Jennifer Fulwiler, the popular blogger at Conversion Diary and the National Catholic Register, has ventured into the world of reality television. But don’t let the “reality television” part scare you off. Minor Revisions, a three-part miniseries, promises to be a delight.

The show ties into Jennifer’s personal conversion story from atheism to Catholicism, and includes glimpses into family life at the Fulwiler home – if you’re already a fan of Jennifer’s writing, you know that includes such things as scorpion attacks and the ups and downs of having five young children. But the show also incorporates thoughtful conversations between Fulwiler and various other Catholic figures – a pro-life obstetrician, a recovering heroin addict healed through the power of prayer, a philosophy professor engaged in apologetics, former Planned Parenthood executive Abby Johnson, and Jennifer’s husband, Joe. The exchanges between Jennifer and her own father, who share a love of astronomy and explore their differing perspectives on faith, were particularly moving. You can read more about the series in Jennifer’s entertaining “urgent apology about the content of Minor Revisions.”

I would highly encourage you to make time tomorrow night (Thursday, December 13) to watch the first of the three episodes. Here’s the trailer:

The show will air on December 13, December 20, and January 10, all at 8 PM EST (7 PM CST). You can watch it online live at http://netny.net/watch-now/. It will also air on the NET network in the NYC area (TimeWarner Ch 97 & Cablevision Ch 30), and it will be available as an on-demand show for Verizon FiOS subscribers. Though there may be reruns, it won’t be archived online, so be sure to catch it live! More info here: http://netny.net/minorrevisions/

- DS

Today is the 114th birthday of Clive Staples Lewis, but there is more to celebrate. Westminster Abbey has recently announced a memorial to Lewis will be placed in Poets’ Corner next fall, fifty years after his death. Alister McGrath offers his support of the decision in the Telegraph.

In the end, the poetic vision that Lewis never quite managed to actualise in his verse was found instead in his prose. Here we find one of the keys to his success as a writer – his ability to express complex ideas in simple language, connecting with his audience without losing elegance of expression. Lewis learnt this skill the hard way, partly through lecturing to aircrews during the Second World War. If you could not express something in simple language, Lewis later declared, it was because you had failed to understand it yourself.

Lewis is one of the best examples of a writer who took pleasure in the art of communication, melding simplicity and elegance in a way few could manage. His popular religious writings – such as The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity – combine these qualities, even though they cannot be counted as great literature.

Read more.

St. Peter’s List has picked Dappled Things as one of “6 Great Catholic Christmas Gifts” in their most recent list, an honor it shares with Pope Benedict’s newly released Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, as well as some beautiful sacramentals and other Catholic gear. We were particularly amused by a coffee mug featuring artwork from our own Matthew Alderman, which features the following quote from Pope Clement VIII:

Why, this Satan’s drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it. We shall cheat Satan by baptizing it.

Also, if you come to us through their website, you might just find a special offer waiting.

Ryan Charles Trusell, of Ora et Labora et Zombies fame, has brought together Catholic authors Brandon Vogt, Simcha Fisher, Dan Lord, and Dappled Things Web Editor Dorian Speed, to produce Adventhology, a series of affecting short pieces that make ideal reading for that oft-forgotten season of expectation. Trusell, it turns out, is not only passionate about Benedictines and zombies, but is at least equally dedicated to the craft of printing. He describes the project as a “micropublishing adventure” in which “[e]ach piece is published separately, as its own small booklet, of fine paper with a hand-printed softcover.”

On her blog, Dorian describes her own piece, The Bells of Bethlehem, as one that follows “the tried-and-true formula of Christmas writing: salt dough ornaments, Columbia Records Stereo LPs, phone calls to the afterlife, obscure liturgical terminology, circling back around to gingerbread because we talked about death in the middle and need to end on a happy note. Your standard Advent-type essay.” She then gives as snippet of what we can expect:

Nostalgia tempts us to say “I’d really rather stay here, thanks” when it’s time to come back to the present. There are pieces of my heart left back in the past, and now that I am a mother myself there are more pieces walking around, growing out of their jackets and slamming the door behind them as they rush outside. One of the things I most enjoy about marriage is having someone else who treasures the trivial milestones of our children’s lives and wants to look back through all of our pictures.

So many pictures. What greater misery confronts the modern parent than that terrifying realization: I forgot the camera. How am I to give my children a home of love and warm memories if I do not document all of our days? Every so often I will happen upon a canister of undeveloped film from the first couple of years of my oldest child’s life, before we went digital and started taking ten times as many pictures. Having these photos developed is an unexpected gift of moments I’d completely forgotten about.

