Happy St. Patrick’s Day Everyone, regardless of if it’s actually that day or not, this article was published on that day.
I am not Irish, not by a long shot; therefore, I’m not a descendant of a Celtic tribe who spoke the melodious Gaelic language. Part of me wishes I was whenever I hear a verse in Gaelic…there’s something about it that mesmerizes and captures your attention. A picture is created in my mind, that of a girl-woman who longs for simplicity yet greatness, not mediocrity but meaning…
Saol na saol, Tús go deireadh. Tá muid beo Go deo.
I love to comb through a Catholic writers’ writings and grab a hunk of their words with my metaphysical hands and assemble them together like Legos in an article highlighting the uniqueness and beauty of their work for all the world to see. In this particular case I am shinning a light on the work of Avellina Balestri who writes here, there and everywhere. She is a tremendous talent stringing together words in stories and non-fiction essays about the heart and core of Catholic faith. She is ecumenical and open-hearted to all people of all faith traditions who seek truth, beauty and love. So, if you’re not acquainted with her work, read and get to know her.
Patheos Interview
Until I get a new longer interview from her, here is A short interview from Getting To Know Patheos Writers Part 2 she did back in 2020 about her Patheos blog. It will give you an inside look at the mind of a woman dedicated to the art of writing.
The Interview
1. What do you like about being a Catholic Patheos Writer?
I enjoy the general Patheos Layout. Both On the website and just the fact that it is very diverse. It has a lot of different voices and can get a lot of different types of exposure then I might be used to with just my own followers. This Broadens it out. People who might not ordinarily read stuff that I write. That is one of the nice things that Patheos offers is the opportunity is to widen your sphere of influence and just get new experience and new interactions with different types of people and different authors.
2. What is the Main focus of your particular blog?
I’m not 100% sure if my particular blog has a single focus, it’s kinna a mix of things. I use the term numinous weavings on it because I kinna wanted to emphasize that I’m reflecting on spiritual things. And the effect of heaven meeting earth in different kind of ways. I’m a story teller. You know, so I’ll combine different types of articles. Sometimes I will do just reflections on spiritual things, theology or current events. I’m always trying to get something spiritual out of it. Or I’ll review art and media or stories or I’ll put my own stories or retellings of legends and so on and so fourth.
3. What’s your favorite article/Post you have written?
A personal one for me was my reflection on Christ in the Waiting Room. My encounters of seeing Christ in my Own Life. In just having moments that luminous reality coming to the fore, in that Christological encounter in places you might not ordinarily recognize it and suddenly feeling that grace penetrating the hum drum daily existence.
Christ comes to us in strange ways, in blessedly strange ways. I remember a day in spring last year, somewhere between St. Valentine’s Day and Lent, and I had some small religious epiphany. I was in a dentist’s waiting room, and the TV was playing the live action version of 101 Dalmatians. The scene was of the marriage of Roger and Anita, and without expecting it I found myself transfixed by the background. The painting showed the body of Christ being taken down by the cross, about to be placed in the arms of the sorrowing mother.
4. What is your favorite Catholic topic to write about?
It’s probably hard to say without connecting to a bunch of other topics because I would say I really have a sense of the connection to the concept of the trinity and trinarian mysticism. Which in turn is intrinsically connected to the notion of the incarnation God becoming Man. Which in turn is intrinsically connected to the passion and the resurrection. It can’t be taken apart. All those three things which mark out Christianity for what it is are indeed what I most enjoy reflecting upon. They mark us out as Christians and are the deepest facets of our faith.
5. If you are named a Saint, what would you be named patron saint of?
I’m tempted to say picking up projects other people have dropped. My name Avellina comes from a type of hazelnut that is crop that grows in the providence Avellino in Italy. Funny part is that Hazel wood is the stuff you throw on a fire that is dying to pick it up again.
I have noticed that in my life this has been a recurring theme. That whether it’s magazines or conferences or whatnot, a project that is about to die and somehow I get roped into springing the thing to life and kinna leading the charge to get it done.
