About the Author
Welcome, fellow pilgrim! My name is Thom Ryng, and this is my blog. It was initially launched in 2006. It limped along for a few years before being definitively re-launched in 2010.
This site is a spiritual and liturgical commentary and occasional apologetic by a Catholic convert and Benedictine Oblate, faithful to the Magisterium and championing the New Liturgical Movement.
My hope is that this will some day become a spiritual journal. Maybe it already is; I don’t know.
I’m married to Francine my Muse, my beautiful bride who has made much of this journey with me.
Following a twenty-year search for Truth, I was baptized at the improbable age of 38. My wife and I subsequently became Oblates of the Order of Saint Benedict.
By profession, I’m a writer and editor. If you’re into that sort of thing, you can see my CV here. I assisted Bishop Peter J. Elliott in the preparation of Ceremonies Explained for Servers, which was published by Ignatius Press in 2019. I’m also the author of The Altar Server Handbook, published in 2022.
For many years at my parish of Holy Rosary in Tacoma, I was an adult catechist, Altar Server coordinator, and M.C. I chaired our Liturgical Commission mostly because I can run a meeting and keep a diverse group of very intelligent, but easily distractible, folks on task. That all came to an end during the Year of the Plague, when our parish closed.
In late 2022, I again took up some of those roles at our new parish of Saint Patrick.
This site also recounts our pilgrimages on the Way of Saint James – the Camino de Santiago – as well as the planning that lead to it. More is available on our dedicated Camino blog.
In 2013, I walked the route known as the Camino Francés, a trek of some 790km – 500 miles give or take – from the ancient Abbey of Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees right across the north of Spain to the tomb of Saint James in the Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela.
Francine joined me in the beautiful city of León, and we walked the final 300 or so km together.
In the spring of 2016, we did it again! This time, we both started in the village of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port on the French side of the Pyrenees.
In 2018, we took a slightly shorter walk on the Galician portion of the Camino Francés – about 160km or 100 miles, and then in 2022 we walked the Camino Primitivo with a friend, a mountainous 320km or 200 miles.
In the summer and autumn of 2023, I walked a much, much longer Camino – a thousand miles from Le Puy-en-Velay in France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
Clearly, I am a madman. But hopefully I learned a few things. Some further pilgrim ruminations may be found on our dedicated Camino blog here.
Pray for me, and pray for all pilgrims upon the earth.
The Church is an inn, where wayfarers returning to the eternal homeland are refreshed from their journey.
(Saint Augustine)
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Nunc cœpi.
About the Name of the Blog
“If you feel . . . that well-read people are less likely to be evil, and a world full of people sitting quietly with good books in their hands is preferable to world filled with schisms and sirens and other noisy and troublesome things, then every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, ‘The world is quiet here,’ as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.”
(Lemony Snicket, The Slippery Slope)
“If God speaks to us even in silence, we in turn discover in silence the possibility of speaking with God and about God. … Silent contemplation immerses us in the source of that Love who directs us towards our neighbours so that we may feel their suffering and offer them the light of Christ, his message of life and his saving gift of the fullness of love.”
Disclaimer: It’s Just Me in Here
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author alone. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer or my pastor. Or anybody else, really. However, please also see the Guiding Principles.
