( Read more... )

I am of the opinion that the Preamble to the Constitution of Ireland is one of the most beautiful religious writings of the twentieth century. If you can get past the dodginess of using explicitly religious language as an enacting formula in the first place, that is.

In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as ( Read more... )

Mashimo read a lot of Wilde while he was working on Noir.

And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
   The hand that held the steel:
For only blood can wipe out blood,
   And only tears can heal:
And the crimson stain that was of Cain
   Became Christ’s snow-white seal.

I knew there was a reason why I loved both that poem and that show in such similar ( Read more... )

When I was in Ireland a few years ago I kept a diary. My entry for 1 July reads, in part:

'People in this part of Ireland are very religious and pretty superstitious as well. They're Catholic but their idea of God seems to owe a lot to the Cailleach, being deeply tied to some whirling, creative-destructive sort of physical nature. I was at the ( Read more... )