Moderator: Mrs. Bacich

The Stepinac Literary Journal is called The Phoenix. 

It is an opportunity for many students to show their creative writing skills through short stories and poems. 

The Phoenix is published annually. 

In the Garden of Paradise, beneath the Tree of Knowledge, bloomed a rose bush. Here, in the first rose, a bird was born His flight was like the flashing of light, his plumage was beauteous, and his song ravishing. But when Eve plucked the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, when she and Adam were driven from Paradise, there fell from the flaming sword of the cherub a spark into the nest of the bird, which blazed up forthwith. The bird perished in the flames; but from the red egg in the nest there fluttered aloft a new one- the one solitary Phoenix bird.

The fable tells that he dwells in Arabia and every hundred years, he burns himself to death in his nest; but each time a new Phoenix, the only one in the world, rises up from the red egg. The bird flutters around us, swift as light, beautous in color, charming in song. When a mother sits by her infant's cradle, he stands on the pillow, and, with his wings, forms a glory around the infant's head. He flies through the chamber of content, and brings sunshine into it, and the violets on the humble table smell doubly sweet.

The Bird of Paradise - renewed each century - born in flame, ending in flame! Thy picture, in a golden flame, hangs in the halls of the rich, but thou thyself often flies around, lonely and disregarded, a myth - "The Phoenix of Arabia." In Paradise, when thou wert born in the first rose, beneath the Tree of Knowledge, thou receivedst a kiss, and they right name was given thee - thy name, Poetry. 

THE LEGACY CONTINUES...