Ward Goes to Poland, Churches

Ward recently took a trip to Poland and occasionally does a guest post here about his trip.

St. Mary's Basilica, Krakow. 

I don't pretend to understand the religious history of Poland, but I did learn a few things on my trip.  We saw a number of churches and cathedrals that had changed throughout history, to and from different religions as the ruling countries changed. At the end of the post, I tried to do a brief summary, if you're interested in a little more detail.*

The Polish constitution allows for religious freedom, but over 70% of the population identifies as Roman Catholic (7% say they do not identify as having a religion, the 0.4% are various Protestant religions). And because Christianity is considered an important part of Poland's history and culture, it is taught in schools. 

Currently, religious education is 2 hours/week, but a proposal is to cut it back to 1 hour/week and not count the grade in the GPA. Not everyone is happy about that, and we saw protests against the change. I found all of this very interesting because it is so different than our treatment of religion that we are familiar with in the US. 

The protest we saw for Solidarity in Warsaw. Our guide said that it was about the issue of cutting back on religious education in the schools, among other things.

Most everywhere we went, we saw beautiful churches and cathedrals. I had to Google the difference between them:

A church is a general term for any Christian place of worship, while a cathedral is a church that serves as the seat of a bishop and is the main church of a diocese. A basilica is a church designated by the pope for its historical and architectural significance, and a chapel is a smaller place of worship that typically does not have a permanent congregation or priest.

Here are a few of the churches and cathedrals we visited.

This is St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Wroclaw. It is a Cathedral because it is the Bishop's church, and is the seat of the Archdiocese of Wrocław. 

St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Wroclaw

Brass model of the cathedral. We saw a lot of these brass models outside many of the churches.

Inside St. John's Cathedral. Every time, I was impressed with the grand, tall, open space.

Next, we saw St. Elizabeth's Church in Wroclaw.

The tower was originally 130 meters (425 feet) tall, but was destroyed by fire. When rebuilt, it is now only 91 meters (300 feet) tall.

St. Elizabeth's Church official name is the Garrison Church Military and Civil Parish of St. Elizabeth. I think it got that name as part of the de-germanification of Poland at the end of WWII. This church was originally built in the 14th century. The old stone plaque is in German because this had been a Lutheran church since 1525. It was Lutheran until the end of WWII, then became a Catholic Church. The more recent sign (in Polish) has mass schedules. 

Inside St. Elizabeth's

Next, we visited Kraków. Kraków was the capital of Poland for many years before Warsaw became the capital. This was because the King had made an alliance with Lithuania, and Warsaw was more central in the new kingdom.

Very pretty St. Mary's Basilica in Krakow's town square.

St. Mary's Basilica at night on the town square, which is active both in the daytime and at night. 

In Warsaw, we visited Holy Cross Church, which is famous because

Frederick Chopin's heart is buried in a crypt here. He died in Paris, but told his family he wanted to be buried in Poland. It was too hard to bring his whole body back, so his sister cut out his heart and brought it back to this church in Warsaw in a jar filled with cognac, approximately 1850. 

The church is also really pretty (but they are all pretty) and supposedly has a splinter of the original cross. 

The Holy Cross Church, with a painting by Canaletto in the mid-1700s of the same church, and a photo below of the church after the devastation of WWII.

You can't tell from the photo, but the interior of the church burned to the ground, so the church is just a shell at this point. 

We went off the beaten path to visit the town of Lomza, where there were church records of my ancestors. It was very interesting to see descriptions of marriages and births.

The Cathedral of Saint Michael the Archangel at Łomża. We met with a records specialist here who helped us find and decipher family records. Some were written in Russian and some were written in Latin.

The next day, we went to Miastkowo, which is a small town with the parish church nearest to the village of Czartoria, where my family was from.

Here we found more records, but there was no one to translate them for us, so we took pictures, hoping to find someone to translate them later. We also saw several family names in the church cemetery.

One afternoon, we toured Krakow's Jewish District. This district was named Kasimierz after King Kasimir III, who, in 1335, formally declared the area, then a suburb of Krakow, a town where Jews and ethnic Poles could peacefully coexist. That happened until WWII.

Notice the white wall on the right-hand side of the picture. The top of the wall is street level. The white building with the green roofs is a synagogue that was built below street level because Jewish synagogues were not allowed to be taller than any Catholic church.

We saw more beautiful churches, both inside and out. And they made me wonder about the money and labor that went into creating them.

*I tried to boil down the very complex religious history in a few words below. I think I got the general points right.

Roman Catholicism formally began in Poland in 966 AD and has been the predominant religion in Poland since then. Other Catholic religions (Greek and Russian Orthodox) have a part in the history of the country and have current populations.

While the borders changed (frequently) with Germany, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Czech, and Hungary all exerting dominion over Polish territory at some time over the last several centuries, the dominant religions of those countries extended into Poland. 

