Hello friends!

We have arrived yet again at precipice of a new year – assuming you didn’t already turn the page when Advent started – and once again the editors at Dappled Things are sharing the highlights from this past year’s reading. Some of these are newish works, some are quite old, some are not yet even published. We love it all.

Here’s to another year of full of the delight of living our best lives and the delight of reading the best books.

Bernardo Aparicio – Founder and Publisher

Earth and Water (tentative title), the forthcoming debut novel by Dappled Things editor-in-chief Katy Carl, was by far the best book I read this year. I’m sorry to say you won’t be able to purchase a copy from Wiseblood Books for a few months yet, but you can start counting the days (as you should). It’s not just that, as a writer, I found her prose good to the point of being almost intimidating. Or that she achieves a depth of understanding of her characters that’s rarely seen. Or that through the story of two artists and lovers she takes us on an exhilarating, heart-wrenching emotional tour through the longings of the human heart. No, it’s more than that. It’s that by the end of the book, I was convinced I had just read not only a masterfully executed novel, but actually one of the best novels I have ever read. Katy’s a good friend and I’m worried I’m going to make her uncomfortable with this kind of praise, or worry her that I’m hyping up the book too much. I worry also that readers might figure I’m being biased in my assessment, since I can’t be exactly a disinterested party when it comes to a book by a close friend and collaborator. Fair enough. All I can say is this: I have long known Katy was an excellent writer through our more than a decade of working together and was more than prepared to like the book when I got my advanced copy, but I wasn’t prepared for what it actually was. My wife can attest that when I started reading it, I kept interrupting her with expressions of disbelief at how good it was. After a while, I began to worry that she couldn’t possibly sustain such a level, that like many other books, it would set off some neat fireworks at the beginning that would eventually peter out. There was no way she could pull it off. Well, she did. If, like me, you’ve been rooting for a Catholic literary renaissance, get yourself a copy of Earth and Water the day it comes out, because however far this renaissance goes, it’s not going to get much better than this.

Katy Carl – Editor in Chief

This year much of my reading has revolved around preparing to participate in the pilot year of the Wiseblood Books writer-in-residence program: studying classic novels like Henry James’ Roderick Hudson, Balzac’s Lost Illusions, Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, and Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, among others. We also covered the new edition of James Wood’s How Fiction Works, Caroline Gordon’s How To Read A Novel, Douglas Bauer’s The Stuff of Fiction: Advice on Craft, and several titles from Greywolf Press’s “The Art Of” series. In new books this year I especially appreciated Christopher Beha’s novel The Index of Self-Destructive Acts and Nick Ripatrazone’s study of Catholic influence in contemporary fiction, Longing for an Absent God. And since I’ve been invited to write an Advent-themed devotional for 2021, my spiritual reading recently has tended in that direction, including Caryll Houselander’s The Reed of God, Oliver Treanor’s Seven Bells to Bethlehem, and poet Jacob Riyeff’s fascinating team translation, with co-author and spouse Mamie Riyeff, of Middle English meditations on the O Antiphons. The book, called O Shining Light, includes illustration work by liturgical artist (and friend of Dappled Things!) Daniel Mitsui–definitely seek out a copy of this beautiful Gracewing Press edition, if you can. Also under the heading of liturgical living, I highly recommend Jay W. Richards’ Eat, Fast, Feast: A Christian Guide to Fasting, which has helped me–as someone decidedly not naturally good at self-denial–to frame and understand this traditional practice in a way that has placed it more within reach for the ordinary person.

Natalie Morrill – Fiction Editor

The best book I read this year (so far) was a re-read: Middlemarch by George Eliot. It’s books like this that make you recognize the difference between “having something to read” & “having your days & mindset shaped by the marvelous thing you’re reading (& which you can’t wait to get back to).” What is there to say about Middlemarch that hasn’t already been said? Perhaps one thing I realized any time I had this in my hands was that I had trouble answering friends when they asked, “What is it about?” My attempts to sum up the subject matter always fell flat or sounded hopelessly vague: a town; bad marriages; good and bad people. The hospital comes into it. Various people need money or have too much of it. Maybe a snappier answer would have been, “It’s a big novel about a small town and the incredible weight of human souls,” though heaven knows I’m not one for snappy answers. Eliot stands alongside Austen & Dostoyevsky in my mind as being among the most psychologically astute novelists in the business. If nothing else, read this for the most accurate (& frustrating) portrayal of a narcissistic personality disorder in literature. Or join me in being an unapologetic fangirl of Caleb Garth & Mr. Farebrother (whose story I still need to know the end of!). But you’d do much better to read it because you love beautiful things & desire happiness. Read or re-read it in 2021 to make your year (& days, & hours) better.

Also worth mentioning: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (as wonderful & magical as everyone says it is) & Josef Pieper’s Guide to Thomas Aquinas (like a friend introducing a friend).

Barbara Gonzalez – Associate Editor

I will start off by saying that I watched the 1994 BBC adaptation of Middlemarch this summer and if you liked the book, I think you will enjoy looking up the series. It stars a young Rufus Sewell and was available on Amazon Prime earlier this year – maybe it still is.

