church paraphernalia

here is a model of a festive church which we saw at our friends’ house last night.
it was all sparkly and glowey and quite kitsch.

it was a sunny morning and the light reflecting off the building on the other side of the road produced this spotty effect on this church.

i’ve never walked past westminster cathedral cathedral before despite having been to this area of town dozens of times in the last few years. i guess i’ve just never walked past that bit of the road.
i love how you can work in london for over 7 years and still completely miss a famous landmark !

i went in to this church last time i was in brussels and saw this fantastic statue stuck up by a window. my attempts to photograph it failed last time, so i tried especially hard this time.
here is jesus’ mum on a boat calming the storm. just as well the grown up jesus had his mum there to do all the miracles for him. she’s got jesus in one arm and a pepper grinder in the other !

read the actual story here

few people are aware but in addition to carpentry the young jesus also had a job as a street performer where he and his mum would balance flower pots on his head

the light from a stained glass window produced an anti-window on the brick wall (and the angle in the foreground).

this stained glass window in a church in ghent produced a psychedelic overlay on this painting. it was like someone had gone mad with highlighter pens.

here’s a collection of things mounted together in a display in a church. it contained a number of ceramic dolls legs.
and i found that quite disturbing:

here they are in situ:

and here are the central characters through a fence:

in these modern days putting numbers of psalms and hymns on church boards seems a bit retro. churches are often 10 years behind in terms of technology. we’ve only just moved to using an over head projector at our church, but it does its job so why buy a whizzy projector ?
this is another belgian photo which i took when my feet were too tired to walk. so i sat for half an hour watching people get ready for mass. then i left.

here’s another one of thoese bizarre catholic statues where the baby seems to have a grown up’s face. unfortunately you can’t really tell in this picture as i was too far away ! but you know what i mean.

i took lots of pictures of religious icons in and around churches whilst in belgium. i’ll spread them out a bit so they don’t become too monotonous.
here’s mary in a mental hospital (i’ll explain why i was in a mental hospital another day). the sky, sun and statue really did all like this when i took the photo.