Also, the Protestant Reformation affected Poland, with Lutherans (mostly from Germany) and Calvinists (from Switzerland) coming to and staying in Poland.

In the Middle Ages and into the Enlightenment period, Poland was relatively more tolerant of religious diversity than most of the rest of Europe, so there was an influx of people of different religions (Baptists, Moravians, Jews, etc.) looking to settle there to practice their religions in peace.

Flowers

 Continuing with yesterday's nature theme, here are some of the flowers that are still blooming in our yard. I took these pictures a couple of days ago, and some of the flowers have faded more since then, but they are still lovely to see.

Until next time...

Thankful Sunday

Ward and I took a walk today, and this hymn is what I was thinking as we were enjoying the beauty of autumn.

For the Beauty of the Earth

For the beauty of the earth

For the beauty of the skies,

For the love which from our birth 

over and around us lies:

Lord of all, to thee we raise 

this our joyful hymn of praise.

For the beauty of each hour

of the day and of the night.

Hill and vale and tree and flower,

Sun and moon and stars of light:

Lord of all to thee we raise

This our joyful hymn of praise.

Words: Fol­li­ot S. Pier­point, in Lyra Eu­cha­rist­ica, by Or­by Ship­ley, se­cond edi­tion, 1864.

Music: Dix, Con­rad Koch­er, 1838

Pictures from a walk today in Fountain Rock Nature Center.

Until next time...

Black Cat Day

 There's a day for everything now, and today is Black Cat Day. So, in honor of Black Cat Day, I'm going to rerun a post about the black cat we used to have, Lucky. 

We got Lucky with his sister Lucy, as a young kitten from one of Theo's classmates. When Lucky was a few weeks old, he followed his mother out a door that closed on him before he was all the way through. His family thought the slamming door had killed him, but no, Lucky had other ideas. When he came to us a few weeks later, he was a healthy, playful kitten that we named Lucky because of the good luck he had already had in his young life.

It was soon evident that he was the dominant cat over his littermate Lucy, a sweet, gentle girl. Three years later, he remained the top cat when the other two cats, Leo and Annie, came into the house. Despite constant challenges from Annie, Lucky remained in charge. No need for swats or growls to keep the others in line. A stern look from him was all that it took.

As part of his leadership role, he was a leader in the food department. He was the one who got to eat first and the one who opened the food bag for the others. He could tear a hole in a new bag of food in no time flat. Then the others got to enjoy the spoils of his efforts. We tried to put the food away as soon as we got it, but he was amazingly fast at this trick.

He also got first crack at the prey that ventured into our house. He didn't bring the dead mouse or mole to us, as many cats do; he hid them under one particular rug in the basement. The same rug that he did his trick of lying on his side and running around the edge of it. We don't know what all of that meant in cat behavior, but I guess he did.

Lucky was also a relaxed cat who enjoyed a good lap to purr on and a pat from anyone — stranger or not. Even the vet. That was until he had some medical problems that needed invasive procedures. After that, the vet was not his friend. In fact, sometimes it took two or three of the most experienced people at the vet's to help Lucky with what he needed. Can't say that I blamed him. I wouldn't have been very happy with the people who poked and prodded me for no good reason that I could understand. But he and I survived, as did our other cats he hissed at for several days after they had been to the vet.

He was also our adventure kitty. All of our cats were indoor cats. They were curious about the outside, but happy to watch the show from a window. A door left open by mistake might get a cat creeping outside, but never a dash. So we couldn't figure out how and why we would occasionally find Lucky outside meowing at a window to come back in. He seemed happy, just ready to come inside for a bit of warmth. Sometimes he had been out all night, and we didn't even know he was out there. One time, he helped us figure out that we had a torn screen (maybe he tore it), but other times, we never figured out how he made it out. But he always came back.

Lucky had a good, long life of 18 years, and we still miss him.

Book Reviews

 Evans Above by Rhys Bowen, adult mystery, 1997

This is the first book in the Constable Evans mystery series. It is rare to find the first in a series on a library shelf, so I snapped it up when I saw it.

Evan Evans is a constable in the small Welsh Village of Llanfair. He was training to be a policeman in a larger city, but came back to his roots for a quieter way of life. 

Llanfair is quaint, and the villagers are an interesting group of people in this cozy mystery.  The town is small and everyone knows everything that is going on. Evan is an eligible bachelor, and it is the goal of many in the village to find a wife for him. The village is situated below picturesque, ragged mountains. The quaint atmosphere is ruined only by a large hotel at the edge of town, which brings guests to town who keep needing to be rescued off the mountains by the village folks. Evan, who knows the mountains well, is part of the volunteer rescue team.

