They are really nice to contemplate on a Sunday with the morning cuppa, aren't they? Apropos of this wintry post, it's a chilly one this morning here in the midlands. Temps were hovering around 35 degrees Fahrenheit at dawn, which is near to as wintry as Ireland gets.
Something about the patience of these places; they're both sentinels and talismanic spaces indifferent to (above? apart from?) temporal concerns of the day. They reach both forwards and backwards in time yet remain plainly present. And at the heart of it there's always water: life, birth, sustenance, renewal.
Optera, your comment "...talismanic spaces indifferent to (above? apart from?) temporal concerns of the day. They reach both forwards and backwards in time yet remain plainly present," perfectly describes the feeling I had visiting St Mary's Well in Newcastle (see my comment below). You have articulated (much better than I did) the feeling of being in such a place.
Your comment about the patience and indifference of these places reminded me of Walter de la Mere's haunting poem, The Listeners. After the Traveler pounds on the moonlit door to inquire if anyone is there, come these lines:
"But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men."
I love the idea that in certain locations, someone or something is listening, and communication is happening, even if it is only in our hearts.
This past week I found myself wishing for Sunday morning to arrive and therefore your next installment of your Irish well series. They give me a great deal to ponder on as I go about my life during the intervening days - thank you.
I was in Newcastle-upon-Tyne last week and, inspired by this series, I visited St Mary's Well in Jesmond. It's a holy well down a wooded lane in a pleasant suburban neighbourhood, although I wouldn't be surprised if many of the people who live nearby have no idea it's here.
About a hundred yards along the lane you can step through a gap to find yourself in a gloomy hollow about 20ft across, surrounded by trees and a wooden fence.
A channel leading to the well source has been constructed of stone at some time in the past. On the day I was there there there was a smallish pool of water speckled with a confetti of early autumn leaf falls. Carved into the stone above the source is the Latin word 'gratia' ('thanks').
Despite being in the middle of a busy residential area, when I stepped into the hollow I felt as if I had entered another world. Everything was silent and dark, with a damp odour. I'd be tempted to say it felt spooky, but perhaps what I mean is 'different'.
This is a Marian well (like Derrycrag) and although there is no shrine here, there were offerings that were clearly recent.
An internet search tells me the well is linked to the nearby chapel of St. Mary, which was once one of the holiest pilgrimage sites in the UK. However, although the chapel dates to the 12th-century, the well supposedly dates to only the 17th-century, which I find a little surprising.
The well is Grade II listed, which means it is protected by law, and I found that there is a local 'friends' support group: https://www.stmaryswell.org
I spent about half an hour there and said a prayer to the Holy Mother before departing.
I will try to add a couple of pictures but I don't know whether the site permits this, so I apologise if they don't appear.
I was there more than 25 years ago in a small party led by Derek Brown. Things seem to have moved on. There was no listing then (?) and certainly no website. We could not have found the place without him. We also went to St Mary's Chapel and saw from the recent tokens, flowers as I remember, that it was still a place of pilgrimage. I am glad to have met Derek, a good man with a great depth of knowledge of history and pre-history. A conversation with him afterwards inspired a poem, ‘Finding Old Wells’ where I have acknowledge my debt to him. Paul’s recent series has prompted me recently to dig it out.
No problem, kind of you. I might have of put this one up somewhere already because Holy Wells and Derek were good memories. Otherwise I have never made poems public before but I was thinking last week of putting up the occasional poem on my substack if they chime with what I am reading or writing. But I am not sure I know yet how to use substack. I will give it a go. Thanks.
Well (no pun intended), you have started something.
Since visiting the well in Newcastle I have been looking into wells closer to where I live in Somerset and making plans to visit.
In a strange moment of serendipity (or something more intentional) I was listening to your conversation on ThePlough podcast and was struck by your reference to God breathing his spirit into the earth to make mankind (from Genesis). An hour after hearing this I was reading about holy wells in Somerset and came across a picture of one such at Watchet. It's called St Decuman's Holy Well (not a saint with whom I'm familiar). Engraved on the large marker stone denoting the well's entrance are these words: "God breathed and man became a living soul."
