What I Learned in Poland

reflections on + recap of the New Feminist Pilgrimage

This letter is free for you to read, but it wasn’t free for me to produce. If you’re interested in reading more letters from me + other guest posters, I would be honored if you would prayerfully consider upgrading your subscription. This publication is only possible because of our generous full subscribers. Full subscribers get access to our entire archive, (at least) two extra essays a month, our summer read along, our monthly booklists, quarterly ask-me-anything sessions, our upcoming Advent podcast, and more.

How on earth do you sum up ten days of travel with 30 new friends? No idea. It’s like when you get home from a spiritually fruitful experience only to have someone casually go “How was it??” Do you talk about the best meal you had, or the funniest conversation you embarked on, or the most intense moment of prayer? It’s impossible to answer well. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try.

I debated doing some kind of day-by-day recap but honestly, this email would be 10,000 words long and if you want the fullness of the beauty of the trip, you’ll just have to join us one day. ;) The New Feminist Pilgrimage was a joy to lead and a grace to experience. The simplest way of sharing about is, I think, to share what God taught me from it. We’re a few weeks out now and that was intentional; I think if you asked me the day after we returned what I learned I might say something about schedule tweaks or airport mishaps. But the graces God gives us can be so much deeper if we have the courage to pick up the rain-covered stones and look underneath, and so I’d love to share with you five things I learned in Poland, from God and from my friends.

All photos—yes, all of them—in this recap were taken by fellow sojourners. I was dreadful at taking photos this trip and I’m so thankful that many of the pilgrims were great with their cameras!

It’s not about me.

I live in a weird space where most of my writing is public, and it often has to do with my life, but there are things in my life I want to or know that I should keep private. I’m forever walking that tricky line. But here is one thing I’ll share: I was facing a lot of what I can only call spiritual attack in the day or so leading up to the trip. (I hate calling things “spiritual attack” without proper discernment because I think we often misname exhaustion or burnout or human error as “spiritual attack” but whatever, we’re rolling with it). Even on the trip, I found myself very consumed with fear that people weren’t “having a good time”. I don’t even know what I meant by this. I brought it up to a couple of very, very trusted people, including two that were on the trip, and was met with bewildered looks. People were quite clearly “having a good time”.

A few weeks after the trip, this truth slowly came to light in my heart: it is a good thing to want people you’re leading to feel safe and comfortable. It is not necessarily a good goal for them to “have a good time” (which—again! They did!) because that infers that I’m in control of that! That implies that I am the captain of their spirit; that I am the one with the power to determine whether or not they’re having spiritual breakthroughs. That’s a lie. It’s my job, one that I’ve discerned God calling me to do, to create opportunities for encounter with Christ. That’s what I did, and the rest should be joyfully out of my hands. In other words—I need to pray the litany of humility a bit more often.

Unexpected graces are the most delightful.

Since I’ve been to Poland many times, I thought I had the itinerary down pat. But the things I expected I (and others) would be most moved by ended up not being the highlights! Yeah, Our Lady of Częstochowa is really cool, and seeing Wadowice, where JP2 grew up, was the pinnacle of the trip. But when I think of the most meaningful parts of the trip for me, I think of the day we spent in the Tatra mountains, sipping hot wine where JP2 loved to hike. I think of the night we had a “slumber party” all piled in my hotel room with the wine we bought from Zabka because we didn’t realize the hotel wouldn’t let us drink it in the lobby…oops. 🤣I think of the afternoon spent in Niepokalanów, the monastery founded by St. Maximilian Kolbe that I threw on the itinerary as an I-guess-we-should-go-there-huh that wound up being a place of deep spiritual contemplation for me.

You can plan your itinerary to the T; you can map out the perfectly timed talks for long bus rides; you can come prepared with spiritual questions and answers you’d like God to hand you. But on both pilgrimages I’ve led, it’s the “sleeper hits” that have been the most transformative.

People are craving community.

Throughout the trip, I kept hearing one refrain over and over: “This is just so nice.” What people meant wasn’t the fried onion pierogi or the stunning gothic archetecture. They meant being with Catholic women who they could put their feet up around. They meant, as our tour guide poked fun at us for doing, grabbing a drink and talking about Pope Benedict 16’s legacy. They meant asking tough questions and wrestling with complex answers. They meant community, something so many of us long for, which is really hard to cultivate in 2023.

I understand that a multi-thousand-dollar trip isn’t accessible to everyone. I really do get that. But if you’re able to travel, or even able to ask God to show you an opportunity to travel if its His will, I really recommend shutting the laptop and hopping on a plane with a couple dozen strangers. You may just walk away with lifelong friends—the kind that are hard to make at the gym or Costco or work or your typical haunts.

