In Conversation with Eric A. Clayton, Author of 'The Seagull on the Chapel'

Lisa M. Hendey's conversation with author Eric A. Clayton reminds us that God truly loves each of us, exactly as we are!

I remember exactly where I was when I received the message that Pope Leo XIV had been elected during the Conclave. Since I was driving and didn’t have immediate access to a live video feed of the day’s proceedings, I missed the whole kerfuffle surrounding the seagull who sat perched near the smokestack atop the Sistine Chapel as the world awaited the big news. And though I neglected to meet the “Sistine Seagull” live, I certainly witnessed her (yes, her) fifteen minutes of fame.

So I was delighted with the recent news that gifted authors Eric A. Clayton and Shannon K. Evans had teamed with illustrator Angela Edmonds and Paraclete Press to memorialize this heartwarming story for children in the new book The Seagull on the Chapel: A Story of Value and Worth.

Today, I’m happy to share my recent email conversation with Eric all about “Maggie,” the famous seagull, the spiritual lessons to be learned from Star Wars, and how much God loves and delights in each of us, even seagulls!

Q: Eric, congratulations on your co-authorship of the delightful new book The Seagull on the Chapel: A Story of Value and Worth alongside Shannon K. Evans. We run in similar publishing circles, and it’s always a joy to celebrate beautiful work like this. Please briefly introduce yourself to our community.

A: Thanks, Lisa! I appreciate the opportunity — and I’m reminded of how we met many years ago when I was working at Catholic Relief Services on the CRS Rice Bowl team. You were one of our great champions!

Nowadays, I work at the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, which often means collaborating with really cool creative folks on projects we sponsor through the Jesuit Media Lab. I write a weekly column on Ignatian spirituality and daily life called “Now Discern This.” I guest host “AMDG: A Jesuit Podcast,” and I give a ton of workshops and retreats around the country and even internationally, often focused on how we can incorporate Ignatian spirituality and storytelling into our prayer life.

I’ve written several books on ways to engage the Ignatian tradition in our contemporary lives: for adults, Finding Peace Here and Now: How Ignatian Spirituality Leads Us to Healing and Wholeness, My Life with the Jedi: The Spirituality of Star Wars, and Cannonball Moments: Telling Your Story, Deepening Your Faith; for children (co-authored with my friend Shannon Evans): Our Mother Too: Mary Embraces the World and our newest The Seagull on the Chapel: A Story of Value and Worth.

Q: I have to admit, as someone who was fascinated by the Seagulls’ antics at the Conclave, I’m a bit jealous of your ingenuity with this concept! What inspired The Seagull on the Chapel, and how quickly did the book come together?

A: It’s such an iconic image now, right? To be honest, the book came together very quickly. We were still in those days right after the Conclave. I think it was Shannon who stumbled upon a meme or some such thing of the seagull and a caption that read something like, “Someone write a kid’s book about this!” And she was like, “Want to give it a shot?” I remember I was waiting to get my hair cut, and so I was just sitting there and had some time. We literally started texting ideas back and forth right then and there. Those ideas turned into lines of text, a general story idea, and, before I knew it, we had a shared doc and a full manuscript.

Paraclete Press was really excited about the potential for this story. But we all knew we had to move quickly, that it would be important to have the book ready for the first anniversary of Pope Leo’s election. So we all just got to it, and the book came together certainly faster than any other book project I’ve ever worked on! We selected an illustrator and workshopped the text. Paraclete had a clear vision, and I’m so impressed with Angela Edmonds’ illustrations—to me, that’s the hardest part!

Q: This is your second collaboration with Shannon and also your second book for children. What brought the two of you together as writing partners? How does your collaboration work?

A: Shannon and I have been friends for years. I first met her when I started working at the Jesuit Conference; she was writing a monthly column for us, and I was her editor. Then, when she started working at National Catholic Reporter, she became my editor. So we’re very familiar with each other’s writing. I like to think in these sweeping narratives, and Shannon is very gifted at making the language accessible, at bringing the story to life. She can — and does! — say, “Hey, this ending isn’t working. This word choice is all wrong.” And her instincts are usually right, whether we’re workshopping an article or a picture book.

