DappledThings.org

A quarterly journal of ideas, art, and faith

To Whom Much Is Given

J.B. Toner

My gift?  My gift?  My burden, onus, cross,
 Spine-bending load, soul-chafing, grinding yoke,
 Bit, spur, leash, collar whereupon I choke,
The gain that means my ease and freedom's loss—
This gift of words, bequeathed I know not why:
 This keenest hound without a scent to track,
 This knight without a dragon to attack,
This arrow with no target but the sky.
Thou madest me a steward, but what for?
  A herald with no message to proclaim,
Shall I condemn, exult, blaspheme, adore,
  Spit, sing, scream, carol, cry, laud, lie, praise, blame,
Repudiate my powers forevermore—
  Or only murmur patiently Your name?

Night Crossing

Amos Johannes Hunt

Who then is this, whom even wind and sea
submit to for instruction, who shuts up
their elemental raging, interrupts
their wild destruction with authority?
What then is this authority, that made
us cross at night, without a stated cause,
without assurance that the thoughtless laws
of nature would not trump our brave crusade?
Where then is this crusade advancing to?
What fate can this most questionary man
be on his way to meeting in this poor
and questionable world? And once more, who,
and who, and who is this, who proves he can
sleep easily when death is at his door?

Open Great Wide Doors

Stephanie Mader

I’m zipping down Parker Avenue, cursing myself and wondering why I didn’t charge my cell phone last night. If I were a smart man, which I sometimes claim to be, I might’ve called Tessa and asked her to sneak my charger over during lunch. Only, Mr. Boss-man was hovering around my desk all day. I could see his reflection in my computer screen. It’s like he knows. They were supposed to call today. [Read more…]

Catholic Education and Masturbation

Fr. Damien Ference

Much has been written about the dramatic shift that took place in Catholic education after the Second Vatican Council. The Baltimore Catechism was out and Buddy Christ was in. The memorization of basic foundational formulations of our faith such as the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes and the Corporal Works of Mercy took a backseat to a new style of catechesis fueled by construction paper, paste, and pictures that were assembled into a collage about how Jesus made us feel. Sin was a topic we never heard much about, unless sin meant disobeying mom and dad. God was nice and we should be, too. Jesus had long hair, wore sandals, and ate organic food. The whole experience of Catholic education in the early 1980s can best be summed up by the title of the hymnal filled with songs by Carey Landry and his fellow St. Louis Jesuits (who gave us the hit “Great Things Happen When God Mixes with Us”): Hi God! [Read more…]

Alessandro’s Ascent

Heather K. Thompson

Being a Miracle of St. Maria Goretti

She came
Into the brazen ferment of the times,
Like a clear sky over a glistening sea,
As enlivening as a fresh, earth-bedecked wind
That twists through the spaces between leaves and then collides
With the relentless bumblebee. [Read more…]

Answer the Question

Matthew Mehan

Little stars flickered behind the big ones. George had seen the big ones all his life, but this was almost too much. He’d read somewhere and remembered dimly that there were maybe seven—or was it nine—layers of stars to be seen in the night sky, and here, under this indigo dome ringed with pine trees, he fancied he could guess at maybe five, six layers.

“I see seven layers of stars,” he whispered to his sister. She, too, recalled dimly something perhaps their father had told them about Greek—or maybe Egyptian—astronomers seeing multiple layers of stars. She waved an unseen mosquito away from her ear. She rustled her windbreaker by moving her head to tell her brother that she’d looked over at him or nodded or something. “Incredible.” [Read more…]

A Private Matter

Katy Carl

“There’s a woman downstairs who wants to talk to Penny, but Penny isn’t here. Do you have time to sit down with her?”

Jim peered into the cubicle where I sat scrolling through e-mails and the morning news bulletins. Two weeks away from the end of my newspaper internship, I had grown fond of what our grizzled cop reporter termed “butt journalism”—- hooking up to the internet and telephone and letting the information come to you. Field interviews remained a thrill, but increasingly I liked a story you didn’t have to leave your chair to complete. [Read more…]

Refiner’s Fire

Shannon Berry

After

In the Old Testament, fire was a purifying element. The sacrifices were burnt because the Jews believed that their sins were transferred to the animal on the altar, and the burning devoured these sins and sent the aroma of repentance to the God above. In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul takes this idea a step further, adapts it to fit Christianity and says that we should offer our bodies as living sacrifices, making our very lives offerings to God, making our lives blazing, constant, purifying fires. Fires that burn, spark, and glow. Fires within. This same fire urged Teresa of Avila to reform her religious order, which had fallen into laziness and wealth. It drove her to sit for hours praying whether she felt anything or not. It’s a fire that isn’t extinguished unless we kill it, heaping buckets of lukewarm water on the blaze. [Read more…]

Ephphetha, that is, Be Opened

Shannon Berry

Then he looked up to heaven and groaned —Mark 7:34

I.

At the solitude of pinewood rooms
at the silence of photographs
the internal motions pause and quiver.

Words slide through sockets,
squeeze through cracks between hinges
press through the sieves of screens.

Letters burn like Autumn leaves
smoking out September. [Read more…]

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