Lyon (Or, Addie Jo and Janie's Adventure Into Lyon's City Hall)

It's amazing how being in Europe pulls people out of the woodwork that you hadn't expected to see. And for all the negative hype and I've passed along about Facebook and the internet in general, it does create some pretty awesome happenstance meetings.

Take seeing Janie in Lyon for example.

I had Lyon on my list just to give me a place to be for a few days during a longer stay in Avignon, kind of a minor scene in front of a new landscape before heading on to the explosion of epicness that would be Paris. Janie, who I think I rode the bus with when she was a freshman and I was a sophomore at Carolina, but who had transferred to State the year after, had seen my note with my itinerary on Facebook and proposed meeting up. Delighted again to see someone new and familiar, I agreed.

Janie met me at the McDonald's near my hotel that had become like a second home to me, due to the free wi-fi. (As an aside, I feel absolutely ridiculous asking about wi-fi in English. How do you think I fared asking about it in continental Europe, where they pronounce it wee-fee? Answer- I never asked about it. Oh embarassment. How you infiltrate my life with difficulty.) It was here, you may recall, that I laid out my resolve to catch the blog up to present times. I'm still a country and several churches behind, but the gap is closing.

Anyway, Janie and I met at McDonald's and from there we took the metro and then the tram up to Notre Dame de Fourviere, another church on a hill.

 We made our way back down the hill to the cathedral in Lyon, with its astrological clock.

 Finally, we went over to the opera, taking pictures of the muses standing over the entrance.

Leaving off Urania, of course, because the muse of astronomy has an unfortunate name and little to do with opera.

Janie had been in the town hall on a visit with her study abroad program but didn't know if we should step inside this time without a guide. A female guard stood outside the gate. After a few moments of debate, we were encouraged to enter by the exit of a woman with shopping bags. We ducked into the gate while the guard was distracted, just for good measure.

After taking a few pictures of a rather remarkable fountain,

we made the braver decision to walk inside the hall. The worst that could happen is that they tell us to leave, we reasoned. All the same, we peered around corners before entering rooms and ran lightly across creaking wooden floors when we heard anyone approach. Losing our resolve and having seen all we wanted to see, we escaped unscathed, the only evidence of our incursion a few pictures on my camera.

Quite exciting pictures, of course.

The next day we met for lunch over by the university, a conglomeration of buildings that would form the perfect setting for a post-apocalyptic drama, as Janie pointed out. We sat outside a pizza place and talked about being physics students, a strangely comforting topic for me. We walked over to a gas station after lunch to get some wonderful lemon tart and then I headed back to my section of town, garnering a parting gift- a lanyard from CERN that I am beyond excited about. Leave it to two American science majors to meet in France and exchange gifts from a particle accelerator in Switzerland.

Another rainy day and delayed train later and I left Lyon behind me, scrolling fondly through my pictures of flower trees

 and lions before arriving at the city of lights, Paris.

Popes 'n Avignon

I have to admit defeat in this instance. It turns out that I know nothing about the pope, despite having seen him live and in person. I planned this to be a short little post about the Avignon popes but as I delve into this, I realize that there is so much about the history of the church that I had no clue about. I sat in Starbucks for hours wading through wikipedia articles on the history of the church (and the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire and various saints) before I gave up trying to understand the bigger picture on my own. As a high point in my research, I stumbled across this amusing summary of the history of the western world- warning: coarse language. It was a pretty pleasant couple of hours, though, because I got a chance to listen to Bec Sandridge. She's quite good and you should all go give her a listen- she's on iTunes as well- as she was one of my roommates at the hostel in Glasgow and she's a bit phenomenal.