Our first collaborative book project was Our Mother Too: Mary Embraces the World, which was published by Paulist Press in 2025. We both have a great love and interest in Marian apparitions, and we saw the possibility to tell a story that sees in Mary’s many appearances the truth that God treasures each of us exactly where we are and how we are.

I think that’s ultimately what really makes our collaboration so fun and successful—we both have young kids. We both have a great desire to introduce our children to a God who delights in us, who loves us as we are, who wants to remind us that we are already the beloved of God. That was a theme we pulled on in Our Mother Too, and it’s one we were really excited to return to in The Seagull on the Chapel. After all, can we ever be reminded too often that we are God’s beloved?

Q: Along with telling a delightful story for children, how does this book emulate your work on Our Mother Too: Mary Embraces the World in making weighty theological concepts accessible for little readers and their families?

A: Again, I think it boils down to the simple truths we want our kids to know in their very souls: God delights in you. You are God’s beloved. You are already a wondrous creation. We can all see ourselves as Maggie; we’ve all experienced shame, doubt, and feelings of being less-than. So, we take this common, shared experience and use it as a way in, a way to encounter that all-loving, ever-smiling God.

Ultimately, I hope our books are simple stepping stones, the start of a conversation. With Our Mother Too, for example, my great hope was that kids would see these beautiful images and read these singular yet breathtaking descriptions of these apparitions and say, “I want to know more.” And then the family starts a conversation. Or, when these same kids encounter the names of these apparitions in their religious education classes or at Mass, they say, “Wait — I’ve heard that before!”

Same with The Seagull on the Chapel. We want Maggie to be the avatar for what so many of us feel and know. But Maggie’s story is unfolding in a particular moment—a conclave! There’s a pope, images of Vatican City, and mentions of cardinals and the Sistine Chapel. It’s not about offering a litany of definitions; it’s about conjuring something in the imagination of these young people that, again, they say, “I want to know more.”

Forming a religious imagination in our children is key, for me. From that imagination, theological insights can grow. But if there’s no imagination, if there’s no sense that the world is so much greater than what can be seen, if there’s a reluctance to use our imagination to embrace a God beyond our knowing because we can’t fully know God—or if we pretend we can fully know God and thus don’t need an imagination—that’s where we fail our children. Why? Because we’ve put God in a very small box indeed.

Q: Tell me about the creative vision of illustrator Angela Edmonds, who brings “Maggie” to life. And, by the way, how did Maggie get her name?

A: Angela has done beautiful work, right? Incredible. I think what’s so wonderful about her art is that it really captures the whimsy and delight of the book!

As for Maggie’s name, this might be somewhat apocryphal, but what I remember is this: We were thinking about Mary Magdalene, how she offers us an example of what it means to embrace a God of delight, to set aside any shame or doubt or feelings of being less-than and instead get up and be about the unique mission God has given us.

Q: Let’s pivot to another fun project of yours, My Life with the Jedi: The Spirituality of Star Wars. What’s the blueprint here?

A: I’m a life-long Star Wars fan, and my own spiritual life has been deeply affected by the Ignatian tradition. I remember that I was in conversation with my friend and editor at Loyola Press — we were talking about one of the newer Star Wars TV shows — and I ended the conversation by saying, “Hey, if you ever want a book on how Ignatian spirituality can give language to some of the spiritual insights of Star Wars, just say the word.” Well, he loved that idea, and I cobbled a proposal together within a week!

The book, at its core, responds to this invitation that George Lucas himself puts in the Star Wars universe. He’s quite clear that no singular religious or spiritual tradition has a monopoly on Star Wars, though we can easily see hints of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, and more. Rather, Lucas seems to want us to engage the Force as something spiritual from our own faith traditions. How can we use this story as a place of dialogue, of encounter? Not a tool to convince others that we’re right and they’re wrong; not some secret quest to convert the masses; rather, a point of discussion and mutual sharing and learning.

So, that’s what I did. I found that we could pray key scenes from Star Wars — and I really span the franchise, I go well beyond the movies — and in so doing, we could practice some Ignatian contemplation, we could engage different aspects of the tradition. It’s not so much about seeing Luke as a Christ figure — no, not at all. It’s more about, “Hey, we all have to go into our own Dark Side caves now and again; what happens when we do? What spiritual tools do we need to come back out in one piece?”

