A quarterly journal of ideas, art, and faith
Matthew Alderman
Matthew Alderman
The glacial white paint comes peeling away
From the monumental doorframe,
Peeling away in great strips like some fabulous
Undiagnosed disease:
And the columns all around are cold and mottled,
Pale and dead and grey.
I stand at the grate,
Looking in through holy prison-bars
Rich with swirling ironwork arabesques
Moorish Palermo turned baroque. [Read more…]
Dappled Things
Tonita M. Helton
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church.
Colossians 1:24
During a Mass I recently attended, Archbishop Chaput preached in his Homily of those stricken by painful disease and illness and said of them, that those who suffer so, and suffer well, “do more good for the kingdom than any words a Bishop like myself could ever offer.” [Read more…]
Dappled Things
Jessica Hoelzer
“Inner silence, Mother. I struggle with inner silence.” I shudder as I always do when confessing my weaknesses. My Mother Superior responds with a grave nod of her head.
“A common admission, most often from novices and young postulants. But you have been here almost eleven years. Has your heart always struggled like this, or is it one of those regresses we often encounter on this long walk with our Savior?” She speaks, as she always does, with a sincere desire to be of service, but the solemnity in her tone betrays the gravity of her question. My eyes stray to the familiar furnishing of Mother Olivia’s office. Wooden bookcases line the walls, but they are not packed and overflowing like those of a library. Instead, each shelf is filled only halfway with books or file folders. The other half lies in wait, expectant. Her desk is made of the same color wood and is empty except for my file, a Bible, and a small glass dove, a reminder of her patron saint, whose spirit returned to heaven in the form of a dove. An icon of peace.
I know the answer to her question, but I don’t know how to express it. There isn’t a one or two word response to describe my feelings, and I cannot find my voice. After living by the rule of silence for so long, my vocal responses are limited to the Liturgy of the Hours, Mass, and Confession. I finger the wooden beads of my Rosary inside the folds of my cream colored habit, searching for words.
Dappled Things
Terence Siren
I am an Artist A Poet A Prodigal Preacher A Wanderer A Pilgrim I am a Truth Seeker A Hopeful Romantic A Lover A Fool Ever toeing the line between Foolish and Cool
Dappled Things
J.F. Lovell
As I see it
it recedes into the distance,
as dreams projected on the backs of eyelids
disappear into the dense fog of memory.
Forever elusive, forever mysterious,
forever sought after once it’s lost.
Son, even now I sense in your wide-eyed gaze
an instinctive awareness of its passing.
[Read more…]
Dappled Things
Noel Bava, SJ
There are things that despite the passage of time tenaciously remain unchanged. And love like a lingering wound, though it may heal, leaves a scar which never fades, never wanes.
I first met Emilia when my mother asked me to collect from her mother, Mrs. Rivera, the fifty pesos she owed her. That was actually the third time that I was dispatched by my mother to their house, which to me looked more like a chicken coop painted white. At first, I did not like the idea of wasting half an hour going there and back. I wanted to be with my cousins flying kites in the fields, but Papa’s thick leather belt nudged me into obeying my mother’s request.
This third time visiting Mrs. Rivera’s house was like the first two: no one answered my knocking. But since the front door was left ajar, I gave in to the temptation of peering in to take a look inside their little shanty. The house was bare and very dark with unwashed dishes lying all over the place. A faded picture of Our Lady was the sole adornment inside. I noticed a little girl leaving from the back door. [Read more…]
Dappled Things
John Di Camillo
The abortion debate has become mired in confusion over the interpretation of science. Abortion advocates have generated much of this confusion in two ways: first, they assert that science is on their side through their reduction of an unborn child in early developmental stages to “a few cells” or simply “fetal tissue” that is not yet a human being; second, they deny the validity of a religiously inspired stance as anti-science and based on unprovable, dogmatic metaphysics.
The proposition that science supports abortion is inherently flawed because science in and of itself is incapable of making moral judgments. It is objective, empirical, and non-partisan. Experimentation and scientific results present us with fact, not ethical analysis. Science forms the raw material upon which decisions of acceptability must be made: the fact that a biological human being during its developmental process consists of only a bundle of cells—only a single cell at its beginning point!—does not tell us whether we can justifiably destroy him or her during that phase. This requires ontology: a metaphysical analysis of the nature of a human being and what constitutes life.
Dappled Things
J.B. Toner
Well, answer me, for God’s love, Christ, speak up—
Explain Your perfect Paradise to me,
Where Clare and Francis sup (quite possibly)
With those who poison your once-sacred cup:
With rapists, killers, child-molesting priests,
Where Stalin (maybe, through Your holy grace)
Meets tortured gulag inmates face to face
And sings hosannahs at the endless feast!
Yes, You forgive us, Lord, I know that part—
But we’re just human, Jesus, You forget,
So how can we forgive what we have done?
— Oh, wait. . . Your human mother’s human heart
Was pierced by me, and each of us, and yet
She loves me still, the killer of her Son.
Dappled Things
Clay Reherman
To many, the phrase “hard times in America” brings to mind stark images of the 1930s: Ecological and economic disaster, powerful storms following close upon one another, high crime, starvation, despair, societal depression in every imaginable degree and mode. We may thank Mr. Steinbeck for this mental association: His painting of the “dust bowl days” in The Grapes of Wrath has imbued three generations with a notion of what it’s like when a nation is visited by the Angel of Death.
1934
Most Americans in those days had an idea that a sentence of doom could be carried out from above, below, or somewhere. While the 1920s had been exceedingly prosperous and “liberating” to most classes of people, there was still an honest fear of God left in this country: Like a thief in the night, the Angel of Death snuck up on folks, and even a proud craftsman like Garv Atwood could be left holding the bag.
[Read more…]
Matthew Alderman
Matthew Alderman
Vita Nuova, xxvi
I saw faded beauty once
Pass me by in a gallery of stippled Seurats:
Maybe she was an English teacher,
A soccer mom in homely new white sneakers,
A nurse in jade-green scrubs.
You would have never called her pretty,
Nor stopped, admiringly at a distance,
Draping a chaste lechery in classical garb with the wan
Affectations of swooning lovers,
And bothered to notice her. [Read more…]