So I would be the Patron Saint of Hazel wood projects.
Who is your favorite Living Writer?
My favorite living writer would probably be Bishop Robert Barron. I deeply appreciate his reflections on spirituality and life in general from a Catholic perspective, both his various articles and daily reflections. I keep up to date with , his books, his Youtube videos, documentary series. The Catholicism series is a classic. I find him as someone who is able to convey these truths in a very erudite and understandable fashion for a laymen.
The young people that I deal with on a daily basis through the web have a thousand skeptical questions about God, about religion, about the institutional Church and its moral teaching, about the Bible, etc. But underneath those questions are always an implicit fascination and a desire for connection. I believe they would like the Holy Father to know that they are still in the game, still eager to learn, still hungry—even when on the surface they might seem angry or disaffected. Their questions are not finally an indication of alienation from the Church—just the contrary. Bishop Robert Barron, How to Help Young People Find Faith: An Interview with Bishop Barron ( August 1, 2018) Word on Fire
If you could have lunch with any deceased writer who would it be, what would you eat and what would you talk about?
Carlol Houselander, who was a British Catholic author. Probably end up going to a British
British pub. Fish and Chips or something like that. That would be lovely and talk to her about Christian mystism. Hopefully somewhere in the English country side. That would be very interesting.
“Christ asks for a home in your soul, where he can be at rest with you, where he can talk easily to you, where you and he, alone together, can laugh and be silent and be delighted with one another.” — Caryll Houselander (This War Is the Passion)
And now I’m going to shine the spotlight on the many places you can find her writings about life, history, the church, love, and other various mysteries.
About Avellina
Avellina Balestri is a Catholic author and editor based in the historic Maryland-Pennsylvania borderlands. Her stories, poems, and essays have been featured in over thirty print and online publications including The Wisdom Daily, The Latin Mass Magazine, and The St. Austin Review. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Fellowship & Fairydust, a magazine inspiring faith and creativity and exploring the arts through a spiritual lens. Under its auspices, she had the honor of hosting a literary conference at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University, commemorating the legacy of J.R.R. Tolkien. Her hobbies include listening to and performing folk music, watching and reviewing classic films, and chatting with a zany array of international contacts. Avellina believes that the Trinitarian and Incarnational mysteries are reflected in all things good, true, and beautiful, and that the image of God is wondrously woven into every human heart. These themes are at the forefront of the stories she chooses to tell. –Avellina Balestri (Author of Saplings of Sherwood) | Goodreads
Robin listened and believed. How could he not? She seemed so wise, so full of fire and grace, like a fierce goddess of old in her tale-telling, plucking her lyre in the great hall on festival days, or like the Virgin Mary, kneeling in the chapel with a string of wooden prayer beads, carved like tiny roses, slipping through her fingers. The light from the stained-glass window would illuminate her face, and cause the coronet on her head to glisten like a halo. In her very person, she interwove the varied strands of their people’s legacy, forming a tapestry that was pleasing to behold. Likewise, mother and son shared a singular unity, right down to the color of their eyes, blue as a robin’s eggs or a cloudless spring sky, alluring and untamed.
Scattered and slaughtered, the Jacobites would never rise again until Judgment Day. Nevertheless, their legend lived in the very air, like sea-salt still swirling upon the wind, even as their bones moldered in common graves beneath a thin layer of ground. As far as Edmund was concerned, despite this painful past, it was still good ground, his ground. By now, most Catholics in Britain and Ireland had distanced themselves from the Jacobite courts across the water. Recusants in Lancashire were just as likely to toast and sing “God save Great George, Our King” as their Anglican neighbors, perhaps even more boisterously to affirm their loyalty to the reigning Hanoverians beyond suspicion. Besides, German Geordie had at least proven himself to be no coward of a king, putting his own royal body on the line while fighting the French at Dettingen. That, Edmund decided, made him a worthy Englishman at heart, even if his continental accent remained strong enough to cut with a knife.
