Sierra Highlands

This passage, towards the end of the short story Revelation, has been on my mind recently since I wrote about Flannery O'Connor a few days ago.

There was only a purple streak in the sky, cutting through a field of crimson and leading like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk ..A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extended upward through the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling towards heaven.... And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away. Flannery O'Connor, Revelation