Fencing Bear at Prayer

The numbers are in: although 55% of Belgians consider themselves religious , fewer than 10% of Belgians attend church on Sundays . According to a Eurobarometer poll taken in 2005 (coincidentally, only a few months before Pope John Paul II died), 27% of Belgian citizens claimed that "they do not believe that there is any sort of spirit, God or life-force." On the other hand, some 29% were willing to admit that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life-force," while 43% answered "I believe there is a God."* Presumably, it is this latter 72% that makes up the purportedly seven million plus Catholics in Belgium, some three quarters of the country's 10 million or so inhabitants . All I can say at the moment is, "It's a good thing I'm a medievalist, otherwise I might actually believe most of these numbers." To be fair, I've only been here two weeks, so who am I to say what Belgians believe? But there are certain anomalies ...

I went to a Taize prayer service last night, where the seven of us spent a good part of the hour sitting in silence . Was anybody listening? Were we? I have been typing all day today, taking notes from the manuscripts and so have very few words left. A meditation on color and the number of drops of Christ's blood, instead.* Perhaps, if I get far enough into Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled , I'll write a poem about it. For now, silence and the opportunity to listen to the rain.** *BL Egerton MS 1821, fol. 6v-7. Can you count the drops? They should, if John Lowden's calculations are correct, come to somewhere around 5,475 all told--in other words, 15 x 365: the number of wounds Christ received in the course of the Passion, 15 for every day of the year. ** 1 Kings 19:11-13 . There was, in fact, a great thunderstorm in the middle of the hour, with hail and a great crashing of rain on the roof of the chapel. And then came silence.