Students suffer COVID’s slings and arrows by drafting a creative opus

A just-published literary collection shows what can happen when four students at Catholic Pacific College and their mentor priest decide to make the best of a bad situation, namely COVID lockdowns.

University classrooms may have closed as a result of the pandemic, but for Father David Bellusci the move to online platforms became an opportunity to develop the writing talents of his students.

Father Bellusci reached out to interested writers and offered them online creative writing workshops. Now, the works of four students have come together in a collection of poetry, short stories, and drama called Sagittae Angelorum (Arrows of Angels).

The collection features the compositions of Dominic Nootebos, Joelle Joosten, Jeremy Joosten, and Lucas Smith, who expressed themselves in different genres of writing, receiving guidance on their submissions by Father Bellusci, who edited the publication.

Father Bellusci said the disruptive reality of cell phones and time-consuming internet activities led to a necessary shift in “habit-formation” so the students could discover, make use of, and share the creative gifts and talents God had given each of them.

They explored authors – including some translated into English – who were for the most part Catholic or whose writing was influenced by Catholic culture.

Included were Gerard Manley Hopkins (England), Flannery O’Connor (U.S.), Joseph Mary Plunkett (Ireland), Rainer-Maria Rilke (Austria), Gabrielle Roy (Canada), and St. John of the Cross (Spain). The international selection of authors served as models or mentors in raising ethical and existential questions in the underlying quest for God.

The work of Dominic Nootebos is written in a way that the reader is not just immersed in the story but experiences the characters’ emotions and thoughts. The effect is that the reader, like the heroes and villains in the stories, is left wondering, “What will happen next?” 

Each story lingers in the reader’s mind and pulls gently at the heart. For example, in Lost Love of the Haunted and Hollow, the reader is compelled to sympathize with the character of Dimitri, alone and trying to understand the fresh wounds of his solitude as the author leads his reader to the brutality of love and death. 

Jeremy Joosten’s poem Bus Ride to Italy” exposes a hidden world of “flying bears” and “cosmic feasts” from the comfort of an Italian bus seat. The reader enters Jeremy’s imagination and encounters stars, an enchanted world, companionship, and the writer’s underlying questions. For Joosten, undergirding his “Italian” adventure is a call to remember, “we’ve barely just begun.” Each piece prompts readers to reflect on their own lives, encouraging them to questions during moments of quiet contemplation as they immerse themselves in the writer’s creative expressions of ethical and existential realities.

In the short story Turbulence, Joelle Joosten takes her reader on a journey of love and agony. In this powerful love drama, she conveys the complexity of human emotions in the context of marriage, placing the reader into scenes with genuine characters who are personal and relatable. She creates fresh images and metaphors that provoke the reader into reflection and with a distinct voice constructs a passionate love story that also explores the value of commitment.

Lucas Smith’s Home Bound uniquely combines science fiction with Catholic spirituality. Common to other genres that Lucas explores, the reader is disillusioned from the comfort of the routine, with characters who overcome the sedentary dormancy of their souls with adventure, challenge, and greatness.

The story is set in space, which becomes both an intimate part of human existence as well as something beyond it. Mars and planet Earth are juxtaposed as opposing definitions for human beings’ purpose, and in a conversation amongst an endless sea of stars while travelling on the East Chaser, the reader is invited to ponder whether any person or place can fulfil the longings of the human heart.

Sagittae Angelorum is available from Wipf and Stock Publishers.

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