A news item last week reminded me of a story about the writer Flannery O’Connor. In one of her letters collected in The Habit of Being she described how she was present at a swanky literary gathering in New York where the author Mary McCarthy was a fellow guest. O’Connor was intimidated by the literati and said scarcely a word all evening. Then she describes the scene:
"Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the “most portable” person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.” That was all the defense I was capable of, but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable."
