As I get older, I find religion increasingly odd. I'm a bit bemused that people don't, as they experience life and all the arbitrariness and misery it has to offer, conclude that surely it can't all be part of some grand plan or omniscient construct. I realise that my bemusement is down to my failure to understand the concept of faith, which by definition requires you to accept that there is a rationale for the seemingly irrational, but my mystification increases all the same.

Which brings me to Saint Therese. Her bones (or some of them at least) have been touring the country, and people have turned out in their thousands to see them. I'm almost lost for words at how bewildering this is to me. These are the bones of a woman who, while undeniably good and worthy, was still just an ordinary person. She lived a simple life, which apparently is what made her special. She didn't have any visions or similarly ethereal experiences. Why on earth are people bothered about seeing her bones? Which in fact you can't even see, given that they're contained in a big silver container. Which in itself is inside a perspex box. The bones are said to promote healing, and although I imagine that's the motivation of some particularly superstitious visitors I refuse to believe that tens of thousands of people are turning out for that reason. What the blazes is going on here?

Here's what I find oddest about it though. If I were religious, I'd be a lot more interested in what was happening on the spiritual plane than the corporeal one. The whole business of religious relics seems to be missing the point to me. The advantage religious people have over the rest of us (or disadvantage, depending on your perspective) is that they have a spiritual dimension which we do not. Why sully that purity of vision by worrying about bones and shrouds and miscellaneous other bric-a-brac? If God is going to be within you, surely he's going to make a direct trip. He's not going to find a route in via a heavily guarded femur.