Tarwater clenched his fist. He stood like one condemned, waiting at the spot of execution. Then the revelation came, silent, implacable, direct as a bullet. He did not look into the eyes of any fiery beast or see a burning bush. He only knew, with a certainty sunk in despair, that he was expected to baptize the child he saw and begin the life his great-uncle had prepared for him. He knew that he was called to be a prophet and that the ways of this prophecy would not be remarkable. His black pupils, glassy and still, reflected depth on depth his own stricken image of himself, trudging into the distance in the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus, until at last he received his reward, a broken fish, a multiplied loaf. The Lord out of dust had created him, had made him blood and nerve and mind, had made him to bleed and weep and think, and set him in a world of loss and fire all to baptize one idiot child that He need not have created in the first place and to cry out a gospel just as foolish.
Flannery O’Connor, The Violent Bear It Away
***
Tonight’s musical offering:
Respighi: Pines of Rome (finale – Appian Way) – Slobodeniouk – Sinfónica de Galicia – OJSG
(for a powerful sensory experience – full-screen enabled, with headphones on and volume cranked from the very beginning – and stay with it through the wonderfully slow crescendo to a nearly over-powering, triumphant ending.)
Dispatches from the Asylum 