Processions for All







Because it is so comforting (but mostly because it is nearly midnight and I have nothing to say), I give you this from The Path to Rome:

Then I looked down from the bridge across the plain, and saw, a long way off beyond the railway, the very ugly factory village of Thayon, and reached it at last, not without noticing that the people were standing branches of trees before their doors, and the little children noisily helping to tread the stems firmly into the earth. They told me it was for the coming of Corpus Christi, and so proved to me that religion, which is as old as these valleys, would last out their inhabiting men. Even here, in a place made by a great laundry, a modern industrial row of tenements, all the world was putting out green branches to welcome the Procession and the Sacrament and the Priest. Comforted by this evident refutation of the sad nonsense I had read in Cities from the pen of intellectuals—nonsense I had known to be nonsense, but that had none the less tarnished my mind—I happily entered the inn, ate and drank, praised God, and lay down to sleep in a great bed.

And so should I. Lie down to sleep, I mean. What a day! I didn't get to the Corpus Christi procession because my poor mother was sick and I had to drive her to the clinic. The last few days have been crazy in general... Expect more posting tomorrow!