Friday Links Are Back! 12/16/22
[Editor’s Note: This Friday Links post is courtesy of the newest member of the Dappled Things team, social media editor Mary Finnegan. After several years working as a registered nurse in various settings including the operating room and the neonatal ICU, Mary works as a freelance editor and writer. Mary earned a BA in English, a BS in Nursing, and is currently pursuing her MFA in creative writing at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. Mary’s poetry, essays, and stories can be found in Ekstasis, Lydwine Journal, American Journal of Nursing, Catholic Digest, Amethyst Review, and elsewhere. She is an assistant editor at Wiseblood Books and leads writing workshops for Catholic Literary Arts. Welcome to the masthead, Mary! —KC]
+ "The Hymn of Juan Diego,” a poem for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe by James Matthew Wilson
+A new verse translation of St Ambrose’s Advent Hymn by E.J. Hutchinson in First Things
+Wiseblood Books 2023 anticipated publications and a Christmas discount
+Hillsdale College Chapel Choir singing ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’
+Paul Pastor’s challenge to Christian writers in Ekstasis
+The Merry Beggars: An Audio Advent Calendar recording of A Christmas Carol
Though Advent is a penitential season, the Church, in her wisdom, dapples these four weeks of waiting with feast days. Hopefully, on the first major feast of the season, Saint Nicholas’ Day, you awoke to find your shoes overflowing with chocolates. If not, this week’s Friday Links should fill your heart with delight and an ever growing gratitude for the beauties of this world.
"The Hymn of Juan Diego,” a poem for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe by James Matthew Wilson
James Matthew Wilson’s poem, “The Hymn of San Juan Diego,” is a wonderful way to recall the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the miraculous image left on Juan Diego’s tilma. This is the second poem in Wilson’s song cycle inspired by the Mass of the Americas, called The River of the Immaculate Conception, which is available from Wiseblood Books. According to Wilson, he “adheres in most respects very closely to the original Aztec-language account of the apparition.” Wilson’s vivid poem recounts Mary’s appearance to Juan Diego on Tepeyac hill as he was walking to mass, her promise to be mother to all those who seek her, and her request for a church to be built in her honor. The poem reminds us that Juan Diego’s efforts to fulfill Mary’s request brought him scorn from “the bishop’s jeweled servants” and abuse and mockery from the “the brute crowd at the bishop’s door.” When Juan was finally able to see the bishop, he unfolded his cloak to reveal not just a shower of fresh roses, but an “image of that placid queen/Ablaze with teal and gold.”
Our Lady of Guadalupe’s message was then what it has always been: we must seek to be “by Her love transformed.”
The offertory at the Mass of the Americas, picture from the Benedict XVI Institute
+A new verse translations of St. Ambrose's Advent Hymn by E.J. Hutchinson in First Things
E.J. Hutchinson’s new verse translation of St. Ambrose’s Advent Hymn, “And the Word Became Flesh,” appeared in First Things on December 13. As noted in First Things, this hymn “takes the Incarnation of the Son of God as its theme. St. Ambrose weaves together the Gospel narrative with Old Testament texts and Nicene Christology to turn the singer to the song’s subject in personal faith.”
The hymn reminds us that Christ, carried to birth in the pure womb of the Virgin, was “begotten not of mortal seed” and, though equal to the Father, He wore “the trophy of our flesh and blood.” And, gloriously, the hymn reminds us that with the Incarnation, the “barren night” becomes “numinous.”
+Wiseblood Books 2023 anticipated publications and a Christmas discount
Joshua Hren over at Wiseblood Books released a list of anticipated publications for 2023, as well as an offer for 20% any orders placed before December 31, 2022. If you haven’t completed your Christmas shopping (I certainly haven’t!) or if you want to treat yourself to a new book (always!), Wiseblood has a long list of must-haves. I highly recommend Alfred Nicol’s new translation of Julien Vocances’ 100 Visions of War. It is a stunning sequence of haikus that turns the Japanese form on its head.
As Dana Gioia stated in his preface to the book, “more than a century after its publication, Vocance’s sequence has lost neither its shock value nor its strange tenderness."
For fiction lovers, Sally Thomas’ recently released debut novel, Works of Mercy, offers a more domestic, but no less moving, vision than Vocance’s war poems. This lovely, quiet novel will sneak up on you, just as a chaotic family, a new pastor, and a hairless, eyeless kitten, all sneak up on Thomas’ protagonist, Kirsty Sain, breaking through the high wall around her heart.
+Hillsdale College Chapel Choir singing O Little Town of Bethlehem
Dr. Timothy McDonnell directs the Hillsdale College Chapel Choir in this lovely arrangement of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” This traditional Christmas carol was written by Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal priest, when he was rector of Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia. Brooks was inspired to write the lyrics after a visit to Bethlehem. Dr McDonnell’s arrangement maintains the simplicity and beauty of the original while highlighting the interweaving voices of the choral choir.
+Paul Pastor’s challenge to Christian writers from Ekstasis
In his recent enticing essay at Ekstasis, “Treasures of Darkness,” Paul Pastor continues the conversation about Christian writing, encouraging Christian writers to return to their wild roots. This piece is as much manifesto as essay, and like any good manifesto, it makes bold and audacious claims, inviting Christian writers to seek once again, “treasures in darkness.”
Paul lives in a wild place, near the Columbia River in Oregon, and spends as much time as he can outdoors, wandering through the forest, searching for epiphanies. He often finds these epiphanies in the unlikely kingdom of the Fungi. In this essay, Paul muses on the nature of oyster mushrooms, the “stallions of the mushroom world.. at once vicious hunter and abundant gift, wise, fierce, and generous.”
You may be wondering what mushrooms have to do with writing. For that answer, you’ll need to read the essay, but rest assured, Paul offers insights that make the reading worth the effort. As a poet and editor, Paul knows his way around the written word just as well as he knows his way around the forest. He calls on the Christian writer to hunt once again the mysterious spiritual and literary treasures of the image — “symbol, archetype, and icon” — and intuition, or “gut-knowing.” Pastor, in this essay/manifesto, promises that if writers hunt “within the rich, damp logs of our lives…we will find ourselves routinely in the company of vast and mighty presences…”
Read the essay and follow Paul at https://www.pauljpastor.com.
+The Merry Beggars: An Audio Advent Calendar recording of A Christmas Carol
And, finally, The Merry Beggars are presenting a new kind of Advent calendar with their audio recording of that Christmas classic, A Christmas Carol. You can subscribe to The Merry Beggars and receive a new episode each day of Advent. Don’t worry, it’s not too late to sign up. You can also go to their website or your favorite podcast platform to listen.