My main inspirations for writing poetry are drawn from the religious, historical, and mythological traditions of both east and west. But I also delve into social justice and sense of place, two concepts which I believe are knit together. The idea of the personal and the communal permeates the desire for home which we all have, and which I believe will be fully realized in the world to come, though we might do our best to bring heaven to earth through our recognition of the divine spark in each person and the eternal purpose unfolding in time.
In every time and place, there have been those whose holiness and insight have marked them out as an example to be followed. Their reach has been universal, like rain falling upon the seeds of spiritual growth, both for their con-temporaries and the generations that came after them. They provide timeless guidance for living a life of wholeness that encompasses body, mind, and spirit in the service of God and in solidarity with our fellow man, springing up through the ages to confront the conditions that faced them, and continue to face us.
Sometimes they helped change the world through actively advancing caus-es of social justice; other times they did so through the contemplative preservation of wisdom. We hear their stories, and read their writings, as if they were still among us today, pointing the direction of the pilgrim’s path. They shape our collective consciousness, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. They take us by the hand and lead us out into the desert, or far across the sea, or to any “thin place” where heaven and earth, temporality and eternity, can meet.
Her Articles
Her theological reflections expressed in essays and stories are scattered around the web. Here is a small sampling of some of her profound thoughts. Look around and you will find more.
The sun sets red against the mountains, and I take her smooth white hand, like the petals of the first blossoms of spring, and bring it to my lips In gratitude. It is sweeter to me than the water, as is the rose blooming in her cheeks. There are crystal tears melting from the blue of her compassionate gaze, and the sea could not have been more mesmerizing. I thought I heard its waves tumultuous against the shores of her golden hair, like the sunlit sand, and her footsteps along the corridors lull me to sleep. They do not bring dreams of the ethereal lingering of elves, but of the hearty survival of men. Our future. Our world. For Wrath, For Ruin: A Lord of the Rings Fanfiction – Avellina Balestri – Official
Carmelite Poetic Imagery
Oh, ye lovers, hear! Listen to the voice within you that calls you so often, the will between seen and unseen that reveals itself through all the senses, and yet is beyond them all. Kiss and be kissed by the wind, for it is softer than any lips, and fear not when the kiss ends and lips grow dry. You will pray until they bleed, and believe yourself forsaken in the dark night of your soul, crossed between heaven and hell in exile. And yet you will hear, in your own voice echoing, the sound the Beloved beckoning. You may wander the desert as Majnun seeking Lela, as Solomon seeking Sheba, as the Maji seeking Jesus, and emptiness must be your consolation. Wisdom seeks beauty, and beauty clothes wisdom… Oh, Ye Lovers!: A Meditation On Rumi And St. John Of The Cross – The Wisdom Daily
Christmas
There is more to Christmas than just Christ’s birth. It serves as the beginning of an epic, and Advent is the prologue whereby we prepare for the first spellbinding chapter. There’s a thread running through Christmas that ties into so many other Christological elements, including Christ as Divine Lover, in concert with the poetry of St. John of the Cross, whose feast aptly coincides with the Advent season on December 14.
But I feel that this depth and dimension often gets overlooked in the over-sentimentalized secular seasonal hype. It is a 3-D sort of depth, set against the backdrop of darkness and death and a frozen landscape. It is brittle bleakness in the bleak midwinter, bearing up against the frosty wind, iron ground, and stone water. The elements have given up their ghosts and seem to be suspended in a state of waiting – waiting for the light, the breath, the rush of some solitary stirring that speaks of life’s return. Avellina Balestri And Thy Word Broke Their Swords: The Empowering Depth and Dimension of Christmas (December 19, 2016) OnePeterFive
Devotion to Christ
I knew that many young people were leaving the religion of their upbringing for other alternatives, but while I did broaden and deepen my interpretation of certain aspects, I never felt the urge to leave my Catholic faith nor cease being a Christian. Perhaps the main reason for this, in addition to various other factors, was Jesus Christ Himself who kept calling me back to the heart of the Universal Church, burst and bleeding and crowned with thorns. For wherever I turned, even in the bleakest moments, there I encountered Christ, and Him crucified. In Him, and through Him, I found the meaning of redemptive suffering which unites all suffering souls in solidarity with the cross in an ongoing flood of transformative love. And of course, that is the heart of what Easter has always meant to the faithful: Love will have the last word.
