Lent/Easter Dappled Things now available!

In case you haven't heard (this is popular news in the Catholic blogosphere), the latest issue of Dappled Things is now available. It's a magazine that showcases the talent of Catholic (and Christian) youth.

Plus, they have a great deal of their content available online! This includes fiction, poetry, essays, art and photography! Really worth a browse...

Reading an interview with the editor-in-chief, I have to say I really like their approach and philosophy (it's the literature major in me coming out):

How do you see the role of literature in Catholic life?

When the board of Dappled Things were all introducing ourselves via e-mail, we were all sharing our favorite authors. Nearly everyone mentioned at least one of the usual modern Catholic writers or writers with Christian sympathies: Dostoevsky, Tolkien, Tolstoy, Flannery O’Connor, Jane Austen and, especially, G.K. Chesterton. And to answer your question, I’m going to shamelessly steal an idea from G.K. Chesterton in his book Orthodoxy.

Chesterton writes about fairy tales and about “the romance of orthodoxy,” meaning that just as in a fairy tale the natural condition of the characters is one of wonder and amazement and simultaneously of struggle. There is something infinitely wonderful but also mystifying and difficult to accept about the great sweep and scope of the Christian story and the Christian life. Sometimes the fate of a character in the Christian story hangs on a great battle, a great sacrifice, a great journey. But sometimes, as Chesterton writes, the fate of a Christian depends on what he does on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon.

We as Christians need to be able to keep both in mind at once, the whole picture and the little details. Literature pays attention to both these extremes and to everything in between. Stories recount great feats of valor remembered for all human history, and stories recount those unseen internal battles that are so often 20 times more difficult than picking up a weapon and having it out. Poetry often touches on things great and small at once. Homeric poetry, for example is epic: huge in scope and extremely long, and at the same time individual images are perfectly crafted, often like little mirrors reflecting and illuminating the themes of the whole. Or a sonnet by Shakespeare — while concise and metrical, it manages to touch on the great mysteries of life and death.

Something I always like to keep in mind is that Jesus told stories. When he came to minister, he didn’t gather people around himself and hand out lists of rules. Of course he preached and prophesied, but he also told stories to convey to us what is true and real, who he is, how he cares for us, how we ought to live our lives.

There must be something perfect about the medium of storytelling if that is one way that God himself wants us to learn about him and our relationship with him.

High quality.