Sunday, June 16:
Blandine’s Communion! R. embraces me. “You have a lot to do, but the blessing is with you.” It comes from him, and when I see my good, earnest girl walk around the altar, I think to myself that no preliminary training could have prepared her so well, plowed her soul so thoroughly for the seed, as living in the sight of his image!
I ask R. not to come to church, but he appears in time for the sacred act. “There is a lot to be learned from it,” he says when we return home, “and it is always the human beings who dismay one at such times, the brutal human beings for whom nevertheless Jesus came to earth.” “Just in front of you was a face which really did look brutal!” “I should like to demand of our dear parsons that they remove their spectacles on such occasions. What do they need spectacles for? And it takes away all their dignity.” “Spectacles to see the word of God!” he says again later. R. deplores the wafer, would prefer a loaf of bread to be broken and distributed.
The 40 years of which Tauler speaks have already struck for me; today with all my soul I submerged myself, forgot the “harsh murmur” of mortal souls, or thought of them as better than myself. My thanks to you, my dear child, you have given me more than I have given you! I made you the gift of this sad life, you have given me this hour. Blessings on you all!
A quiet day, R. reads Renan, smiling over certain expressions, I sit beside him reading Dante, and we exchange impressions of our reading. Early to bed. R. is pleased that in Parsifal he has not depicted the action of the service in the Temple, but has concentrated everything into the blessing of the Grail.
During the service the sounds of Parsifal echoed within me and accompanied my child.