Meet: Leah Libresco Sargeant
LEAH LIBRESCO SARGEANT is a NYC-based writer. (www.leahlibresco.com)
Catholic Artist Connection (CAC): What brought you to NYC, and where did you come from?
Leah Libresco Sargeant (LLS): I grew up on Long Island, but I moved to D.C. after college (and did one year in Berkeley). I moved to NYC (staying with my parents) two months before I married my husband (who was NYC based).
CAC: What do you see as your personal mission as a Catholic working in the arts?
LLS: Working as a journalist, it’s my job to tell the truth. Being a Catholic journalist, it’s my job to do more than just avoid falsehood. If I write pieces that leave the reader feeling despair, contempt, viciousness; I think I’ve meaningfully not told the truth about the world, even if my fact checking is complete. I try to pray for my readers and to reflect on whether I can say that my writing was good for them.
CAC: Where have you found support among your fellow artists for your Catholic faith?
LLS: I particularly enjoy it when people invite me into their own joy in creating. My husband (Alexi Sargeant) is also a writer, but he does game design and playwriting as well. It’s delightful to enjoy both what he creates and to be privy to his care and joy in creating them. One of the ways I see him as a Catholic artist is that his creativity is always marked by love for the people he’s creating for. (The result of his good habits as a director, I think). When other Catholic artists invite me into their work, I get to see how they draw on different virtues, gifts of the Holy Spirit, etc.
CAC: How can the Church be more welcoming to artists?
LLS: The Church uses beauty to teach us about God. Our stained glass and statues is catechesis that no one needs to be able to read to learn from. Be attentive to the beauty of the liturgy, and use homilies to invite us into the beauty. Draw our attention to the beauty we may not notice (I was very moved when I learned that priests keep forefinger and thumb touching after the consecration of the Eucharist, so that they will not casually touch anything else after touching the Body of Christ). The Church should feel like the natural home of anyone moved by beauty.
CAC: How have you found or built community as a Catholic artist living in NYC?
LLS: My husband and I like to invite people over to read plays aloud. It was particularly wonderful to read A Man for All Seasons for St. Thomas More’s feast day. (We did it, sans permit, in Madison Sq. Park). I’ve hosted spiritual reading bookclubs and had rosary walks for Marian feasts.
CAC: What is your daily spiritual practice?
LLS: I pray Morning Office and the Office of Readings when I get up. I try to have a spiritual reading book I read part of every day (right now, it’s Nouwen’s The Inner Voice of Love). At the moment, I’m doing a daily chaplet of Divine Mercy for accountability and penance for clerical sexual abuse.
CAC: What is your daily artistic practice?
LLS: I’m doing much more freelance work this year. I’m trying out having a spreadsheet with different columns for different projects, so I can write down what progress I made each day.
Leah’s book on building Catholic community is available now!
Building the Benedict Option: A Guide to Gathering Two or Three Together in His Name