My book of 2020 would be Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed. It had been on my list for a while. Pope Francis said a few years ago that he thought all engaged couples should read it together. I found out there was a plague in it, so that pushed it to the top of my list. It was comforting to spend some time with this book and realize that maybe this year was not quite as “unprecedented” as the pundits said. It not only features a pandemic but also the separation and isolation of two lovers, meditations on the meaning of marriage and Providence, even some reflections on crime, corruption and justice, especially justice for the poor.

Rhonda Ortiz – Webmaster

Mere weeks before the death of George Floyd, I happened to read Melba Pattillo Beals’ memoir, Warriors Don’t Cry, about the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Talk about providential.

I’m not sure if I want to say more than that. 🙂

Terence Sweeney – Associate Editor

If there is a canon of Catholic literature, this year taught me that Claude McKay should be added to it. The Jamaicain-born Harlem Renaissance writer wrote searing poems and novels from the experience of oppression. Each depicts a lived solidarity of social outcasts and yearning for a deeper justice. This year I read one of his later novels, Romance in Marseille. The novel, written before McKay’s conversion to Catholicism, depicts Lafala a crippled African trapped between American, France, and Africa. Suddenly wealthy, he seeks love in Marseille and instead finds a deeper homesickness. I recommend reading it alongside his Complete Poems which depict his poetic seeking and eventual finding of a home in the Catholic Church.

Patrick Callahan – Book Review Editor

Sing-Song, A Nursery Rhyme Book with poems by Christina Rossetti and illustrations by Arthur Hughes capped off a great reading year for myself. It can be found rather cheap, but must be found with Hughes’ companion illustrations. It can be read in a single sitting, preferably aloud as the children play in the yard. Rossetti thrives in the humble materials and plans particular to the genre with subtle craftsmanship that reminds me of the deceptive simplicity of A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad. It is the first work I have read that plumbs the paradox of the parent who both desires to see a colicky child sleep through the night and fears this very thing because some infants sleep never to wake again to this life. And it is a nursery rhyme book before the early 20th century invention of hermetically sealed and manufactured childhood. Some of the Victorian sweetness has been retained in modern imagery-angels and puppies; none of the Victorian gothic–fairy rings and death. All at risk of taking their adult selves too seriously and children who demand adults recognize they play for mortal stakes will profit from this slender volume.

Rosemary Callenberg – Associate Editor

My favorite work of fiction this year was Charis in the World of Wonders, by Marly Youmans. This novel was beautiful. The language was rich and poetic without ever crossing the line into “too much,” and I felt a great sense of intimacy with the main character in both her struggles and joys.

Another favorite read, this one nonfiction, was Evening in the Palace of Reason, by James R. Gaines. I read this partly because of the title, which caught my eye; partly because it’s about Bach meeting Frederick the Great, and we were studying Bach in our homeschool. It’s a weakness of mine that I often find it hard to focus on nonfiction, but this book was enjoyable and compelling enough that I read it from beginning to end without a “fiction break.” The author brought his figures to life vividly–both as individual persons and as representations of conflicting values at the beginning of the Enlightenment. And I learned a lot about Bach’s music, too–which the book often encourages the reader to pause and savor.

Ann Thomas – Managing Editor

This year I made a priority of becoming acquainted with Cluny Media’s catalogue. They publish so many magnificent titles I hardly knew where to start, but chose to begin with Paul Claudel’s Poetic Art. True to Cluny Media‘s philosophy that, “A book, from cover to cover, should be an artifact, a work of art,” this slim volume is. In it, Claudel is not exploring prosody, or the creation of poetry, but rather the poetry of creation through our experience of language. “But, whereas, our existence down here is like a barbaric and broken language, our life in God shall be like exquisitely perfect verse.” Thanks to Cluny Media’s attention to craftsmanship, this is a book that will withstand the physical demands of being my constant companion for years. While I can say I’ve read it through to the end, it’s more truthful to say I’ve begun my journey with Poetic Art than “I finished it.”

Classes, a cosmology, the O antiphons in O Come O Come Emmanuel, and a love poem to Our Lady of O.

A Celebration of Angels & Saints by Eliot Weinberger

Katy Carl, DT Editor in Chief wrote, “Whoa, this looks amazing.” Point Reyes Books will offer this online conversation on December 14 at 7:00 PM PST:

Eliot Weinberger, called ‘one of the world’s greatest essayists’ by the New York Times, is joined in conversation by Pulitzer Prize winner Forrest Gander to celebrate the publication of Angels and Saints (New Directions and Christine Burgin). . . .

“The celebrated essayist Eliot Weinberger has mined and deconstructed, resurrected and distilled centuries of theology into an awe-inspiring exploration of the heavenly host.”

Doorways to the Sacred Virtual Series

More online classes of interest are coming up this week at Catholic Literary Arts, continuing their “Doorways to the Sacred” series.