–Easter to Me: A Personal Reflection on Holy Week – Avellina Balestri – Official
Faith, Fact and Fiction
Longing For Heaven
Powers rise and fall. We’re only here for a test. It’s not home. When I’m quite dead, I hope to find my way home. But I don’t seek a home here, not really. I am homesick for a place I have never seen. No, more than a place. A reality I have never known, and yet which I was molded to know, and which I have caught glimpses of in everything and nothing…a knowing beyond knowing. That transcendent reality that made the greatest theologians say that all their words were as unto dry straw by comparison. –Lightworkers In A Starless Twilight | Avellina Balestri
Mary’s “Magnificat
I am often impressed by the sheer level of courage that comes through Mary’s “Magnificat”, when this spirited teenaged Jewish peasant girl predicts that the Lord will “scatter the proud in the conceit of their souls, and exalt the humble,” reminiscent of the teenaged David’s victory over Goliath with nothing but a shepherd’s sling-shot. Her words are a ringing cry for justice, and though she is often referred to as meek and mild, she also speaks with the roar of a lioness and the wisdom of a seer. Perhaps she exemplifies Christ’s own instruction to be as “wise as serpents, yet innocent as doves.
Gentleness and strength; education and humility; passion and compassion; obedience and freedom. These attributes are not at odds with one another, but in Mary find their balance and their union. She is the precursor of Joan of Arc, a maiden warrior on a spiritual plain, carrying forward the standard of Israel, just as Esther did before the king on their behalf. But now her act of acceptance to do the will of the Lord will extend the Covenant beyond her own nation to all the nations of the world. And through this child born to her in the stable straw, this young man doomed to be betrayed by his own people and put to death by foreign conquerors, the proud of the world shall know their overthrow and the humble will travel the royal road to freedom, crossing the new Red Sea of Christ’s blood.
I’ve held my son in my arms today. It was so long since last I did that. Years. For three years now he has been dying to me, a little at a time. I suppose I knew this is how it would end. But you always hope, you hope against the darkness, you hope against death. But he was dead. I saw him. It is a strange thing.
I’ve never seen him…dead before, he who was always so full of life, more fully alive than anyone I have ever known, pulsing with youth, agility, vigor. Life…now drained out. Yes, I’ve seen him asleep many times, I’ve sung him to sleep as a child. Inside my womb, I imagine he slept. But tonight I saw him…dead. Every muscle, every potential movement never to be made, forever made stone. Mother of Sorrows – Avellina Balestri – Official
Pro-Life
I have seen abortion and it’s aftermath, and it has scarred me, as it has scarred so many in this country and across the world by greater or lesser degrees. I have been a a pro-life advocate nearly my whole life out of sympathy for the vulnerable which I believe we share. But you call this savage business “healthcare;” I call it an ugly, vile, brutal atrocity against fellow members of our species that solves nothing for the mother or child. It just spills blood, which cries out from the earth to the heavens. Violence begets violence, and permission to commit violence is permission to destroy not only another person but also oneself. –An Open Letter To Senator Bernie Sanders | A Catholic Woman Writer Expresses Some Concerns About Pro-life Issues To Bernie Sanders.
Robin Hood
I am beginning to wonder now if the story of Robin Hood actually helped me make sense of the story of Jesus Christ, or indeed simply brought it more deeply into perspective for me. Because Robin, in a most inverse way, was still living out the Gospel by filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty and was laying down his life in the process. Avellina Balestri, Growing Up with Disney’s “Robin Hood” (April 15, 2020) Longbows & Rosary Beads @ Patheos Catholic
What Makes Literature Catholic?