But, despite my procrastination (I am so good at that- I should have minored in that, maybe even majored in it), I did manage to ascertain some facts that I shall now present to you. Things to know about the popes (mostly taken from the well-annotated wiki article):

1) Pope is the title of the Bishop of Rome, who's now seen as the spiritual head of the Roman Catholic Church.
2) Peter is generally considered to be the first pope, though he didn't use the title. In fact, the title of pope wasn't given exclusively to the bishop of Rome until centuries after the apostles lived and died.
3) After the fall of the Roman empire, popes took over care of the city of Rome and began to negotiate treaties with rulers of the other powers around them.
4) In 800 AD, Leo II crowned Charlemagne and officially set up the policy that emperors had to be anoited by the pope. Now you've got all sorts of political power invested in the pope and the papacy isn't exactly the thing we think of today, though it got cleaned up starting around 1049 by Leo IX.
5) In 1054, the church split into East and West halves. Kinda a big deal.
6) During the Middle Ages, you've got Western popes vying for power with the monarchs of Europe. (If you think of the Pardoner's Tale, you're probably on the right track. Also the scene with the pope in Doctor Faustus.)
6a) The pope actually moved his court to Avignon from 1309-1377. The popes in this time were French and allied with the French king. They had quite the set up in Avignon, as can be seen by the papal palace there. You've got luxury to the max, and, according to the wiki, it Avignon Papacy was known for greed and corruption.

And a palace.

7) For a while there, you've got Popes and Anti-popes and the papacy changed back to Rome, though there might still be a rival pope set up in Avignon.
8) All this begins to end as a response to the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. The church responds to the reformers' criticisms and in the end of it all, you end up with the dynamics we see today- a church already split East-West and now split Protestant-Catholic, not to mention all the other various branches that have come off of the main church as a part of the growing of a religion.
9) The First Vatican Council, coming around in 1870, declared that when the pope speaks ex cathedra (from the chair [of Peter]) he's saying something infallible.

From this chair, in fact.

This has only been used once since it was set out, in 1950, to declare the Assumption of Mary as dogma.
10) In 1962 you've got the Second Vatican Council, which started some of the reforms and changes we can see in Catholic churches today.

Of course, this is a minor sprinkling of events throughout a long and complex history of the church (but now you know why no one ever tries to teach you church history in Sunday school- it's a bit too involved for the hour between services) and I've definitely left out all of the thought behind the actions of all of the parties in the church. All this is to say that the Avignon Papacy is just one stage in a long, long history of the popes and the leaders of the church in Rome. I almost feel bad, looking at all of this as an outsider, because I sometimes think that I should feel like this church is my church. I can't pretend there isn't centuries of history between the apostles, the church fathers and then the Protestant Reformation, and in those centuries, the church was the Church. It's the traditions out of which we all grew.

And of course, it's easy to denounce the popes in Avignon (and in Rome- have you seen the Vatican?) as having been extravagant but, then again, it's not like many Christian leaders today are jumping into vows of poverty. Well, I should probably clarify that I'm talking about mainstream Christian leaders in America. Because if there's one thing that I can learn from being in Avignon, beyond the fact that the French like big golden statues

 and dancing on bridges that can't handle it,

it's that I don't know much even about Western church traditions, much less the state of Christians worldwide today. It's a big and varied place, our Church. Bit of a ponderous thing to see, really.

Notre Dame de la Guarde

Pam read to me from her app on things to do in the city as Pam and I sat on the bus to Marseille. Apparently there was this big church on a hill that would be cool to visit, along with the Old Port area and did you know that  it's the second largest city in France after Paris and the third largest metropolitan area after Paris and Lyon and therefore, I've been to the three biggest cities in France? Yeah, France planning win.

So we decided that we'd venture up to the church on the hill and walk around the Vieux Port and just in general see what was up in Marseille. It'd been warm in the south of France so armed with nothing more than our water bottles, sunglasses and purses, we began our walk around the city, following signs and tramping through backstreets and alleys to begin the climb up the hill.

You can see the church on the way into the city. In fact, you can see it forty miles out to sea. You can definitely see it from the islands in the bay of Marseille, because Alexandre Dumas talks about it on the first page of the Count of Monte Cristo. The big thing you think is maybe a cross from far away becomes Mary and Jesus, waving people into the city, blessing all who call on them.

That's a big church on a hill. It's funny how this...

turns into this.

And from what I can read of Our Lady of the Guard, it's been a spot for many people to come and be blessed. There are ships, many ships, people and football teams that all have left their thanks to Our Lady of the Guard along the walls of the church. 