I spent most of this morning watering my houseplants with tap water... my orchids that I fuss over. For sure, spending so much time watering house plants, handling them, observing them, seeing their growth is in another time frame, like much of what we do around our house. It is not the time frame of this well, though...
Yesterday I was at the funeral of someone dear to me, a French man who was baptized Catholic at a late stage in his life. He put his considerable musical gifts to play music at the Sunday mass, and he and his talents will be sorely missed now, I fear.
One of the hymns we sang was for/to Mary :
"Look at the star, invoke Mary, if you follow her, you will fear nothing... she will lead you on the path....If your soul is overcome with anger ; jealousy, and treason overwhelm you, if your heart goes over into the abyss, carried away by streams of sadness, She rises over the sea, she shines, her splendor and her rays give light over the whole world, from the skies, to the bottom of the sea. If you follow (her), you won't stray, if you pray to her, you will not weaken. You will fear nothing, she is with you, and, she will guide you right into port."
She was with us yesterday, and at the well too.
...
I have not seen holy wells in France, and do not know if they exist in such a "rationalist" country these days. It's good to see that they're still alive in Ireland.
Not really. I have given you my loose English translation for what we sang in French. I can ask around some people who are much more knowledgeable about Catholic tradition in France than I am, and get back to you later in the week.
I am so happy that the school children wrote down their thoughts about this. In the craziness of the world we live in , these stories and memories will live on .
The rags on the Rag tree will come and go, stories will be handed down for generations to come.
I do understand the obvious connection of the Latin language to the notion of empire--both secular and ecclesiological. My own experience with the Latin Mass (aka the Gregorian Mass) is that it has been the most deeply, transformative Liturgy. Of course, that is just my experience. Others may find it to be otherwise. I have also attended the Gregorian Mass mostly done in Biblical English (some parts still in Latin). This is also very good. But for whatever reason the Latin Mass goes deeper for me.
Yes, I agree that somehow prayers said in Latin feel more magical, other worldly. Possibly because Latin is an old language, it was spoken in the time of Jesus and His word has come down to us partly through Latin translations. As a Roman Catholic I have to say that both the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary feel closer to the divine in Latin than when recited in current, everyday languages. And dare I admit that when it comes to the Lord's Prayer I much prefe the C of E version over the RC version?
Funnily enough, and I don't know why, I find that Latin prayers make me feel the opposite. They feel rigid and formal and foreign. Whereas prayers in the vernacular have the opposite effect for me.
Perhaps for an Englishman the King James Bible is the height of classical Christian poetry!
Oct 15, 2023·edited Oct 15, 2023Liked by Paul Kingsnorth
I find it interesting to consider how what we find formal is what at the time would have seemed normal: "thou" was just another pronoun, and they weren't trying to be fancy. I read the Bible in the New King James version, which was basically the King James but with some things like that made modern. I thought maybe that was okay since how I hear "you" is how they would have heard "thou", so the artificial gap was getting closed.
It's another story, though, if the distance is intentional. I just started reading *The Wake*, and wow, it took me about an hour to figure out what exactly I was looking at. But then I think my brain reconfigured and caught on to the pattern.
It is a very interesting question, language and old religion.
I think it’s perhaps a case of two very different, beautifully coloured birds.
Kjv was it’s day’s vernacular; koine (so?) Greek of my was a low language;
So yes reaching the people in our translations is good.
But,
So too is poetry. Is the feel of the sense of language that has been prayed through as it were by generations and so sanctified, beautified, and also grandma knows best family-arized etc.
… and I’m not convinced that today’s English really has the nuance and range to capture the same beauty.
It is a very interesting question, language and old religion.
I think it’s perhaps a case of two very different, beautifully coloured birds.
King James Version English was its day’s vernacular; Koine Greek of course was a low language (a fisherman's speech; everyday language of the people);
So yes reaching the people in our translations is good...
[of course God is here to frustrate the proud and elevate the humble. This simple language is a beautifully coloured bird. And simple as it is there is an iridescent sheen often to this simple language. What you read depends on the words but even more on the way that you see.
In fact it reminds me of the non-voweled script of Biblical Hebrew; what you read (out loud) is more to do with your own heart than the visible concrete text]
Rod and Jack, it's magical because of the cadence and all the long vowel endings. Palestrina would not have done what he did if he'd been working with German text. Spoken Latin is three-quarters of the way to plainchant already.
