I just got back from spending some time with good friends in St. Patrick’s honor. Here’s a picture from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin that I took when my wife and I visited Ireland. On a wall outside there are memorials to many of Ireland’s famous writers including Jonathan Swift and Samuel Beckett. Oscar Wilde’s boyhood home isn’t far away and there is, of course, the omnipresence of Joyce and Yeats everywhere in the city. The Book of Kells is another amazing piece of Ireland’s literary (and spiritual) legacy. Reading the prologue of John’s gospel in something that beautiful and old, well, that’s an experience.
Oh, and James Flory, if you happen to be reading this: Happy Birthday, old man. You’ll always be just a shade younger than this guy.