And while I watched, she blessed herself with two hands

March 11, 2009

“Give out the Angelus” said the housemate when the bell started to gong before the six one, and I started to, and then we were both flying through it like mad things, taken with what an odd sort of thing it was to do for sport. I knew if I stopped for a second, I’d forget the words. I only know it by rote. It was only afterwards I realised that I also only know it in a monotone. 

HailMaryfullofgrace. The words merge. They’re not supposed to do that. They’re not supposed to mean nothing on your tongue either. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

2 Responses to “And while I watched, she blessed herself with two hands”

  1. Lottie Says:

    I’m the same – I can only beat it out under my breath at 10 words a second.

    My gran used to make us say 10 decades of the Rosary everynight until I was about 15 and there are certain prayers that I could still list off in my sleep.

  2. ccbreeze Says:

    I know it probably doesn’t count for much to say prayers at speed and without thought, but it’s curiously comforting all the same.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s