TO THE BASILIQUE DU SACRE COEUR  today. Stunned by the huge number of awed, quietened tourist / pilgrims and by the Divine Office sung as I’ve never heard it before.

I’m hard pressed to put into words what moves me so in holy spaces like this. And that fact alone tells me something about what draws so very many pilgrims to come here on a misty weekday morning - the lack of wordy explanation!  Here there’s time and space for Françoise to recite Psalm 150 over and over again, for Annick to weep, quietly, without interruption. Here is something more than “doing the monuments of Paris” … much more to do with a growing recognition, more and more widely held as the noisy eons of our human religiosity pass by, held by people of many races and climes, that the beauty of holiness, the sacré coeur of faith, is often well approached in awed quietness.