Thank you for the reference to your writing, the Cross and the Machine. They reverberate so deeply in me and speak to what has happened all my life....that relentless presence of Christ and the ongoing death and resurrection within me to admit my love for the mystical path of consciousness, the teachings command.
So fun to see these shrines and wells...they exist in the Azores too. There are villages there(Azores) that were settled by Irish that fled the potato famine..but the Portuguese are very devoted to Mary as well.
I was looking at family records there yrs ago and was so impressed with the beautiful hand written documents. Are they readable to the computer educated users of our time? I have heard that recent college grads can not read them...astonishing how advanced and lost we have become.
Sky blue is supposed to be Mary's color, right? That box is painted the same hue as the wellhouse from last week. I ran into this passage from the Orthodox theologian Florensky the other day:
“Sophia is the true Sky; in sophianic experiences the perception of blueness is present; therefore, blue is the natural symbol of Sophia, and hence the Sky—Sophia’s symbol—appears blue to us. In short, Sophia does not appear in a blue environment because the sky is blue; rather the sky is blue because Sophia has a blue environment.”
(He helped develop a school of thought where Sophia, the Wisdom of God, is closely connected to the Virgin Mary.)
In the Catholic West, Mary's colours are blue and white. In the Orthodox east they are blue and red. I don't know what the Catholic symbolism is, but in Orthodoxy, the red symbolises the heavenly realm, and the blue is the earthly or human realm.
Mary's icons have her wearing red over blue: symbolising that she is human but cloaked in divinity as the Mother of God. Christ's icons, by contrast, commonly see him wearing blue over red, because he is divinity cloaked in humanity: God in human form.
It's also apparently the case that in the Byzantine empire, blue was traditionally the colour of the empress.
So me and the machine are not getting along today. 🤣 I tried to type a comment twice. The first time most of the text deleted while I was typing (some glitch of iPhone where if you type to fast it sends a trigger to delete?!). Then the second time I finished and posted the comment, but then accidentally either deleted it or hid it irretrievably from myself and maybe everyone else (I don’t know).
Anyway I will try to summarize:
--Enjoying the well series, thank you!
--Inspired to check out holy wells if/when I ever make it to Ireland
--I have often instinctively looked for or wanted to note sacred natural places in my home place of Western Canada. But unless it is an acknowledged indigenous site, such markers do not exist
--The only other thing that comes to mind are “memorial benches.” These are usually in parks or along walking paths, and families will pay for a bench to be put in with a plaque on it acknowledging their departed loved one. On a couple of occasions I have seen benches commemorating a wedding or most touchingly, the birth of a grandchild (that one was particularly well done with a beautiful poem included.)
While this isn’t exactly a holy well type location it is a way of locating a sort of transcendent meaning on the landscape. I know I always feel compelled to read the plaques, though I can rarely tell much about the person from what is shared.
"We may be in the age of vaccines and gene therapy, but we are still, it seems, in the age of the rag trees too. Even in the heart of an Irish winter."
The poetic juxtaposition is striking. Reading about these ancient holy wells while being conscious that I am a 'modern' is a spiritual experience.
The opening of the well looks like the wound in the side of Christ. It does seem like the mysterious lady you met at the end of the chamber was Mary, who is always near the heart of her son. Are you familiar with Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Bernadette?
I really look forward to these well stories every Sunday, they make me so happy 🙏
They are really nice to contemplate on a Sunday with the morning cuppa, aren't they? Apropos of this wintry post, it's a chilly one this morning here in the midlands. Temps were hovering around 35 degrees Fahrenheit at dawn, which is near to as wintry as Ireland gets.
Something about the patience of these places; they're both sentinels and talismanic spaces indifferent to (above? apart from?) temporal concerns of the day. They reach both forwards and backwards in time yet remain plainly present. And at the heart of it there's always water: life, birth, sustenance, renewal.
Optera, your comment "...talismanic spaces indifferent to (above? apart from?) temporal concerns of the day. They reach both forwards and backwards in time yet remain plainly present," perfectly describes the feeling I had visiting St Mary's Well in Newcastle (see my comment below). You have articulated (much better than I did) the feeling of being in such a place.