Sorrow + beauty can coexist.

One unexpected theme of the trip seemed to be the co-mingling of sorrow and beauty. We’d be driving to Auschwitz, contemplating God’s place in true human tragedies, and the most magnificent double rainbow we’d ever seen would peek out. We’d be reeling from learning about the Katyn massacre, one of the most horrific war crimes to ever take place, when an a cappella version of Be Thou My Vision would bring us to tears. We’d be gazing at images of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko’s mangled corpse before spending time in prayer in a beautiful chapel that celebrated the reliance of the Polish people. It was a really intricate look at how sorrow and beauty can play together in God’s plan, crafting the divine timeline we live in and pointing us towards an ultimate truth. Honestly, this has been the spiritual wrestling of my heart the past two years os it makes sense that God would paint the entire trip with this filter for me. I can’t say I have easy answers to hand you but I can say that I know both sorrow and beauty play important roles in God’s will and Poland is an interesting archetype of that balance.

We can learn from one another.

One thing I’ve been struck by during both of the pilgrimages I’ve led is how special it is to bring people together from all different walks of life. Different ages; different heritages; different classes; different interests—they all whirl together in a Christ-centered alchemy that honestly just makes everything really interesting. Gen Z’ers (ours didn’t have TikTok THEY WOULD LIKE YOU TO KNOW!) learned from Boomers learned from millennials learned from Gen X’ers, and it was a reminder that we’re all sisters in Christ.

Interested in traveling with The Catholic Feminist?

I frequently get asked if we’re going to do more pilgrimages. My 110% honest answer? Probably, but I don’t know. I always let the Holy Spirit guide these types of big decisions and when he puts a pull on my heart to go somewhere, that’s where I’ll go! Will it be back to Poland? France again? Somewhere totally new? Who can say! But I completely trust this corner of my career to Jesus’ care, and I know that his plans are better than any feeble ones I could try to throw at you.

That being said, if you’re interested in joining us on a future trip, sign up for the waitlist! They’ll be the first to know about any trips I’m planning on doing in the future. I hope to travel with you one day! ❤️ This form is not a commitment in the slightest; it’s literally just saying you want to stay up-to-date on future trips.

From one of the pilgrims: “It’s two weeks out and I still feel like I have one foot in Poland and the other here, in everyday life in the U.S. What a beautiful country Poland is, with a rich history and deep faith! Your love of the country, of its saints and of our faith is moving and inspiring. The depth of faith sharing we all had with each other in private conversations was a gift. I’m grateful too for the wide range of ages, perspectives and life experiences of fellow pilgrims. I never expected to feel so connected to a group of strangers in so short a time, and I’m blessed to have shared these experiences with my daughter.”

And another said this: “The community and conversations among the pilgrims - whether they were deep and thoughtful or silly and weird, each conversation was such a blessing to experience and to get to know another person. I learned a lot about the Church, the others, and myself. And I was reminded to not back away from the truth and the goodness of digging into hard and interesting questions about the faith. It was such a gift to be able to do that with other Catholic Feminists who also strive to know, serve and love God".

On My Nightstand 

• The Deep Down Things by Amber Haines and Seth Haines: I would read a grocery list written by the Haines’. I loved this story of finding hope in a time of deep despair for each of them (Amber’s experience of spiritual abuse; Seth’s alcoholism) and was fascinated by their conversion to Catholicism.

• Dorothy Day: A Biography by William Miller: I’ve read many a Dorothy Day biography, but I’m currently trudging through this tome as part of a Catholic Worker book club I’ve joined. It’s really interesting as Miller had access to Day’s actual diaries.

• Nobel Peace Prize won by Narges Mohammadi for ‘fight against the oppression of women in Iran’: Can’t think of anyone alive today who deserved this more than the currently imprisoned activist. “‘Standing alongside the brave mothers of Iran, I will continue to fight against the relentless discrimination, tyranny, and gender-based oppression by the oppressive religious government until the liberation of women,’ she said.”

---

In case you missed these Letters:

• The Gospel as a Fairytale - for subscribers

• Trigger Warnings and Taylor Swift - for subscribers

• She Was Told to Suck It Up, Then Needed a Hysterectomy - for everyone

---

This newsletter was free for you to read, but it wasn’t free to create.

Letters From a Catholic Feminist is proud to be an entirely reader-supported publication. For access to our entire archives, as well as our booklists and upcoming Advent podcast, please prayerfully consider upgrading your subscription. The more subscribers we have, the more we’re able to tackle hefty topics like women’s healthcare with research, grace, and care. We will be increasing the price of letters on 1/1/24—lock into our current rate of five bucks a month (cheaper than a grande PSL) now.