Faulkner and Faith

I have long loved this excerpt from Faulkner's Light in August. It is a description of the Reverend Gail Hightower's (character in Light in August) thoughts on the Sunday evening prayer meeting. When I first read it several years ago it captured my own boyhood experience of the Sunday night service.

I don't want to add much reflection. I just want to share this excellent piece of writing...

"Sunday evening prayer meeting. It has seemed to him always that at that hour man approaches nearest of all to God, nearer than at any other hour of all the seven days. Then alone, of all church gatherings, is there something of that peace which is the promise and the end of the Church. The mind and the heart purged then, if it is ever to be; the week and its whatever disasters finished and summed and expiated by the stern and formal fury of the morning service; the next week and its whatever disasters not yet born, the heart quiet now for a little while beneath the cool soft blowing of faith and hope."