Trusell’s work through Labora Editions truly seems like a labor of love, not to mention one in which love brings forth the dedication needed to produce a high quality work. We’re thrilled to see this sort of initiative taking place in the Catholic publishing world. Along with Korrektiv Press, Tuscany Press, and other such projects, one is almost tempted to say that a trend is afoot.

If you are interested in submitting your work to Dappled Things, please note that we have a new system for processing submissions. We are no longer receiving submissions by e-mail, and any work sent that way after November 25, 2012 AD will not be read. Instead, we have switched to using Submittable, a system that will not only allow us to track submissions more effectively and have a quicker turn-around with regards to editorial decisions, but also will allow contributors to track the status of their pieces more easily, not just those submitted to Dappled Things, but to any journals that use the same system. For further information, please see our Submit page.

Looking for an original Christmas gift? Give a reader in your life the gift of beauty with a subscription to the gorgeously printed edition of Dappled Things. If you make your purchase before December 16, we will send the recipient a beautiful card featuring artwork from the magazine, wishing them a merry Christmas and letting them know of your gift.

You can purchase Christmas gift subscriptions by clicking here.

One of the things I really miss about having moved away from DC is attending the magnificent liturgies at the Dominican House of Studies, in particular their Tenebrae service during Holy Week, and their All Saints Day Vigil (always followed by a reception that’s delightfully chock-full of friars and Catholic nerds). It was at this vigil, a few years ago, that I first heard “Joy and Triumph Everlasting,” a hymn masterfully translated from Latin by Robert Bridges (he who brought Hopkins’ poems to light), which has gone on to become not only my favorite All Saints hymn, but one of my very favorite hymns, period. It’s hard, very hard, to hear it sung without the transcendent hope of Heaven coming awake within you:

Joy and triumph everlasting
Hath the heav’nly Church on high;
For that pure immortal gladness
All our feast days mourn and sigh:
Yet in death’s dark desert wild
Doth the mother aid her child;
Guards celestial thence attend us,
Stand in combat to defend us.

Here the world’s perpetual warfare
Holds from Heav’n the soul apart;
Legioned foes in shadowy terror
Vex the Sabbath of the heart.
O how happy that estate
Where delight doth not abate!
For that home the spirit yearneth,
Where none languisheth nor mourneth.

There the body hath no torment,
There the mind is free from care,
There is every voice rejoicing,
Every heart is loving there.
Angels in that city dwell;
Them their King delighteth well:
Still they joy and weary never,
More and more desiring ever.

There the seers and fathers holy,
There the prophets glorified,
All their doubts and darkness ended,
In the Light of Light abide.
There the saints, whose memories old
We in faithful hymns uphold,
Have forgot their bitter story
In the joy of Jesus’ glory.

More and more desiring ever. That’s how the song leaves me. It has no space for wimpy cartoon angels plucking harps on fluffy clouds, but rather leaves one with a hint and a hunger for that which eye has not seen and ear has not heard. If you’ve never listened to the song yourself, you can get a very brief sample by clicking here, or I suppose there’s always the MIDI file you can find at Cyberhymnal, though it seems a crime to subject to such treatment a song that does so much to obliterate kitsch visions of Heaven.

How about you, dear readers? Know any other hymns that do justice to the feast of All Saints?

- B.A.

With a celebration of Vespers in the Sistine Chapel, Pope Benedict marked the first five hundred years of this magnificent example of faith and art coming together seamlessly. The Sistine Chapel gives the lie to the secularist fallacy that by worshiping God, man is somehow diminished, when quite the opposite is the case: he is ennobled.

News.va reports:

Calling the Sistine Chapel a “liturgical classroom”, Pope Benedict said he was marking the anniversary of this “historical and artistic event” with a liturgical celebration because “the works of art which decorate it, especially the frescos, find in the liturgy . . . their living environment. It is the context in which is expressed their beauty, their richness, and the significance of their meaning.”

Chesterton, as is often the case, put it best: “We become taller when we bow.”

What better place for a Flannery O’Connor symposium than Louisiana this November? (Well, maybe Milledgeville, but let’s not split hairs). And it looks like a terrific lineup.

“Flannery O’Connor: The Legacy of a Southern Catholic Writer” will be held in Lafayette, La., the weekend of Nov. 9, 2012. In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of O’Connor speaking at UL Lafayette and the recent discovery of a recording of her talk, the university, along with Our Lady of Wisdom Catholic Church & Student Center, Friends of the Humanities and Deep South Magazine, present a symposium of speakers and activities based on the Southern Gothic writer.

Check out the lineup of guest speakers and make your plans for Louisiana!