Psalm 118 - my solace and my blessing - unfathomably deep. It is my backbone. - Ida Friederike Görres

I just revelled in that High Mass at Beuron Abbey on All Saints' Day..Of course it's a spectacle, but that's just what makes sense, the very same sense as monasticism in general...ritual as the reflection of glory. How marvellously impersonal it is - the strict anonymity of the monks, even more impressive when they raise their hoods. They are just figures and voices. What an achievement to divest oneself of everything private, individual, to enact this holy drama day after day, indifferent to one's personal mood, representing all of us simply as mouth of the Church.

Larion's Law by Peter Freuchen. An Indian saga written by a Dane who lived for thirty years among the woodland tribes of Alaska and even had an Eskimo wife...Really one is ashamed to belong to a white race...what we did to Indians, Negroes, Australian aborigines (not even out of political fanaticism either, but as a matter of course, en passant)

Legenda Aurea. To think that there's no Catholic edition of this most Catholic book!...Richard Benz sees it as epic and myth of the Middle Ages, exact parallel to the Gothic cathedrals. Sunk into oblivion with the epoch, rediscovered through the history of art, in the countless painters inspired by the Legend. Wonderful, costly and beautiful - but belonging utterly to the past, monument, museum: venerable, interesting , imposing - tout à fait passé.