Fencing Bear at Prayer

Courtesy of my long-suffering but ever-so-stalwart son, a.k.a. the skeleton. What I'm saying: "Goodness, another church!" Sunrise over our last morning in Antwerp, and now we're on our way home via London.

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 ...

*With thanks to my son for formatting the nifty borders. Now he is making his evil sock monkey fly down from the loft in our hotel room. I just saw a slinky swing past.... I wonder what this says about the relationship between God, details, creativity and play?

I’ve started this post in my head several times in the last few days, but it keeps changing before I get an opportunity to sit down and write. At first it was simply going to be a “Where’s Waldo” reflection on looking for statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary on street corners (they’re everywhere here in Belgium; statues, that is, not just street corners). But then I started worrying about what this profusion of Marys might mean. A day or so ago, I hit my Protestant wall: I was no longer tickled to spot yet another Virgin peeking out over the doorway or under a spangled canopy overlooking the street, but rather almost disgusted at the near idolatry of it all. Then I started getting depressed. Was I the only one even paying attention to the fact that the Virgin Mother of God was supposedly watching over every street? Many of the statues are chipped and apparently uncared for. Perhaps Belgians notice them only when tourists clutter up the sidewalk taking pictures of them. I started ...