So, last week I finally returned to Knock again. Twenty years ago this year I made my first pilgrimage there, in the fall after I graduated from college. I walked - and hitch hiked - there from Belfast. I'd meant to try to make it all the way to Jerusalem by foot that time, but I only actually made it as far as Rome, and that mostly by bus, not foot..
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is all too weak.
This time I've made no such stupid resolutions, and am going to get to as many places as I can, any way I can. Still, I am back on that old path. I'll write about the genesis of the urge to do this, and other ancillary topics soon. In the meantime, I give you a little photo essay from the shrine up at Knock:
The facade of the original parish church, Msgr. Horan's ugly modernesque basilica in background.
Interior of said parish. Old School Irish Catholic Style.
Chapel of the Apparition, on back of the parish church.
The parish church, from vantage of the basilica.
This is what happens when you give some odd Irishman a camera..
Did NATO donate the dough me boys, did NATO donate the dough?
Blogger's gotten all squirelly on YouTube, so if that won't play, perhaps then this will:
I actually think the airstrip is more suited to anti-sub warfare in the North Atlantic, especially seeing as how most of the planes that actually ended up taking Qaddafi out flew from Italy..
Still, a song particularly suited to marking my pilgrimage to.. ah, Knock.
Father Horan, from the information desk giftshop:
Poor Old Father Jim's Gone to the Airport in the Sky.. Yet the Msgr.'s Still Very Well Remembered.
And just to clarify, the next field while actually full of rocks, was still quite comfortable. I know because I slept in it.
And on the way back to Dublin we passed by the airport, and while I couldn't get off to take a proper shot of the runway, I did get this:
And it's 88,000 feet!
And that's all I've currently got about that old aerodrome up in Knock. Cheers.
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