Father Blackwood.

Ask the Apostate

The questions people bring to a former priest.

Ordinary questions — about grief, guilt, time, the body, and making peace with a life you didn't plan — answered plainly, and without pretending to cure them.

Why do I procrastinate on things I actually want to do?

The reluctance is information, not a defect.

The long answer →

Why does a place feel 'off' before I can say why?

The body reads a room faster than the mind can explain, and we've learned to distrust the faster instrument.

The long answer →

What do we lose when everything can be looked up?

The fertile part of not-knowing.

The long answer →

How do you make peace with a life that didn't turn out the way you planned?

Stop grieving the plan and move into the house you actually built.

The long answer →

Is it wrong that I'm starting to forget their voice?

The fading is the toll for keeping them in a living mind, not a recording.

The long answer →

Why do some chores feel like prayer, even if you don't believe in anything?

The feeling isn't imported from a belief—the chore makes it.

The long answer →

How do you stop feeling guilty about something you can't take back?

Stop paying a closed account, and let the guilt change what you do next.

The long answer →

How do I actually become a better person?

Stop adding virtues and start subtracting.

The long answer →

Why do we check the door is locked when we already know it's locked?

Knowing isn't the same as having touched it.

The long answer →

Is it selfish to want to be left alone?

Solitude isn't taken from the people you love—it's what makes you fit to be among them.

The long answer →

How do you actually get out of your head and into your body?

You can't think your way in; give the hands a real task and the body arrives.

The long answer →

Is being impatient a small kind of cruelty?

Impatience is a failure of attention wearing a virtue's mask.

The long answer →

Why does handwriting feel more honest than type?

Handwriting carries the body that made it; type erases it.

The long answer →

Does it actually matter that I'll be forgotten?

You'll be forgotten the way rain is—not gone, only unnamed.

The long answer →

Why do we still carry the coffin ourselves, when a trolley would do?

Being spared the weight would be a theft.

The long answer →

Why can't the day start until you've had your coffee?

Not the caffeine, but the ceremony.

The long answer →

Why do I only notice my body when something goes wrong?

Health is a silence we mistake for absence.

The long answer →

As I get older I feel like a stranger in my own body — is aging just loss?

The body isn't turning on you, it's keeping the record honestly.

The long answer →

How do you accept help when you've always done everything yourself?

Refusing help is often a quieter vanity.

The long answer →

Is acceptance the same as giving up?

Giving up drops the sails; accepting re-trims them.

The long answer →