• Tuesday, Dec 15, 7:00 PM CST “Birthing the Holy: Writing Advent and Christmas” $30
• Taught by Judith Sornberger
• Register here.

• Thursday, Dec 17, 7:00 PM CST Class Three: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “Matryona’s Home” in “The Christ-Centered Short Story” Series
• Taught by Joshua Hren $35
• Register here

Lovely—and extraordinarily rare—late-Renaissance cosmography by Van Aelst

Boston Rare Maps announces the availability of an extremely rare late Renaissance cosmography from 1593 that includes the Apocalyptic visions of St. John the Evangelist on Patmos. At the sale page, you can click on the images and zoom into close-ups of the fascinating details.

Van Aelst’s treatment of the subject is distinctive in format, complexity and content. . . . Surrounding the whole is the coelum empyreum, populated by an array of angels and saints presided over by the Trinity and the Virgin Mary.

“At lower right an inset depicts St. John the Evangelist on the island of Patmos, where he received a divine vision, which an angel instructed him to write down (The vision is depicted as a wedge bearing 26 tiny pictorial panels, emanating from the Trinity and terminating above John.) This text forms the basis for the final book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation or Apocalypse of John (from the original Greek meaning of apocalypse as an unveiling or revelation). This included prophetic predictions describing the final battle between God and Satan, with Jesus’s second coming leading to the final victory over evil and a new world for true believers.”

History and Mystery: The O Antiphons in a Favorite Hymn

Before next week’s Friday links on December 18, the Church will begin singing the O antiphons.This article from a past Advent is about the O antiphons and how they are used in a favorite Advent hymn, Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

“Each night between Dec. 17 and 23, wherever Latin Vespers or the vernacular Evening Prayer are prayed, an O antiphon is sung or recited before and after the Magnificat.” Each antiphon begins with an O followed by one of the scriptural titles of the Messiah, such as O Sapientia, Oh Wisdom and O Emmanuel, Oh God with Us. “The O antiphons powerfully express the Church’s longing and awe at this time of heightened anticipation, while Advent is coming to a close, and the feast of Christmas approaches.”

From the archives: O Come, Emmanuel, 8.75 x 10 inches. Gold leaf and soft distemper on paper. October 2019. Clare Bartel

The Love Song of Our Lady of O

My poem “The Love Song of Our Lady of O” was posted this week at the Catholic Arts Today page on the Benedict VI Institute website, with the photo of a statue I found and love of Our Lady glowingly expectant during the last week before the birth of Our Lord. The poem was one of the top five winners of the “Waiting with the Mother of God during Advent” themed contest sponsored by Catholic Literary Arts. Winners read their poems on December 9 at a virtual gala, and all the poems will soon be published at CatholicLiteraryArts.Org.

On December 18, in the waning days of Advent, a feast was dedicated to Our Lady’s expectation of her son’s birth. Because an ancient law of the Church prohibited the celebration of feasts during Lent, the Tenth Council of Toledo in 656 A.D. transferred the feast of the Annunciation from March 23 to December 18. Eventually, the feast of the Annunciation regained its former date. December 18 later came to be known as the Feast of the Expectation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, commonly called Santa Maria de la O, even in the liturgical books. Though seemingly related to the O Antiphons, the 1909 Catholic Encyclopedia states that name “Our Lady of O” stems from the custom of the clerics in the choir after Vespers on that day to utter a loud and protracted “O,” expressing the longing of the universe for the coming of the Redeemer.”

To enjoy bourbon, you have to roll it around your mouth for thirty seconds and let it burn. When your tongue is a little numb, you can swallow the bourbon and take another sip. This time, instead of just feeling the alcohol, you’ll taste the complexities of the bourbon. You’ll find the notes of vanilla and the oakiness that were masked by the burn of the alcohol before. You have to sit with it a minute before you can enjoy it.

Now, sit with this sentence from The Great Gatsby for a second: “For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.” Roll that around. Take another sip. “So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star.” Mmmm. Take one more sip. “But [my lips] made no sound and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.” Pick up on that saltiness, that bittersweet flavor and savor it. Gatsby is the book that taught me to relish language many years ago; it was the first time I treated a literary work like a fine dinner or good bottle of bourbon. It must be savored.

If I’m going to be honest, I am often guilty of reading through a work quickly in a feverish rush to get to the end. I want to get not just to the climax but also the resolution – I want it tied in a neat literary bow. When I read Jane Eyre for the first time, I was pulled into the story line so much that in my anxiety for Jane I read the entire book in three or four days. I’d love to say that I’ve gotten better about this as I’ve grown older, but just a couple of months ago I did the same thing. I started reading The Bronze Bow to prepare for a literature class I teach and although I read carefully initially, making notes and jotting down discussion ideas and questions, as I grew more interested in the characters and plot, I stopped writing down thoughts or even underlining anything. The race to finish the book was on, and I was determined to sprint my way to the end. When I finally finished the last page, it was 3 a.m. and although I definitely had a Wow, what a book! moment, it wasn’t completely satisfying. Looking back at that first reading of Jane Eyre, I doubt it was satisfying either, beyond the simple satisfaction of my curiosity. It was about as satisfying eating fast food in the car while rushing to an activity rather than sitting down to a meal with my family or friends.

