Things Fall Apart
It happened just as I was walking home after attending Easter Vigil Mass on Holy Saturday. I was walking because my youngest child got antsy during the ritual for welcoming new converts—which, essential as it is, does add significant time to the Mass—and so my wife and she left slightly early in our car.
The night sky was already descended when I exited the church. There were just a few blocks of streetlights around it to walk past before I came to the cemetery I routinely make part of the trajectory from there to my home.
As I walked and reflected on the meaning of the celebration that had just ended, in the black of the cemetery air, I noticed, once, then again, and yet again, flashes of bright light in the corner of my left eye. I thought initially it might be automobile lights behind me, but I failed to find any cars on the street. Then I guessed it might be my glasses doing something funny with glimmers of light from the houses in the distance. I removed them, but the flashes of light did not disappear. When I got home, I noticed fuzzy floaters in that eye that had not been there before the Mass.
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Alexander T. Riley is a senior fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization and a member of the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars.
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