Q: I truly love praying in the crossroads between Catholicism and popular culture, and this book is full of that! Was there a particular point where you realized that Star Wars lore was impacting you spiritually? Or has this been a long-held realization for you?

A: You know, Star Wars has just been a story I’ve loved for so long, I’m not quite sure! As a 10-year-old, I loved pretending I could use the Force, waving my hands at the grocery store doors, that sort of thing. But I think even then, even in that juvenile silliness, I was experiencing something of an embodied spirituality. It goes back to the same lessons I hope our children’s books impart: Are we forming our imaginations to reach for something more, something beyond, something that transcends the physicality of our world? So, those early days were key — and of course, it helped that my dad introduced me to Star Wars basically right before the Special Editions were released in theaters (more Star Wars!) which was of course right before the Prequel Trilogy was released (more more Star Wars!) which kicked off so many books and on and on — there was no shortage of raw material for my imagination.

But more to the point of the spirituality therein — or, at least, why I think approaching Star Wars through Ignatian spirituality is a worthwhile pursuit — there are two foundational concepts I’m working with: 1) Yoda and Obi-Wan tell us that the Force is in all things, connecting everything, gently nudging the workings of the galaxy. Well, hey, St. Ignatius reminded us that God is in all things! And what’s more, God is not some impersonal “force”; God dwells within us and is intimately concerned with our lives. And then, 2) the story of Star Wars is about discerning between two opposing forces, the light side and the dark. And while we think Star Wars is black and white, the real story of these characters is about the little decisions they make that bring them closer to the light or further away. Well, hey, Ignatian spirituality is built on discerning between the call of Christ and the temptations of the false spirit — we’re literally talking about discerning between the light and the dark in our real lives. And guess what? We have a whole tradition with tools for doing exactly that!

Q: I was deeply influenced by the recent blockbuster film adaptation of Project Hail Mary, which seems to be deeply resonating with people of faith, too. How can a book like My Life with Jedi serve as a bridge to folks who are deep thinkers, but perhaps not deeply religious?

A: One of the great graces of this book has been the conversations I’ve been able to have with folks. You know, there are so many people who have been deeply hurt by religion and understandably look with skepticism at anything religious. And yet, people are still hungry for the same spiritual truths that we all crave. We all want to be loved and cherished and made to feel safe and to know that our lives have great value and meaning. So, let’s not enter that conversation through the doorway of religion; let’s do it by way of story. And that’s what I’ve been able to do — I’ve had so many really profound conversations with Star Wars fans (primarily through podcast episodes), many of whom have experienced some deep religious trauma. But because we’re talking about Star Wars and no one was trying to hit anyone over the head with a bible, we could go deep. We could reach for these topics of great import—and we could do so by drawing out some of the parallels with Ignatian spirituality. No one feels threatened, only invited. Everyone leaves the conversation energized.

Q: What’s next for you personally and professionally?

A: In addition to The Seagull on the Chapel, I have a new book coming out with Loyola Press, hopefully at the end of this year. I don’t know how much I can really say about it, other than it will be part-prayer book, part-fantasy adventure, and fully grounded in the Catholic imagination. It’s my attempt to wrestle with the question: “I love fairy tales and stories of high fantasy and mythic adventures — what if I prayed with this stuff?” So, stay on the lookout for that. I’m really excited. We have a title; we have a cover, so I’d say if folks want to stay informed about that, follow me on Substack or Instagram!

And I continue to lead many retreats and workshops! If folks ever want to invite me into their faith community, I’d welcome the chance—you can find me at EricClaytonWrites.com.

Q: Are there any additional thoughts you’d like to share with us?

A: Yes! Folks should check out the Jesuit Media Lab if they are interested in some of these questions we’ve discussed — we exist to gather and form folks at the intersection of Ignatian spirituality and creativity.

Ask for The Seagull on the Chapel at your local Catholic bookseller, or order online from Amazon.com or the publisher, Paraclete Press.

Is this a book you'd like to read? Share your thoughts with the Catholic Mom community! You'll find the comment box below the author's bio and list of recommended articles.

Copyright 2026 Lisa M. Hendey 
Images: courtesy of Eric A. Clayton, all rights reserved.
This article contains Amazon affiliate links, which provide a small compensation to the author of this piece when purchases are made through the links, at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting our Catholic Mom writers in this way.