More than ten years ago, I read a few short stories by Flannery O’Connor for a book club and I absolutely hated them. They were violent, grotesque, and difficult. It was like driving past a train wreck and not being able to look away. I had a particularly difficult time reading, “The River.” It’s about a young boy who is baptized in a river by a preacher who tells him, “If I Baptize you. . .you’ll be able to go to the Kingdom of Christ. You’ll be washed in the river of suffering, son, and you’ll go by the deep river of life.” In his childhood innocence, the boy thinks, “I won’t go back to the apartment then, I’ll go under the river.” Eager to escape the neglect of his parents, he sees baptism as a literal gate through which he will be able to enter the physical Kingdom of Christ, having no real understanding of the sacrament. When he returns home, his selfish, self-absorbed mother cares nothing about him or his baptism and puts him to bed without even taking his shoes off. When he wakes up the next morning, he is on his own to rummage for food while his parents sleep off their drunkenness, and when he remembers the river, he decides to go find the Kingdom of Christ. He submerges himself in the river over and over again until finally the current catches him and pulls him, “swiftly forward and down.” That’s it?! I thought. The poor neglected boy drowns himself looking for the Kingdom of God? I hated it. What a train wreck. I spent the next decade hating O’Connor’s work, at least in theory. I refused to read it.

Then one Sunday my priest talked about Flannery O’Connor in his sermon. I was not entirely surprised because over the course of the last decade I found one person after another who loved Flannery. When Monsignor, who is also my friend, spoke lovingly of O’Connor and her work, somehow it was different. I decided I must be missing something. I asked another friend, Elizabeth, what she thought about O’Connor. I anticipated that she would also be a fan but was still surprised by her enthusiasm. By this time I was not only curious but also determined to give O’Connor’s work another chance.

I began the first story of The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor with some trepidation but was pleased to find that I was actually enjoying it. “The Geranium,” was not the train wreck I remembered of her stories. However, when it abruptly ended with the main character staring out the window and down into the alley where a geranium plant lay on the ground, its pot smashed and its roots sticking up in the air, while the man in the building next door says, “I don’t like people looking at what I do. . .I only tell people once.” I kind of threw my hands up. WHAT?! I shouted inwardly. Fortunately, I saw Monsignor that day. When I asked about these ending lines, he opened the book, read it aloud, and said, “Mmmm. That’s good.”

There was no explanation offered aside from his apparent satisfaction, but this alone changed my view completely. As I continued reading, I grew comfortable with the fact that I didn’t understand everything perfectly. I learned to appreciate the abrupt, untidy endings and to expect catastrophes, which I learned were opportunities for the characters to accept or deny the grace of God. “If you read from a naturalistic perspective,” Monsignor had said, “it’s going to appear grotesque. But if you read it from a supernatural perspective, you’ll see more.” Not only have I gotten better at seeing more than the train wrecks the characters are and the wrecks they make, I’ve grown to enjoy the language and to savor the work, taking nutrition as well as enjoyment. I’ve even learned to appreciate imperfect endings, which is good because life rarely presents us with perfect endings wrapped up in a neat little bow.

When I first read, “The River,” I rushed through it, mouth agape and eyes wide, horrified. In my rush to get to the end, I missed any beauty along the way. When I read through it this time, I noticed sentences like, “The sky was a clear pale blue, all in one piece—except for the hole the sun made—and fringed around the bottom with treetops.” Even though this sentence was leading up to the boy’s death and I had the anxiety of anticipation, I could appreciate its loveliness. I’m learning to find beauty where it exists, despite stress, anxiety, and tragedy.

This past year, I was incredibly grateful for a particularly gorgeous Spring. I remember clearly one particularly beautiful sunset that cast a pink glow over everything, making the pink buds on our trees even lovelier. Actually, I remember that one evening far more clearly than any other in that six weeks.

This time, when I read, “The River,” I savored it. I appreciated the sentences, images, symbols, and ideas rather than rushing to the inevitable outcome. Rather than just hating that the poor boy drowned, I thought about the tragedy of his lack of formation, how horribly the adults around him either neglected or used him for their own purposes and how on one side, people ridiculed religion while on the others sought to convert him more in conquest than in love. No one took the time or spent the energy to show him the love of God. I considered the characters and their faith or lack thereof for the first time. Although the boy was so grievously misunderstanding what the Kingdom of God was and how to get there, I have to appreciate at least a little the zeal with which he sought to find it, misguided though he was.

