Author: AKMA

Walked and ran my two miles this morning, warming back into shape. I walked more than five miles a day while in Brussels, but a first-thing-in-the-morning run is a different beast, and I’m not going to force my creaky joints into a full-on run right away.

Back to work, too, with Morning Prayer in an hour and a half. Had my coffee, time to clean up and get dressed. Who knows what else the future holds?

We had a great time in Brussels, doing what we most enjoy doing on holiday*: visiting churches, resting, and eating. (I also enjoy hunting in second-hand bookshops, and looking for fountain pens and holy cards.) We devoted long stops to the Cathedral of St Michael and St Gudula, Notre-Dame de Bonsecours, St Jean-Bapiste au Béguinage, St Catherine of Alexandria, Notre-Dame des Victoires au Sablon, the Chapel of the Magdalene, St. Nicolas, and Notre-Dame de la Chapelle, with two fruitless stops at Notre-Dame aux Riches Claires.

Margaret also took a workshop on making chocolate truffles, and I walked and browsed.

The churches were breathtaking, as we expect in an ancient Catholic city. We were somewhat charmed by the legend of Béatrice Soetkens, who allegedly had a vision of the Blessed Virgin who prompted her (Béatrice) to sneak to Antwerp to steal ‘the miraculous statue of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw op ‘t Stocxken (“Our Lady on the little stick”)’ from the cathedral; apparently Our Lady was being neglected there, and she would be more fulsomely venerated in Brussels. Sotekens succeeded in her mission, sailing a boat upstream on the Senne to Brussels, despite the lack of a tailwind (some say she had to navigate into the wind), and despite having been detected by a nosy vicar who was frozen in place as she and her husband escaped with the stake-bound Virgin. When the sacred pirates arrived in Brussels, the statue was deposited in the chapel of the Crossbowmen’s Guild (as one does).

Sad to say, the ecclesiastical news from Brussels is not all ‘miraculous delivrance with stolen action figure’. Brussels, and specifically the [pre-cathedral-status] Cathedral of St Gudula. As best I can make out from Wikipedia’s NPOV narration, two clergy of St Gudula’s were caught out engaging in usury, so to distract from their guilt they blamed the Jews of Brussels of stealing consecrated Eucharistic hosts — that is, the very Body of Christ — and desecrating them by stabbing. The primary (alleged) wrongdoer was murdered shortly thereafter; when the alleged secondary malefactors stabbed the hosts, they bled; the alleged desecrators panicked; the hosts were entrusted to a Jewish woman who had converted to Christianity, to take them to the Jewish community in Cologne; instead, she handed the hosts in to the clergy of Notre-Dame de la Chapelle, who returned them to the church of St Gudula, where they were kept in a reliquary thereafter. The Duke of Brabant ordered that somewhere between six and twenty of the (relatively few) Jews in Brussels be burned at the stake.
This grim story of scapegoating, blame-shifting, and religious hatred at the expense of Jews (who can have had little to no interest in what Christians did with their consecrated hosts) persisted in city culture and was re-enacted annually as part of the celebration (!) of the miraculous preservation and return of the Eucharistic Body. That annual observance was suppressed in the aftermath of Vatican II, and a brass plaque is now attached to one of the main doors, saying that the accusations were ‘tendentious’ and the overall narrative a legend.

That strikes me as a faint-hearted apology for mob violence conducted under the auspices of the ducal coronet and ecclesiastical authority. Until churches step forward and acknowledge their complicity in acts of hatred and terror, and endeavour to show their penitence by actions of reconciliation and redress, the guilt remains.

On a less somber note, I found a Parker 51 but didn’t buy it; a holy card of St Eve, and did buy it; and a notebook folder with Magritte’s ‘Les mots et les images’ which you bet I bought.

So we had a magnificent time, shadowed by the persistent reminder of how cruel and base (not ‘based’) the church can be. There’s much more to see, but I’m not sure we’ll be going back; there are so many places we haven’t seen at all.

* ‘On holiday’, not ‘visiting family’. There’s a world of difference, even when the latter is a joyous occasion.

Laptop will be packed most of the day. No big plans, so meandering and shopping. Home tonight.

We had a lovely time, and will testify that the Motel One is a commendable compromise of price, convenience, and comfort.

