from The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

By her own estimation, a plain woman, she did not wish to be a plain old woman. However I would also question her plainness. There were times when her face shimmered and flashed with its own beauty. There was the moment we stood side by side in the church, and I looked down at her face just the second before she said 'I do,' and then heard her say it, and then out of her face flew this extraordinary light, flooding up at me. It was love. You do not expect to see love like that. I did not anyhow.

from The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

As usual I don't have words for what I mean. I am trying to say I loved Bet, yes, soul to soul, and the lines and wrinkles were part of some other story, her own harrowing reading of her own life.

from The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

Even the grandees came to the pictures. ... It wasn't the church, but it was like the church, better, far better. It was at the pictures that you could look around and see that rapt gaze on people's faces that maybe the priest or the minister dreamed of one day seeing on the faces of their parishioners. The whole of Sligo in a damp crowd, all those different people and different degrees, paupers and princes, united by their enchantment. You could have said Ireland was united and free, at the pictures anyhow.

from The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

My next thought was that she was being cagey because she feared me, or was even perhaps in dread of speaking, in case it led her back to things she would rather forget. Of course either way I know she has suffered enormously. You can see it in in her eyes as plain as day. It is actually what gives her her strange grace, if I may say that.

from Traveling, a blog by my colleague Bethany Ferguson

John Updike says, “Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body. if the cells dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall.” Resurrection is as much physicality as it is theology. Belief in the resurrection doesn’t just change how I understand the world, it also impacts how I interact with it, especially with the things that are broken. Even as it seems that things are falling apart, I work by faith for reversal, reknitting, rekindling, resurrection, and look to the One who has promised He is making everything new.

from Life Together, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Word of Scripture should never stop sounding in your ears and working in you all day long, just like the words of someone you love. And just as you do not analyze the words of someone you love, but accept them as they are said to you, accept the Word of Scripture and ponder it in your heart, as Mary did.  That is all… Do not ask "How shall I pass this on?" but "What does it say to me?’" Then ponder this word long in your heart until it has gone right into you and taken possession of you.

from The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

It is funny, but it strikes me that a person without anecdotes that they nurse while they live, and that survive them, are more likely to be utterly lost not only to history but the family following them.