“The River,” actually reminds me of some happy moments at Mass. Our priest uses a fair amount of incense, which is heavenly, and every week it’s a particular joy to see the clouds of incense rise toward Heaven, escorting our prayers to God. Once in a while, though, the incense rises from the swinging thurible, floats around the Sanctuary, then floats out toward the pews where it hovers over our heads, playing with the light streaming in from the windows above us. The first time I noticed this, it was like being underwater and looking up to see the surface of the water flowing and rippling over me, and it was mesmerizing. When this incense stream happened again, I couldn’t help but think of, “The River.” Perhaps I have not literally dived into a river to find the Kingdom of God, but I have been immersed in the river of His grace and mercy.

It could be argued that I was distracted by the incense, but I would say that those moments of visualizing God’s grace swirling around us were not unwelcome distractions. It could even be an aid in appreciating and praying the Mass. Sometimes allowing yourself to notice details, giving all your senses the opportunity to soak up what you’re experiencing, can bring you more deeply into an experience. When you go to a nice restaurant, you don’t just stuff your face, pay your bill, and leave. You enjoy the ambience, the music, the candlelight, the smells and textures and tastes. You linger over the menu and the conversation, maybe even trading samples of your dinner or drink with your friends, and you allow yourself – all of you, your senses, your mind, your focus – to be in the moment and this, not the food alone, is what makes the meal satisfying.

This world is crazy, and most of that craziness is beyond our control. It’s so very tempting to worry about it all, which really only serves to rob us of our peace and the opportunity to be fully present to the people around us or even to our own thoughts. It’s difficult to really enjoy a book that you’re devouring as though you’re stuffing your face rather than enjoying a good meal, but there is so much reward in taking the time to enjoy those beautiful sentences and to enter into the depth of the ideas. Things won’t always have a nice, neat ending and there will be things I can’t completely understand, but if I accept these things and focus instead on the beauty along the way, I can make the most of the stories unfolding before me.

Looking back at those sentences from Gatsby that I loved so well, I am a little surprised to find that they fit this theme as well as they do. “For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.” The control we imagine ourselves to have is unreality, a dream, “founded securely on a fairy’s wind.” To quote Monsignor, mmmm. That’s good.

“So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star.” In the moment before Gatsby kisses Daisy for the first time, he realizes that doing so will transform her from the dreamlike figure of his imagination to a woman of flesh and blood and that the moment will be fleeting, so he pauses, soaking up every ounce of the moment that he can. Time passes. Everything changes. We have the present for a moment before it becomes the past. Though this is sometimes a good thing, some moments must be savored in their entirety, using all your senses. See the stars, the sky, the look of a loved one’s eyes; hear the music of the breeze, birds, orchestra, or children around you; feel the softness of your child’s hand, the sand beneath your feet, the breeze in your hair; smell the saltiness of the ocean, the scent of your child’s head, the earth, the rain; taste the saltiness of tears and the complexity of your coffee. Soak it all up because in the next moment it could all be gone.

“But [my lips] made no sound and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.” Time passes and once a moment is gone, it is gone forever. I don’t know how many moments I wish I could relive. I would love to hold my babies to hold my husband’s hand for the first time again, but those are all firmly in the past and, all too often, what they meant to me then as well as what they mean now are uncommunicable. These are things that must remain forevermore in my heart because they will never mean to another what they do to me, which makes it all the more important to really savor these moments as they happen.

Dinner is not just about filling your belly, it’s an opportunity to connect with family and friends and to feed your heart and soul as much as your stomach. Reading is not about finding out how the story ends, it’s about learning from other people’s experiences, savoring creativity, and digesting ideas. It’s about broadening your vision, experiencing something new, and finding greater depth. It also feeds the heart and soul, which is why a good book can feel like an old friend. More than that, literature can connect us to people, places, and times, helping us to experience life more profoundly, but in order to do so, you have to dive in, involve yourself, and savor it. Move it around your mind and find those tasty morsels, delicious sentences, and meaty ideas. You can’t really appreciate bourbon if you don’t take the time to roll it around your mouth looking for those hints of flavor, you can’t get the most out of a moment or meal without involving the senses, and you can’t be truly satisfied in a book or experience without investing yourself in it. Listen, just for a moment, for the tuning fork struck upon the stars.

Kiera Petrick is a Catholic homeschooling mother, teacher, photographer, writer, and is great at making cakes, at least according to her daughter. Her blog, Talking in the Shower, contains a variety of her writing.

“I am a poet in a Family of Prose.” This pithy little sentence tucked away in one of her letters to a friend was the beginning of my fascination and friendship with Emily Dickinson. It was a moment when I sighed aloud to my book, but really to her, “You too?” For, my family of eight brothers and sisters was very much a prose family. This does not mean they were not fascinating in their own right. I have an aeronautical engineering brother and a sister I would not hesitate to own as math geniuses. They have been known to sit at our kitchen table at long ago family get-togethers and work out some complicated math equation over beers together with a look of absolute, dare I say it, glee. I was continually flummoxed by them while looking over the top of my Wordsworth with the complete disdain of my young romantic soul. There was simply no poetry in mathematics – I would declare to myself – no imagery, no metaphor, no trippingly lovely cadences. No one could possibly rhapsodize over math, and life was not worth the living if we could not rhapsodize! I impulsively trampled math underfoot as a thing of naught and washed my hands of it, and I remained the sole poet in a family of prose for a long and lonely time. I was very much loved by my family, but not ever fully understood by them. I could not even understand myself! Understanding was to come later and in quite a delightful way.