It's also a place of pilgrimage on the day of the Assumption, which is in August, I think. (All of these sainty-festivally-feasty things will be categorized and clarified [or at least linked to] in a future post, I promise.) It's a pretty cool church even without all of the remembrances of the people who've past inside. It's in the Neo-Byzantine style, which means it takes elements from the eastern church into its design. I notice Byzantine things the same way I notice Moorish influences- the striped arches, though these don't look like they came from Agrabah. The golden domes are a pretty good giveaway as well. The crypt, though, is Romanesque. 

Gasp! Not pointed arches! It... it can't be Gothic. How will I know what it is???

I thought I had pictures of the crypt, but that's actually Notre Dame de Fourviere in Lyon, another church on a hill with a big statue of Mary on it. See? See how confusing it is?

I don't even know where I am anymore and Jesus is picking Mary's nose! What is the world coming to?

It was a pretty cool church, with plenty of nautical themed decorations in the interior and exterior.

This is awesome. I've seen it in other places as well, but it is still awesome here.

We walked around the outside to view the city and then up to the gift shop because, hey, why not. Also, they might have water there. And, as if just to disprove my righteous disapproval of gift shops, I had a moment flipping through the prayers on the tall turning card holder more profound than any moment in the crowded basilica.

I ran across the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. It was in French, but I ran down the lines of the familiar prayer, not needing a translation. 

Seigneur, faites de moi un instrument de votre paix.
Là où il y a de la haine, que je mette l'amour.
Là où il y a l'offense, que je mette le pardon.
Là où il y a la discorde, que je mette l'union.
Là où il y a l'erreur, que je mette la vérité.
Là où il y a le doute, que je mette la foi.
Là où il y a le désespoir, que je mette l'espérance.
Là où il y a les ténèbres, que je mette votre lumière.
Là où il y a la tristesse, que je mette la joie.
Ô Maître, que je ne cherche pas tant à être consolé qu'à consoler, à être compris qu'à comprendre, à être aimé qu'à aimer, car c'est en donnant qu'on reçoit, c'est en s'oubliant qu'on trouve, c'est en pardonnant qu'on est pardonné, c'est en mourant qu'on ressuscite à l'éternelle vie.

It's a prayer to which I've always been partial, words that I've often thought were the best prayer I could pray. Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me bring love. Where there is injury, let me bring pardon. Where there is discord, let me bring union; wrong, truth; doubt, faith; despair, hope; darkness, Your light; sadness, joy. Grant that I might not seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love because it is in giving that we receive, searching that we find, in pardoning that we are pardoned and dying that we are given eternal life. It throws me back to a different faith than the one I hold right now. And it's not often that one climbs up a hill to only find themselves at the top. 

So we walked back down the hill past scenes from the gospel carved into the stone of the wall down the sidewalk. Pam made up a song about our trip to the church on the hill in Marseille and I thought about the other people we've been that we meet on mountaintops, and the people we leave behind. And I don't need a card to remember a prayer. But it helps. 

South of France

"Nous avons besion de trois billets a Aix-en-Provence aujord'hui."
"Le hotel, c'est tres loin d'ici?"
"Parlez anglais?"

We took several long trains to get from Barcelona to Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. We talked to a Canadian woman who was visiting a friend and planning on cycling around the countryside that she herself had backpacked through when she was our age. We talked to an English man on his way to house-sit for a friend who clarified that the loud group of boys behind us was speaking Catalan and who explained the Spainish rail system to us. Upon arriving in Aix, a little old Frenchman who spoke no English offered to help us find out hotel. He explained that we'd need to take a bus. So he walked us around town, up some stairs and over to the bus depot where he asked after the right bus for us and sent us on our way. After I made us get off a few stops too early, a kind man at the gas station called us a cab and the woman who pulled up in a cab commented on the size of our bags in an amused voice, happy to bring us all the way into the hotel.