Amazing tour of the excavated undercity in the royal district, a fabulous lunch there (above ground in the museum restaurant, not in the subterranean streets), a visit to Notre-Dame de la Chapelle, then Margaret and I parted ways and she went off to a truffle-making workshop while I wandered the streets of the Beaux-Arts district (‘Bozart’, on the street signs). I headed for the Chapelle de la Madeleine, cos when in doubt, always go to a church you haven’t yet visited. On my way, though, a street sign pointing to the Librairie Schwilden in the Galerie Bortier, caught my eye. Did M. Schwilden by any chance have some images pieuses, holy cards? Yes he did — and he brought out a shoe box filled with holy cards of many sorts. Only one of them came from the Société St Augustin, my special focus of collecting, but that card of St Eve of St Martin is in perfect condition. M. Schwilden has to vacate his shop by the end of August; I’ll keep in touch with him, to know where he and his goods land.

Then I looked in at the Chapelle de la Madeleine, a small church with modern stained glass, side chapels for St Rita and Our LAdy, and a cosy wee gift shop.

Margaret and I met up in the Grand Place, went to Fritland for an afternoon snack, thgen marched up the hill to our lodgings. A long day, but with distinct rewards.

Yesterday before Mass at Our Lady of the Victories (at Sablon), Margaret and I went to the Musée Magritte. It was a great visit — I knew many of the images, but the presentation (in conjunction with works of Jean-Michel Folon) worked effectively to contextualise his works and to set them in their biographical, historical, and sequential settings. Likewise the quotations inscribed on the walls constantly hark back to the intricacy of imagination and expression, cumulatively making a compelling case for his importance as a theoretician of imagination.

Most of all, though, I was unprepared for the intensity of his colour palette. Reproduction belies the vivid luminance of many of the canvases; at the risk of cliché, you simply have to see them to appreciate this element of Magritte’s oeuvre.

The exhibition also did well in depicting Magritte’s marriage to Georgette Beyer, a challenging, enduring relationship. There’s a good film to be made there (but made in Europe, please, not in the USA).

Best of all, for me, was the physical evidence that the Magritte curators think that ‘Les mots et les images’ stands as an especially illuminating instance of his understanding of signification, of painting, and of how it all works. Let’s normalise Magritte as semiologist and hermeneutician worthy of thoughtful consideration.

Yesterday morning I visited the Musée des Bandes Déssinée, then Margaret and I met up and walked to the Église de Notre-Dame de Bon Secours, then to the Église Saint Jean Baptiste au Béguinage, and last to Ste Cathérine d’Alexandrie. We would also have stopped in at the Église Notre-Dame aux Riches Claires but it was closed. (I didn’t even know there were Rich Clares, but there you are.)
Pizza for dinner back at base camp.

Steve and Melinda are gone, Si and Laura, Thomas and Lydia are gone, and Margaret and I woke up to a very warm day, with a hotel breakfast. I’ve been reading and chasing hares and remembering how good it feels to work (in the Foucauldian sense of ‘trying to think something different from what one thought before’). Maybe one or two forays into the outside world, but we’re committed to the premise that this holiday will not be hyperactive. We will seee a sight or two, but the highest priority here will be rest and renewal.

The days passed so rapidly, and so intensely! I will post some pictures shortly, but tomorrow the Harris-Adams return to Indiana, and Margaret and I will begin a full-on, only-the-two-of-us holiday for a week.

I hear those are really good things.

We’ve been all over the place for the past few days. I have run my two miles every morning, but very little else has been regular or normal. Laura, Si, Thomas and Lydia have been an inexpressible delight.

Two miles each of the past two days, pleasant weather, yesterday to the Didcot Railway Centre, this morning probably to the Abbey Grounds in Abingdon, much to do, all is lovely and well. Fantastic to spend some time with Laura, Si, Thomas, and Lydia — and that’s just after two days!

Ollie Watkins’s strike at the end was so magnificent — sudden, sharp, angled, outmaneuvering the defender, perfectly placed — the Netherlands’s goalkeeper didn’t really have a chance.

Squeezed in two miles this morning despite the weather forecast’s confidence that it was actually raining on me while I ran, cup of coffee with smaller dog curled up in my lap, will shower shortly and prepare the bid farewell to Steve and Melinda and Welcome! to Si, Laura, Thomas, and Lydia. Once the Harris-Adams get here, all bets are off; we’ll be responding to people’s food and sleep and entertainment needs 24/7….

The rain has decided to back off for a while, so I ran my two miles, had a cup of coffee and a banana, cleaned up and dressed, and will shortly head to town for more coffee and perhaps Morning Prayer with the clergy staff.