The victims show up fairly early in the story when two men are found dead in the mountains. At first, it looks like a climbing accident, but Evan thinks there's more to it than that. He follows his instincts and plods through to solve the murders despite the fact that his superiors tell him to stay out of the investigation.

 It was an easy, fun read without a complicated plot. Sometimes mystery plots are so complex that I have a hard time following them, but not this time. The book was written almost 30 years ago and shows its age at times. For example, everyone who was married had their wife at home. But that is a minor part of the book. I will probably read another Constable Evans book, but prefer the Royal Spyness Mysteries by Bowen.

The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock, juvenile historical fiction (upper elementary-middle school), 2018.

Somehow, this book slipped under my radar (I'm going to blame it on COVID), but it was quite well-received. Here's a list of accolades it got

"A Newbery Honor Book * Booklist Editors’ Choice * BookPage Best Books * Chicago Public Library Best Fiction * Horn Book Fanfare * Kirkus Reviews Best Books * Publishers Weekly Best Books * Wall Street Journal Best of the Year * An ALA Notable Book" (Amazon)

The book takes place in the Middle Ages (1350) in France and Italy. One third of the European population had just been wiped out by the pestilence (Bubonic plague), and hundreds of thousands of people were pilgrimaging to Rome. 

Boy, an orphan, has a hump and is ridiculed and stoned because of it. However, he has some protection from the family he works for and the local priest. Secundus, a pilgrim, passes by one day and wants Boy to accompany him on his journey for a few days. The journey turns out to be more than a few days as Boy helps Secundus secure seven relics he is looking for.

Boy and Secundus have an epic adventure, and it is a mystery to the reader what exactly the purpose of the journey is for several chapters. In hindsight, you can see the clues that were being given, but I didn't catch on. This is a book where I can't discuss much of the story without spoilers. 

Because Secundus is on a pilgrimage, the book is centered around the Catholic religion and its rule at that time.  The author did extensive research to make the setting of the story as accurate as she could. However, since it involves religion, which is faith-based instead of evidence-based, major parts of the story are imagined.

This is not a religious Bible story. This is an adventure that involves a boy learning about the world and himself, and second chances.

Along with everyone else, I recommend The Book of Boy. It's not like anything I've read before.

The Beat I Drum by Dusti Bowling, juvenile fiction, middle grades, 2025

This is a sequel to the Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus and Momentous Events in the Life of a Cactus, and focuses on Aven's friend Connor, who has Tourette's Syndrome. Barking is his main symptom.

Connor has had to move across town and leave his best friend, Aven, behind, and start a new school. He is just turning 14 and a freshman. He immediately makes friends with another group, which includes a girl with Tourette's and another who has a birthmark across half of her face. Connor has his first feeling of love with these girls and experiences some of the complications that come with that. 

In the meantime, his father, who could not deal with Connor's Tourette's and left two years ago, is now back in the picture, trying to form a new relationship with Connor. Connor is still very angry with his father and wants nothing to do with him.

The pressure of the new school, along with the anger that he feels for his father, brings Connor to a breaking point. However, he has a music teacher who is working with him to find an instrument to play, as sometimes this can help with tics. They eventually decide on the drums, and he starts lessons. The story eventually has a feel-good ending, just like the first book.

Initially, I wasn't very interested in reading about teenage relationships, but the turmoil Connor was experiencing made the story more compelling. The author explores the practical and emotional aspects of Tourette's Syndrome well. She has two daughters and a husband, all of whom have tic disorders, from whom she draws inspiration.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, adult horror, 1959

I don't usually read horror books, but this was my nod to Halloween this month. The Haunting of Hill House is considered a classic, and there are many scholarly things written about it if you want to read a more formal review. I read it many years ago, but I didn't remember much about the book except that it scared me. 

Dr. Montague is a researcher of the supernatural and rents the Hill House for study because of its reputation for being haunted. Several deaths have been associated with the house, and no one stays longer than a few days in it before they leave. The townspeople won't go near it. Along with Dr. Montague, he has two assistants: the vibrant Theodora and the troubled Eleanor. Also, Luke, who will inherit the house, is there to represent the family.

The house gives off bad vibes from the beginning, with strange angles, complicated floor plans, along with heavy and grotesque furnishings. And there are strange, distressing episodes that they all experience.

While all of those things set up a somewhat typical horror story, I found the real creepiness was the psychological part of the book. Eleanor has no real place or experience in the world. She was isolated as she cared for her troublesome mother for 11 years before she died. Going to the Hill House is the first independent thing Eleanor has done in her life. She is emotionally fragile as she sorts out these new experiences. Sometimes you're not sure if it's the house and its ghosts wreaking havoc, or it is Eleanor's subconscious playing out. 

The story builds until it ends with a fitting ending for a psychological horror story. If you're into this kind of thing, it is a well-written, compelling book. 

That's it for this latest set of books.

Until next time...