Your comment about the patience and indifference of these places reminded me of Walter de la Mere's haunting poem, The Listeners. After the Traveler pounds on the moonlit door to inquire if anyone is there, come these lines:
"But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men."
I love the idea that in certain locations, someone or something is listening, and communication is happening, even if it is only in our hearts.
This past week I found myself wishing for Sunday morning to arrive and therefore your next installment of your Irish well series. They give me a great deal to ponder on as I go about my life during the intervening days - thank you.
I was in Newcastle-upon-Tyne last week and, inspired by this series, I visited St Mary's Well in Jesmond. It's a holy well down a wooded lane in a pleasant suburban neighbourhood, although I wouldn't be surprised if many of the people who live nearby have no idea it's here.
About a hundred yards along the lane you can step through a gap to find yourself in a gloomy hollow about 20ft across, surrounded by trees and a wooden fence.
A channel leading to the well source has been constructed of stone at some time in the past. On the day I was there there there was a smallish pool of water speckled with a confetti of early autumn leaf falls. Carved into the stone above the source is the Latin word 'gratia' ('thanks').
Despite being in the middle of a busy residential area, when I stepped into the hollow I felt as if I had entered another world. Everything was silent and dark, with a damp odour. I'd be tempted to say it felt spooky, but perhaps what I mean is 'different'.
This is a Marian well (like Derrycrag) and although there is no shrine here, there were offerings that were clearly recent.
An internet search tells me the well is linked to the nearby chapel of St. Mary, which was once one of the holiest pilgrimage sites in the UK. However, although the chapel dates to the 12th-century, the well supposedly dates to only the 17th-century, which I find a little surprising.
The well is Grade II listed, which means it is protected by law, and I found that there is a local 'friends' support group: https://www.stmaryswell.org
I spent about half an hour there and said a prayer to the Holy Mother before departing.
I will try to add a couple of pictures but I don't know whether the site permits this, so I apologise if they don't appear.
cid:5F1ED441-905C-4D07-9B37-488D16429F31
cid:75BEAA5F-11EC-4F5A-A5E8-FA3CADBFA752
Well, the pics didn't work but you can find images via Google.
Goodness! Thanks.
I was there more than 25 years ago in a small party led by Derek Brown. Things seem to have moved on. There was no listing then (?) and certainly no website. We could not have found the place without him. We also went to St Mary's Chapel and saw from the recent tokens, flowers as I remember, that it was still a place of pilgrimage. I am glad to have met Derek, a good man with a great depth of knowledge of history and pre-history. A conversation with him afterwards inspired a poem, ‘Finding Old Wells’ where I have acknowledge my debt to him. Paul’s recent series has prompted me recently to dig it out.
I would love to read the poem, if you feel like sharing it (no problem if not).
No problem, kind of you. I might have of put this one up somewhere already because Holy Wells and Derek were good memories. Otherwise I have never made poems public before but I was thinking last week of putting up the occasional poem on my substack if they chime with what I am reading or writing. But I am not sure I know yet how to use substack. I will give it a go. Thanks.
I'm pleased to be inspiring well visits. They are great fun.
Well (no pun intended), you have started something.
Since visiting the well in Newcastle I have been looking into wells closer to where I live in Somerset and making plans to visit.
In a strange moment of serendipity (or something more intentional) I was listening to your conversation on ThePlough podcast and was struck by your reference to God breathing his spirit into the earth to make mankind (from Genesis). An hour after hearing this I was reading about holy wells in Somerset and came across a picture of one such at Watchet. It's called St Decuman's Holy Well (not a saint with whom I'm familiar). Engraved on the large marker stone denoting the well's entrance are these words: "God breathed and man became a living soul."
I feel I am being drawn to visit these places.
I spent most of this morning watering my houseplants with tap water... my orchids that I fuss over. For sure, spending so much time watering house plants, handling them, observing them, seeing their growth is in another time frame, like much of what we do around our house. It is not the time frame of this well, though...
Yesterday I was at the funeral of someone dear to me, a French man who was baptized Catholic at a late stage in his life. He put his considerable musical gifts to play music at the Sunday mass, and he and his talents will be sorely missed now, I fear.