I remember the day I met Dr. Richard Ferrier. He was to be my Junior year mathematics teacher in college – for Descartes, no less. He was standing with a small knot of students who were exuberantly singing the haunting English Madrigal “The Silver Swan.” He joined in quite impromptu with a look of…rapture. How could this possibly be? A mathematics teacher singing with a pathos that would rival Keats? I was cautiously optimistic. Who was this man? He had the look of a poet, with a delightful shock of curly hair that was always mussed up by his ever restless hands. He smoked a pipe and wore a tweed coat which was rather on the smaller side. His face was always moving with a myriad of expressions. He arrived as a centaur to the college Halloween party to everyone’s delight. He quoted parts of Dante by heart with tears in his eyes. When someone finished a Cartesian prop on the blackboard in class, he would cry out in sudden delight: “Beatrice!” This man spoke my language. He was a poet and a mathematician and gloried in both; he showed me how to glory, too. He was all wonder at the Universe. I had never met anyone like him before. And it is no slight to my own father whom I love dearly, when I say that I had found a spiritual father in Richard Ferrier that year. This was a person of whom St. Ireneus was to cry, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” He was to teach me who I was. He was to explain myself to me in a way that my biological family was just not able to do, and he was to show me that I was not an anomaly after all. They are so important, these spiritual fathers we encounter during our lifetimes. They enrich our lives by helping us grow into the adults we are to become. We owe much to our biological fathers – absolutely – but we also owe a debt of deepest gratitude to the teachers who father-forth the best in us through an understanding of our deeper selves.

Edward Hitchcock

Emily would have understood my gratitude at finding Richard Ferrier. She, too, found a spiritual father who was to make all the difference to her inner life. His name was Edward Hitchcock. Professor Hitchcock is the reason Emily Dickinson’s poetry is filled with accurate observations of volcanoes, chemical processes, an intimate knowledge of flowers, earthquakes, gems, alloys. There is more mention of these things in her poetry than, “in the poetry of Keats, Emerson, Browning, and Shelley combined!” He was her Natural Science teacher at a little jewel of a school called Amherst Academy. This was a high school of sorts that would be the feeder school for Amherst College. Here, in this small place, were collected many young and wonderful teachers. Both men and women were equally and thoroughly educated in all subjects (hurrah!). The teachers and prefects were encouraged to eat with and discuss with the students after class.

Edward Hitchcock was a star graduate in Natural Science at Yale when he moved over to head that department at Amherst College. The younger students at Amherst Academy were encouraged and allowed to attend classes at the college. That is when Emily met Edward Hitchcock.

He is aptly described in her delightful way as passing on, “the ‘phosphorescence’ of his knowledge to his students and to glorify God by opening their eyes to the wonders of the created Universe.” He was on fire with enthusiasm for the Natural World. He was an accurate scientist AND poet. We read from one of his former students that, “his voluminous scientific writing is for the most part strictly disciplined and factual,” but, “in his prefaces and introductions and wherever the text gives him the slightest opportunity, his style becomes rhapsodic.” Emily read all these texts. She became completely enamored of nature because of him. She had an herbarium complete with, “carefully printed Latin names for each item,” and was known among her friends for having a detailed knowledge of the flora and fauna in and around Amherst. He took them on field trips and they handled rocks, gems, stones. He wrote a very lovely treatise on the seasons and there combined scientific rigor and poetry. Later in life she would say,

When Flowers annually died and I was a child, I used to read Dr. Hitchcock’s Book on the Flowers of North America. This comforted their absence – assuring me they lived.

These are the tender words of a daughter for a beloved father. A man who fathered-forth and unlocked the beauty waiting for him in her mind. He was to show Emily to herself in a way she had not known before. Emily Dickinson’s younger self gathered all this knowledge and love of learning from him. And it overflowed in her poetry effortlessly as part of her mind’s store of treasures. It is a beautiful thing to think about – the debt we owe to Edward Hitchcock, a Natural Science teacher – for the genius that is Emily’s poetry.

Another student put him best when he said,

One of his greatest qualities was the spirit of love, amounting at times to rapture, which animated his studies. ‘No language can express what he enjoyed, when body, soul, and sprit were all in harmony, and all seemingly filled with the charms of nature, the delights of science, or the love of God.

I knew the joy of these words in my own life. I had my own Edward Hitchcock. I was able to meet Dr. Ferrier once again, not too long ago. I wondered if he had changed and what my middle-aged self would think. Was I just remembering him with rose colored glasses? No, as it delightfully turns out. He was the same. He hugged me like a jolly Santa Claus and took my husband and I on a tour of his wonderful, quirky, beautiful garden. We sat down to beers with him and his equally delightful wife Kathy and we talked and rhapsodized about everything under the sun. My memories had not deceived me. He was still my spiritual father and even now, after all these years, he was able to stir up my mind and heart renewed love for the beautiful, the good, and the true…. even….to my complete surprise…mathematics.

