary Mix of Faith and Politics

    Mary J. Novak: The Messy, Necessary Mix of Faith and Politics

    Episode 69 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh.







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    IN THIS EPISODE







    In this episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh, FSPA, talks with Mary J. Novak, executive director of NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice in Washington, D.C. Mary shares life experiences that proved her power to serve and respond to human suffering. They get into the mess of human oneness and the necessity for collaboration in response to existential threats like the climate crisis and the fragility of democracy. Their conversation explores the Catholic tradition to “meddle in politics,” voting rights and why it’s essential for us to focus on strengthening democracy. In answer to Sister Julia’s question, “are we called to imagine new systems?” Mary responded, “We all need structures in our lives for us to flourish. Maybe there’s a better way for us to put democracy together, but much is still working right.” Mary added that “this is an evolutionary moment, and so how do we keep showing up and how do we surround ourselves with community? Democracy is about participating.”







    ABOUT THE GUEST







    Mary J. Novak is the sixth executive director of NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, and the first lay leader to guide the organization founded by Catholic Sisters 50 years ago. She is also an associate member of the Congregation of St. Joseph. Mary’s experience as an organizer and activist as well as a trauma-informed lawyer, educator, chaplain and restorative justice practitioner informs her ability to integrate all aspects of the organization to advance NETWORK’s mission. These experiences have also inspired her to initiate a shared leadership model for the first time in NETWORK’s history. Together the leadership team is positioning NETWORK for the future, strengthening relationships with partners who serve the common good, and ensuring that the NETWORK community flourishes in the shared pursuit of justice. A graduate of Santa Clara University Law School and Washington Theological Union, Mary also studied theology and spirituality at Santa Clara University. Prior to leading NETWORK, Mary served as associate director of mission integration and a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. Mary served as Catholic Mobilizing Network’s founding board chair and is currently chair of the advisory board for the University of St. Thomas Law School’s Initiative on Restorative Justice and Healing.







    MESSY JESUS BUSINESS is hosted by Sister Julia Walsh. 







    Produced and edited by Colin Wambsgans.







    Email us at messyjesusbusiness@gmail.com







    BE SOCIAL:https://www.facebook.com/MessyJesusBusiness

    • 44 min

Customer Reviews

4.9 out of 5
32 Ratings

32 Ratings

ShoreURZ ,

Delightful conversations about faith

Sr. Julia is like the friend you can converse with, who combines truth telling about today’s culture with interviews about Jesus and moral issues of the day. She’s not afraid to call it as she sees it, adding a smile or a laugh to lessen the intensity of the topic. Especially enjoyed the anecdote about how she once talked to an Army recruiter about enlisting, if there was some way she “could join without touching a gun”. They took her off their recruiting list, of course.

JaneSutterBrandt ,

Insightful and joyful podcast

I never miss an episode of this podcast. Sister Julia is an excellent interviewer and brings on a wide variety of guests. She can be serious but also sees humor in situations and I love her laugh. Like Sister Julia, I am a native of Iowa, and a lifelong Catholic, and so I feel a kinship to her. I also like her meditations at the end of each episode.

sssseeettyyvr ,

Wonderful conversation!

Thank you for opening up such important questions in a relatable way!

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