And that's pretty much how the south of France went. From Aix-en-Provence to Marseilles to Avignon, people were kind and helpful. (Sometimes a little too kind- the cat-calling we had been warned about in Italy didn't rear its head until France.) As we watied at the bus station the morning after our arrival, we were offered a ride, which we declined, but later, as I watched an kindly French grandmother hitch a ride on a similar truck, I began to realize that hitchhiking is a legitimate thing here. In general, despite the heat, it was a lovely place to spend a few days.

Marseilles saw Pam and I spend a day climbing the hill to Notre Dame de la Guarde to look over the city and see the islands featured in The Count of Monte Cristo,

wander down to le Vieux Porte to eat a wonderful crepe and walk up and down the busy streets, ordering icees and posing with statues. That night, we watched French movings on TV and talked over the characters with our own interpretations of what their lines should actually be.

Aix-en-Provence is a small town, though charming. By the time I had arrived to catch up with Christine and Pam in the afternoon, we had time to walk over to the astrological clock

 (apparently those are big over here) and find a Tex-Mex place for dinner before catching one of the last buses back. We sat in the upstairs room of the tiny restaurant, talking about Cosmic and Chapel Hill and all the things we missed but would be back to soon.

Our day in Avignon was quite nice, spending the afternoon walking by street performers and actors in town for the festival.

This jazz band was Pam's favorite.

We saw the famous bridge,

 and the Palais des Paupes,

amusing ourselves by stopping for this jazz band or that acting troupe. Pam whiled away the half hour we waited for our train by taking pictures of the Fabulous Invisible Man wearing her battle-torn Sparkly Toms.

Back to Marseilles for one last evening wandering down to the concerts by the Old Port and then we had to say goodbye. We were all splitting for a few days at least- Christine to Belgium to visit the chocolate and the waffles in Brussels, me to Lyon to see a friend and visit a few churches and Pam back home to follow her miracle European adventure with a trip to DC and a return to work. Even the most pleasant of times must pass away. (Why do I always have to sound like a consoling greeting card when I'm sad?) But I have unequivocable proof that out time with Pam was amazing beyond the scope of the word- I cried as I left her to a couple hours' sleep in a hotel in Marseille. Maybe it's part of having a life that seems almost like a movie from time to time- you learn to shed tears at the appropriate scenes.

Nah, it must be because I really miss Pam.

Still, reaching beyond our halfway point in our journeys, we carried on. A quick trip over to Lyon and I left the south of France behind with its good food, good peopel and good memories.

Catalan Gothic

I am an intelligent young woman who has the potential to do great things. In fact, I have already achieved great things by my own standards. A BA in physics is not something to be laughed at outright. I am proud of myself and my accomplishments.

I have to have a statement of affirmation like for times like these.

Goodness, I'm in a cold sweat just thinking about it.

I'm going to try to explain Catalan Gothic to you, as opposed to the other kinds of Gothic architecture you'll see around the continent of Europe. (Note: most of my information comes from two wikipedia articles and a neat site called Sacred Destinations where I actually get a lot of my stuff from. I'll check it with a library when I get to back to Chapel Hill.)

And I have no experience with art or architecture history, which means I'm probably going to sound dumb. Sorry for sounding dumb. But here goes nothing!

Here, be momentarily distracted by a picture of a cathedral.

So most of the churches you're going to be visiting if you're visiting the famous ones around Europe are going to be from somewhere between the 6th (500s) and early 19th (1800s) centuries AD. This is, broadly the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque time periods in architecture (according to the timeline at about.com, but there's also a pretty clickable and interesting timeline at HistoryWorld). Personally, I've seen a lot more Gothic in Germany, Austria and France and a lot more Renaissance and Baroque in Italy, but they're certainly not limited to these regions. Of course, each church was built under its own circumstances and influences, and you'll have modern churches, like La Sagrada Familia, being built in styles of their own but paying tribute to the styles before them, but a lot of the time, you'll walk into a church and the guide will have one of those architectural styles as the main style of the building.

Gothic isn't actually the word they used when they talked about the buildings we call Gothic at the time they were being built. They were being built in the "French" style then, and you do have a lot of your canoncial examples of Gothic architecture in France. Pointed arches, flying buttresses, awesome stained glass and rose windows, heavy decoration on most of the surfaces and twin towers at the facade of the church (these actually came from processions during Holy Week- you'd mount one set of stairs to be symbolically crucified and you'd descend the other to symbolically go to the grave). They only started calling it Gothic in the Renaissance or later, and even then, they called it that as a bit of a diss, equating Gothic with barbarian vandals.