Let us give deep thanks for our families who raised us. But let us give equal thanks for the spiritual fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters who have entered our lives and who have introduced us to the beauty of our better selves. It is God the Father from whom they get their name, and whose gift they are to us. Praise Him!

Denise Trull lives in St. Louis, MO with her husband Tony. She is the artistic director of a small but mighty theater company and loves the written word in all its forms.

Hi there, dear readers — editor in chief Katy Carl here, stepping in for Roseanne Sullivan today. Every Friday, we bring you a roundup of this week’s links of interest on all things counter, original, spare, strange at the intersection of ideas, art, & Catholic faith — where we live.

First this week, a matched pair of links on novelist Christopher Beha, by fiction writers Trevor Cribben Merrill and Joshua Hren. Merrill speaks of the emergent “Beha option,” meaning success in an endeavor to bring “matters of ultimate concern” before a pluralistic audience, as an alternative to the literary “Benedict option” of setting aside dedicated space for writers of Catholic persuasion to pursue works that may most appeal to readers of the same. Hren engages the idea of the “postsecular” environment (a term used by scholar John McClure) to investigate why our moment could be making this endeavor newly possible again. (Then again, considering the upshot of Paul Elie’s 2013 interview with us, perhaps it has always been possible, merely more challenging in some moments than in others. After all, the city of God is always hiding inside the city of man, both already and not yet here…)

[photo credit: “city” by barnyz via Creative Commons, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Another matched pair: at the Slant Books blog, writer Caroline Langston meditates on color and character in Faulkner. Meanwhile, our managing editor Karen Ullo pointed out that the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater is offering a free streaming season this December, in celebration of the achievements of African American artists. During difficult times like these, art can be a lifeline.

[photo credit: Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre via Because Of Them We Can, https://www.becauseofthemwecan.com/]

ICYMI: do give a listen to Dappled Things founder Bernardo Aparicio on the Latino Leaders & Faith podcast with Delila Vazquez and Deacon Charlie Echeverry. Revisit the origin story of Dappled Things, and reflect on the beautiful contributions that Catholics of Hispanic/Latino heritage bring to the universal Church.

And if you just need a quick laugh, Monica at The Saucer offers her uber-Catholic presidential platform: ALL THE DAYS OFF. You’re welcome. 

(Whew, try saying “Samurai seminar sale” five times fast…)

As an update to today’s links post, our partners at the Collegium Institute are offering a special value for Dappled Things readers: Consider jumping into this fascinating deep dive on a masterpiece of global Catholic literature. Terence Sweeney writes:

We at the Collegium Institute in partnership with Dappled Things would like to invite you to consider being a part of our online seminar on the great Catholic novelist Shusaku Endo and his novel The Samurai. The seminar is titled “The Samurai: Endo’s Search for Christ in Japan and Beyond.” This is a four-week series starting on Thursday at 7pm starting October 8. It features noted scholars Van C. Gessel (who translated The Samurai) and John Netland.

We are offering a special promo code for Dappled Things readers. Enter DAPPLEDTHINGS20 for 20% off the cost of registration. For more information and to register, please see our eventbrite.

Thank you for considering being a part of this conversation with us!

The full listing of seminar dates is as follows: October 8, 15, 22, and 29. We hope you can make it!

In 2016, I was engaged in writing an Important Work about Important Things and Deep, Serious, Topics. Or so I thought I was. In truth, important work does not get done by intending to do Important Work, but only by actually doing work that is important. Although I wrote on Deep, Serious, Topics, which I usually enjoy, I was burning out quite rapidly. My medium of choice – a young adult novel – was not quite the right medium, and I began to detest my writing time.

I also, like every author, had a deep pool of ideas I batted about at my whimsy. After reading the light-hearted fantasy webserial Mother of Learning, I was inspired to pluck one such idea out – a serious take on the videogames of my youth–and write it. It was initially my side project, but I soon abandoned the Important Work in favor of writing it exclusively. It was a blast, even if it was not Important, and I finished the entire novel in about three months.

I called it The City and the Dungeon, after the two archetypal elements of the world. One was a vast magical metropolis of human adventurers and clashing politics. The other was a still vaster subterranean realm of unknown depth, of endless monsters, traps, and treasure.

I call them archetypal, because I have played numerous, numerous computer role-playing games (or RPGs for short) where this, and nothing else, is the setup. The point was to cut down on any unnecessary plot and get on with all the adventuring. But I always wondered what it would be like if it really was the case. Thus the story: a serious, but full-hearted take on the less serious but still full-hearted games of my youth.

I was not the only one to have thought of it, I discovered, as I searched for ways to market this somewhat unorthodox idea.

No, it was not all that unorthodox. I discovered I had not merely written genre fiction, but subgenre fiction. Yes, like the space marine novel, the Pride and Prejudice variation and the bear-shifter romance, my work fell into one of those tiny niches on Amazon: mine known as LitRPG.