Writing Religion in Fiction
In terms of historical fiction, I feel that my method is closest to Leo Tolstoy in his epic War & Peace. I appreciate richly layered narratives imbued with a profound sense of spirituality and exploration of morality, using the background of the Napoleonic Wars in Russia.
In fantasy worlds, direct references to this-world religions tend to detract from the whole (thus the need to either use allegory or allusion), but in historical fiction, one can really lean into the way that Christianity (or indeed any other faith, depending on the setting) permeates a particular culture and time period, which then inevitably shapes the characters and their philosophies of life. This is how I have utilized world-building in my retelling of Robin Hood.
The website that lets Avellina let others shine in their unique creative voice.
Literature worthy of the name is ultimately an appeal to the transcendent. Stories can be a glimpse of the eternal, and here at Fellowship & Fairydust, we believe stories are worth being told. As Madeleine L’Engle said: “Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.”
We invite our readers to immerse themselves in tales that traverse darkness into light and kindle sparks of hope even when all other lights have gone out. As JRR Tolkien wrote: “The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places. But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater.”
We strive to exercise the precious gift of sub-creation, bringing ideas into reality and revealing the artistic nature of every soul. Pope St. John Paul II summed this up: “None can sense more deeply than you artists, ingenious creators of beauty that you are, something of the pathos with which God at the dawn of creation looked upon the work of His hands.”
The need for food and drink and the need for sleep and indeed all other needs are a clear reminder to us that actually we are in constant need of God and we are in need of him all the time, he is the true cherisher and sustainer of the universe he is independent, self-sustaining, everliving and not in need of any of the things we need. Yet we in our arrogance and in our own self-glorification only remember him in times of adversity, when hanging from the edge of a cliff, stranded in a dry dessert, drowning in a deep ocean when he is worthy of constant worship and constant glorification. So this Ramadan although I may have been deprived of food in the literal sense, it has definitely given me some food for thought on many other levels. -ARUSHA AFSAR
Being a lampade, Elbert could take off his head without dying. As such, he placed the pumpkin on his shoulders and it became his new head. Meanwhile, the spunkie had fed the turnip lantern cinnamon mixed with other wood, and something else that he did not disclose. This threw everything into disarray. Those lanterns could not be taken back, unless the two gave them up willingly, which they did not. With their newfound strength granted them by the lanterns, they defeated the guards and took off to find themselves a new home. -AMANDA PIZZOLATTO The Legend of the Magic Lanterns – Fellowship & Fairydust
Fellowship & Fairydust: Serials
The Scarlet Tanagers started to sing again and flew into the air. As Migka watched they moved as one body and formed a red whirlwind. Quicker and quicker they flew around until the fallen leaves and small rocks on the ground lifted into the air. The small scarlet birds began to dissolve into one another until there stood Ung. Beautiful, but frightening Ung was the unknown, he was language, he was the wild unseen places. He wore all yellow and his face was a mirror which Migka now saw himself struggle in.-CASSADER GARDUNA –Breaking Dinner Plates – Chapter 2: Where Scarlet Birds Fallow – Fellowship & Fairydust
F &F: What started you on the journey of historical fiction writing in particular?
Nicole Pierman: I was a pre-teen when I first started writing A Patriot’s Tale– but don’t worry, it’s not the same book. I went through seven vastly different drafts over the course of twelve years before I finally published my novel. I watched Mel Gibson’s “The Patriot” and knew even as a child it was not historically accurate. I was always confused (and still am) when people take huge liberties with historical fiction in film and books. So, I decided to write my own story set during the American Revolutionary War. Author Interview: Nicole Pierman – Fellowship & Fairydust
Avellina on the Web
For more information about the author and her various projects, please visit the following websites:
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