One of the hymns we sang was for/to Mary :
"Look at the star, invoke Mary, if you follow her, you will fear nothing... she will lead you on the path....If your soul is overcome with anger ; jealousy, and treason overwhelm you, if your heart goes over into the abyss, carried away by streams of sadness, She rises over the sea, she shines, her splendor and her rays give light over the whole world, from the skies, to the bottom of the sea. If you follow (her), you won't stray, if you pray to her, you will not weaken. You will fear nothing, she is with you, and, she will guide you right into port."
She was with us yesterday, and at the well too.
...
I have not seen holy wells in France, and do not know if they exist in such a "rationalist" country these days. It's good to see that they're still alive in Ireland.
Can you tell me more about that hymn?
Not really. I have given you my loose English translation for what we sang in French. I can ask around some people who are much more knowledgeable about Catholic tradition in France than I am, and get back to you later in the week.
I forgot to say that the last part of the hymn is very appropriate : "guide you right into port", because Mary is definitely for the drowning.
I am so happy that the school children wrote down their thoughts about this. In the craziness of the world we live in , these stories and memories will live on .
The rags on the Rag tree will come and go, stories will be handed down for generations to come.
Ha! It was the Pater Noster. But I probably said the Hail Mary in Latin too. Why Latin? I dunno -- it felt more magical, I guess.
Perhaps I am just bitter because my Latin extends no further than 'Caecilius est in atrium.'
I do understand the obvious connection of the Latin language to the notion of empire--both secular and ecclesiological. My own experience with the Latin Mass (aka the Gregorian Mass) is that it has been the most deeply, transformative Liturgy. Of course, that is just my experience. Others may find it to be otherwise. I have also attended the Gregorian Mass mostly done in Biblical English (some parts still in Latin). This is also very good. But for whatever reason the Latin Mass goes deeper for me.
For what that's worth.
Yes, I agree that somehow prayers said in Latin feel more magical, other worldly. Possibly because Latin is an old language, it was spoken in the time of Jesus and His word has come down to us partly through Latin translations. As a Roman Catholic I have to say that both the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary feel closer to the divine in Latin than when recited in current, everyday languages. And dare I admit that when it comes to the Lord's Prayer I much prefe the C of E version over the RC version?
Funnily enough, and I don't know why, I find that Latin prayers make me feel the opposite. They feel rigid and formal and foreign. Whereas prayers in the vernacular have the opposite effect for me.
Perhaps for an Englishman the King James Bible is the height of classical Christian poetry!
Here is a video on how to say the Our Father in Irish for those interested.
https://www.bitesize.irish/blog/ar-nathair-our-father-lords-prayer/
The Hail Mary:
https://www.bitesize.irish/blog/how-to-say-the-hail-mary/
It was for Shakespeare, and who are we to quibble with him?
I find it interesting to consider how what we find formal is what at the time would have seemed normal: "thou" was just another pronoun, and they weren't trying to be fancy. I read the Bible in the New King James version, which was basically the King James but with some things like that made modern. I thought maybe that was okay since how I hear "you" is how they would have heard "thou", so the artificial gap was getting closed.
It's another story, though, if the distance is intentional. I just started reading *The Wake*, and wow, it took me about an hour to figure out what exactly I was looking at. But then I think my brain reconfigured and caught on to the pattern.
It is a very interesting question, language and old religion.
I think it’s perhaps a case of two very different, beautifully coloured birds.
Kjv was it’s day’s vernacular; koine (so?) Greek of my was a low language;
So yes reaching the people in our translations is good.
But,
So too is poetry. Is the feel of the sense of language that has been prayed through as it were by generations and so sanctified, beautified, and also grandma knows best family-arized etc.
… and I’m not convinced that today’s English really has the nuance and range to capture the same beauty.
[I should be banned from typing on my iphone.]
*
Mark
23 hrs ago
It is a very interesting question, language and old religion.
I think it’s perhaps a case of two very different, beautifully coloured birds.
King James Version English was its day’s vernacular; Koine Greek of course was a low language (a fisherman's speech; everyday language of the people);
So yes reaching the people in our translations is good...