There was, and is, nothing wrong with this. After all, pure entertainment is as valid a reason to tell a story as any other. I can speak only of LitRPG readers, but we (for I immediately started to read in my own genre) are a voracious bunch, some easily devouring multiple books a month, a week, or even a day. And so I believe the same of all other subgenres. Who knows if that space marine novel lights the beacon of heroism in some young man’s heart? Perhaps for some young woman, life without bear-shifter romances would quickly become unbearable. Although I had worked some deeper themes in, subtly, the story was truly just to make people – including myself – happy. And happy we were. But more on this in a moment.

The LitRPG, short for Literature RPG, is an inversion of a certain category of games. In a roleplaying game, rather than individually designing every possible interaction of some muscle-bound barbarian with the rest of world, the creator assigns a number – say, 15 – to represent his Strength, and so on for all his other attributes. Rather than say the Sorceress is wise, we give her a Wisdom of 18, and let complex formulae determine how that translates into more powerful spells.

In all of this, these “statistics” are considered to be the virtual equivalent of a baseball card – they describe, not define. LitRPGs turn that on its head. No, the barbarian has a Strength of 15, ergo he is muscle-bound. The Sorceress not merely knows she has a Wisdom of 18, but she can do the math herself to determine how much damage her fireball can do. These statistics that were formerly abstractions become the ontological basis of reality.

My own LitRPG is about how a human being who touches the mysterious Cornerstone becomes a numerical entity himself – a delver, a creature of stats and levels and hit points and discrete abilities. Anything can be gained as a delver – beauty, power, magic, wealth. But what is truly yourself, when everything that you thought you possessed was merely a number? This is the question I proposed to ask, a question that can really only be asked in a LitRPG, and I feel I asked it successfully. Or, at least, my fans liked my answer. The City and the Dungeon was and is my most popular work to date. At its height, it was ranked #396 in all Amazon’s Kindle Store, and I sold enough copies to change not merely my career, but my life.

Lesson learned – You can be of more benefit to society and yourself by writing an entertaining work, regardless of how philosophical it is or isn’t. After all, I’m sure Jesus heard and read stories for entertainment, just like you and I. “I was bored and suffering, and you wrote a book that took my mind of it for a little bit.” But I did title this “Beauty in the Literature RPG,” and so I’ll leave on a more particular note to Catholic writers.

I had decided early on, when I decided not to write an Important Work, to generally leave Catholicism out of it. But as a layman-but-theology-nerd, I could not help but see places where theology was relevant. Some would inevitably worship the titular Dungeon, but a few, the labyrinthodules, would only venerate the Dungeon while worshiping a divine, transcendant Creator. And I decided, since I was on that subject, to sneak in a little discussion about veneration versus worship.

Meanwhile, I had also wanted to write a work that evoked myths and deep, transcendent mysteries. Though it is still a matter of stats and numbers, I decided that delvers could become like angels, through the use of the proper magical Angelstone. Being a fan of angelogy, and irritated at how angels are usually represented in fantasy as sexy ladies with wings and war bikinis, I broke out Ezekiel. The Cherub that appears in the story has four heads, four wings, and is covered with eyes.

That, by far, has gotten the most reaction of my secular readers. I heard complaints about the theology, but I lost count of the times people bring up the angels – always positively! Because, in the end, it’s not “truths” people read stories to hear – it’s Beauty. And Beauty will save the world.

Matthew P. Schmidt is a science fiction and fantasy author who writes primarily for the young adult audience. His most prominent book, The City and the Dungeon, is the book you just read about, presumably. In either case, he lives in Martins Ferry, Ohio

Dappled Things magazine has always been run by a team of dedicated volunteers who love Catholic literature, art, and thought. If you love these too, we currently have open volunteer staff positions! Interested in helping out? Please send your resume and a brief bio (~150 words) to dappledthings.editor (at) gmail (dot) com. Have a recommendation? Please encourage anyone who might be interested to apply.

The positions are as follows:

Book Review Editor: In collaboration with our editor in chief and president, correspond with authors, book publishers, and reviewers to ensure that reviews of books that will be compelling to our readers consistently appear in Dappled Things.

Social Media Editor: In collaboration with our web editor, pursue the good of Catholic literary tradition and of our community of readers through online engagement; curate content, schedule postings, and handle other duties as assigned.

Associate Editor: In collaboration with the team of associates, section editors, and editor in chief, review incoming submissions to the magazine, offer opinions in the magazine’s internal forum, and recommend submissions for print and web publication.

Managing Editor: In collaboration with the entire Dappled Things staff:

-Regularly review incoming submissions
-Assign monthly readings to associate and section editors
-Communicate with submitters and with authors whose work is scheduled to appear or has appeared in the magazine: send notices, answer queries, etc.
-Follow up with and prompt editors and staff as needed
-Participate in an annual scheduling conversation
-Handle other duties as assigned

We look forward to hearing from you!