Dublin 5

July 18, 2010

Service at St. Patrick’s this morning, the choir of Worcester College, Oxford in residence. They were exquisite. They sang Byrd’s “Ave Verum Corpus” from somewhere back in the ambulatory, and the effect was at once sublime and disturbing, as if one were a sort of inferior spirit in heaven, and could hear the angel choir only from a distance. The sermon, by the parish Treasurer, was a defense of Martha against Mary, in despite of Christ’s own rather unambiguous words. Must have addressed some local political issue we knew not of. I lingered in Temple Bar so as to go to Evensong at either St. Patrick’s or Christ Church, but as I was listening to the singer at Temple Bar pub, I fancied I was becoming ill, and hurried back to the Charles Stewart. I was not ill at all– in fact, something made the whole journey back hilarious to me, and I laughed at secret jokes most of the way. Something preferred that I didn’t go to Evensong.

During the service the simple thing I believe out of the complexities of Christianity became clear to me as it had not before, clear, rational, true to true emotion, convinced and convincing. I have run afoul of the world when I sought to write such a thing down before, but I will try again.