catapult magazine

vol. 7, num. 23 :: 2008.12.19 — 2009.01.02

Kids’ attempts to fit in can be transparent—from the right shoes to the wrong attitude. Some adults never lose that quality, while others make a comfortable outpost on the fringes of their communities. On our attempts and failures, intentional or otherwise, to fit in.

Feature

The freedom, the pain and the just desserts of nerdiness

by Bill Boerman-Cornell

Middle school lessons, for better or worse, become life lessons.

Editorial

Outside looking in

by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma

Remembering Simone Weil and a middle school band of misfits.

Articles

(Partly) rebelling against rebellion

by Deborah Leiter Nyabuti

Reflections of a pastor's kid on struggling against expectations.

The journey in…and back out

by Carol Brennan King

How a local writers' group changed from being a place of belonging.

I don’t listen to Sufjan Stevens

by Kimberly Randle

A suggestion from the margins of Christian college culture.

Conversation: “Duck, Duck, Goose”

by The *cino Community

Your opportunity to be a part of the conversation about (not) fitting in.

Reviews

Kirstin’s recommendations 12.19.08

by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma

Two historically-rooted fictions-a film about arms dealing and a novel about a Sudanese refugee-explore the lives of outsiders.

Out of darkness: A Mumbai story

by Neil E. Das

A review of the film Slumdog Millionaire, which tells the story of a boy who rises to fame on India's hottest game show.

Gallery

Olivia

by Rima Campbell

For Yeshua

by Michelle Julianne Gallagher

In case you missed it the first time

The evangelical expatriates

by Kate Bowman Johnston

A new breed of Christian inside-outsiders burgeons on the web and in the arts.

Death by ice or fire

by Janel Kragt Bakker

Life is a complicated game of Would You Rather? for a those who find pieces of home in two very different worlds.

Aargh, are ye me matey?

by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma

Certain manners of conviction can leave us feeling like outcasts in the empire.

Weaving the web

Rethinking what it means to be Made in America

Curator Magazine

Sarah Hanssen reviews a documentary about gang life in L.A.

Resisting the invitation

Killing the Buddha

A would-be spiritual director finds her own spirit difficult to direct.

Heretics

This American Life

The story of Reverend Carlton Pearson, a renowned evangelical pastor, who cast aside the idea of hell, and with it everything he'd worked for his entire life.

Columns

In[finite]security

by Meredith Kathryn-Case Gipson Hoogendam

What a kindergartener's fashion sense reveals about the mystery of God.

daily asterisk

Even in a country you know by heart
its hard to go the same way twice
the life of the going changes.
The chances change and make a new way.
Any tree or stone or bird
can be the bud of a new direction. The
natural correction is to make intent
of accident. To get back before dark
is the art of going.

Wendell Berry
“Traveling at Home” from Traveling at Home

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