Lent/Easter 2006

A Call to Prayer

Dappled Things

Joy Wambeke

“For the poor souls in purgatory,” I heard my father mutter through clenched teeth. Through the shadows of the upstairs hallway, I could often see my father in my parents’ darkened room, his hands wound around his foot or grasping his knee. He always got ready for work at Sydney harbor in the dark so as not to wake mum. It was his habit to offer the inevitable bumps into furniture for the dead not yet in heaven.

It would be fair to say that mum and my father believed in God. [Read more…]

Wine Making to Marion Williams Singing

Dappled Things

Mela Kirkpatrick

When it quits working, seal the jar tightly and store in a dark place.
The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery

Swing low, sweet chariot

the gushes of juice,
   slurping between our fists
sunk in hundreds
   of purple-red grapes,

[Read more…]

The Egg

Dappled Things

Matthew Crane

There is an oblong thing.
Its white by candle yellow.

Inside, unseen innards
can goosh and grow and mix
a dash life- color, and down
in sticky strands to fluff
and feather flower forth,
a chicken, not an omelet [Read more…]

Chapel of Relics

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…]

Inthe Darkest Hours, Joy

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…]

Cloistered Conversations

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.

[Read more…]

I Am

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

[Read more…]

Phrases I’m Going Through

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…]

Emilia’s Playhouse

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…]

Aborting Metaphysics

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.

[Read more…]