[of course God is here to frustrate the proud and elevate the humble. This simple language is a beautifully coloured bird. And simple as it is there is an iridescent sheen often to this simple language. What you read depends on the words but even more on the way that you see.
In fact it reminds me of the non-voweled script of Biblical Hebrew; what you read (out loud) is more to do with your own heart than the visible concrete text]
Rod and Jack, it's magical because of the cadence and all the long vowel endings. Palestrina would not have done what he did if he'd been working with German text. Spoken Latin is three-quarters of the way to plainchant already.
Thank you for the reference to your writing, the Cross and the Machine. They reverberate so deeply in me and speak to what has happened all my life....that relentless presence of Christ and the ongoing death and resurrection within me to admit my love for the mystical path of consciousness, the teachings command.
Why do you think Rod was praying a Roman Catholic prayer in Latin?
He explained above.
Prayed in Latin because he was in Ireland?
I’d have thought an old Gaelic prayer might suit. My language history is pretty hazy perhaps.
M
So fun to see these shrines and wells...they exist in the Azores too. There are villages there(Azores) that were settled by Irish that fled the potato famine..but the Portuguese are very devoted to Mary as well.
I was looking at family records there yrs ago and was so impressed with the beautiful hand written documents. Are they readable to the computer educated users of our time? I have heard that recent college grads can not read them...astonishing how advanced and lost we have become.
I absolutely love this series. There is so little of this in the US. The only thing I can think of is Chimayo and its holy dirt in New Mexico.
But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” Acts 7:55
Sky blue is supposed to be Mary's color, right? That box is painted the same hue as the wellhouse from last week. I ran into this passage from the Orthodox theologian Florensky the other day:
“Sophia is the true Sky; in sophianic experiences the perception of blueness is present; therefore, blue is the natural symbol of Sophia, and hence the Sky—Sophia’s symbol—appears blue to us. In short, Sophia does not appear in a blue environment because the sky is blue; rather the sky is blue because Sophia has a blue environment.”
(He helped develop a school of thought where Sophia, the Wisdom of God, is closely connected to the Virgin Mary.)
In the Catholic West, Mary's colours are blue and white. In the Orthodox east they are blue and red. I don't know what the Catholic symbolism is, but in Orthodoxy, the red symbolises the heavenly realm, and the blue is the earthly or human realm.
Mary's icons have her wearing red over blue: symbolising that she is human but cloaked in divinity as the Mother of God. Christ's icons, by contrast, commonly see him wearing blue over red, because he is divinity cloaked in humanity: God in human form.
It's also apparently the case that in the Byzantine empire, blue was traditionally the colour of the empress.
So me and the machine are not getting along today. 🤣 I tried to type a comment twice. The first time most of the text deleted while I was typing (some glitch of iPhone where if you type to fast it sends a trigger to delete?!). Then the second time I finished and posted the comment, but then accidentally either deleted it or hid it irretrievably from myself and maybe everyone else (I don’t know).
Anyway I will try to summarize:
--Enjoying the well series, thank you!
--Inspired to check out holy wells if/when I ever make it to Ireland
--I have often instinctively looked for or wanted to note sacred natural places in my home place of Western Canada. But unless it is an acknowledged indigenous site, such markers do not exist
--The only other thing that comes to mind are “memorial benches.” These are usually in parks or along walking paths, and families will pay for a bench to be put in with a plaque on it acknowledging their departed loved one. On a couple of occasions I have seen benches commemorating a wedding or most touchingly, the birth of a grandchild (that one was particularly well done with a beautiful poem included.)
While this isn’t exactly a holy well type location it is a way of locating a sort of transcendent meaning on the landscape. I know I always feel compelled to read the plaques, though I can rarely tell much about the person from what is shared.
Beautiful, the rags as incarnation of hopes. Makes me soft for humanity.
"We may be in the age of vaccines and gene therapy, but we are still, it seems, in the age of the rag trees too. Even in the heart of an Irish winter."
The poetic juxtaposition is striking. Reading about these ancient holy wells while being conscious that I am a 'modern' is a spiritual experience.
The opening of the well looks like the wound in the side of Christ. It does seem like the mysterious lady you met at the end of the chamber was Mary, who is always near the heart of her son. Are you familiar with Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Bernadette?