Flying Island

Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 9.21 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! We have two contributors in creative nonfiction. Both pieces offer moments of reflection. One piece draws a portrait of the writer's personal journey with 9/11 while the other draws a portrait of a man who has made a lasting imprint on the writer's life. We hope you enjoy this issue. Be on the lookout for fee-free submissions! We'd love to see your work. Check back at the end of October for the next issue. Happy Fall! Thank you for reading, Flying Island Editors CREATIVE NONFICTION Dan Carpenter, "Recovering Dom Sebastian" Robin Myers, "The Priest + The Chapel + The Pile" Follow us! Twitter: @JournalFlying Instagram: @flyingislandjournal Are you a writer who is from the Midwest or has close ties to the Midwest? We'd love to read your work. Submissions info in the tab above.

In the summer of 1970, when I was editor of the Marquette (University) Tribune , a story crossed my desk about a visiting scholar-writer-priest from Great Britain named Dom Sebastian Moore. An occasion for no more than mild curiosity in that setting; but I would come to know him well and personally, not in classrooms or offices or chapels but in grungy campus-area bars and seedy apartments. The agent for this odd development was my fellow student and friend Joe McCook, who was a stranger to theology and monastic tradition but a stranger to no human he met. Big Joe ran into a learned, affable, balding, middle-aged, globe-trotting monk in our seedy hangout for all tastes, the Avalanche Bar, and so began our story.      Prodigious socially as he was physically, the 6-foot-four, 230-pound ex-football player, along with his wry, forbearing wife Darlene, became drinking buddies with me well before that summer of my editorship and graduation. I guess they pretty much adopte...

The Priest + The Chapel + The Pile Remembering My 9/11 Journey Remember, the cloudless sky was a bright light blue when at 8:45AM, a plane crashed into the eightieth floor of the north tower at the World Trade Center. A freak accident? Then at 9:03 a second plane crashed into sixtieth floor of the south tower. Then a third plane crashed into the Pentagon. Later, when hijackers took over the controls of United flight 93 bound for San Francisco, Jim Beamer said. “Let’s roll.” Passengers stormed the cockpit.  The plane crashed into an open field in Pennsylvania, instead of it’s intended target in Washington. Planes were ordered to land at the nearest airport.              Our clergy staff met after the second plane crashed to plan of response to the attack.  That afternoon 5:00 PM I began the first hour of a three-hour prayer vigil. The following two Sundays neither of my colleagues spoke about 9/11 from the pulpit. I was to preach on the t...