So you take that kind of style, with the big churches, etc (that I have since seen a lot more of, so it seems that I did this whole thing backwards, especially if you think that I saw a lot of Renaissance before this) and you tweak it a bit in Catalonia, which is a region in Spain, like Andalusia, etc. You're mostly going to see this in Barcelona. The churches built in this style were built on that borderline between the Gothic and Renaissance stages in architecture and in particular, Barcelona Cathedral and Santa Maria del Mar, the two that I saw, were built by the same king- King Jaume II. Of course, this was built in a time when this part of Spain had a lot of influence- just as the cathedral in Seville was built after the Reconquest, these projects were started after a growth in power; Santa Maria del Mar was built after a victory at sea in 1324.

The main differences you're going to see in these churches are a lack of flying butresses, which, if you haven't seen 'em yet, you're not going to miss them; less emphasis on stained glass, which I could see; more somber decorations, so much less of the "let's carve every surface with a saint!" impulse that you'll see on other exteriors; equal height naves- you're not going to see the height of the church change at any stage; and less noticeable or non-existent transepts, the cross bars of the church. The bell towers that go along with these churches, if there are any, are generally separate buildings.

OK, that's done. I can break out of the nervousness. Barcelona Cathedral is in the gothic section of Barcelona and has one of my top ten favorite gargoyles.

Imagine a Howard Dean yell coming from this unicorn.

It's dedicated to Santa Eulalia, who's also a patron saint of Barcelona. She was just a kid when she was martyred by the Romans in the fourth century, burned at the stake. Her crypt is right below the main altar.

Barcelona's cathedral has a stand-alone choir like Seville's, but it's also got a glass door, so you're not entire blocked by the structure if you're stuck in the back.

Do you see the door? I do. 

My favorite thing about this cathedral, though, that sets it apart from all the others is the cloister.

With geese.

No one's sure how they got there, but they might symbolize the saint's virginity or the former glory of Rome. I'm sure they're delighted about both of these options.

Now Santa Maria del Mar is a prime example of Catalan Gothic.

Pretty low-key stained glass windows.

Not overly-decorated.

This actually doesn't have anything to do with Catalan Gothic, but I thought it did and spent a while taking pictures of it. Though, it's a seal of some kind and Catalan Gothic is due to an increase in prominence for the Barcelona crown, so maybe?

 Pretty much everything I listed goes here; most noticeably, the lack of decorations. This is also due, in part, to the burning of the interior that happened during the Spanish Civil War. The walls are still blackened in places.

It was actually a charming little church. Not busy, and you could see your way around the church. Quiet. How many of the people here knew that they were looking at a prime example of a specific type of Gothic architecture? How many of them would have cared? This is something that's really struck me while I've been going around- most of the people who are here saw a pretty building and stopped in. The story the church has to tell stays hidden until you go looking for it, unless you're looking at the darkened patches on the walls. The signs on the wall describing the facets of the church go mostly unread when they're around at all.

It just seems like there's a lot of good stories that are just getting missed out on.

La Sagrada Familia

"Yeah, I was surprised you didn't have Spain on your list to start out with!"
"Yes, but you haven't seen Catalan Gothic!"
"You mean you were in Barcelona and you didn't make seeing La Sagrada Familia a priority?"

Inevitably, someone is going to ask me what I'm doing in Europe and we'll talk about different churches and if they know anything about anything about church architecture, they'll have a reaction like the ones I've heard and reproduced above. Most people were amazed that I hadn't done extensive study on La Sagrada Familia. I just shrugged my shoulders and said that it hadn't come up.

Then I went to visit it and wondered the same thing they did: How did I not know about this?

The answer, of course, is pretty simple. I thought I really had all of this under control and had focused myself on older ceremonial churches, as they'd be the places I'd be the least familiar with. We don't exactly have examples of centuries old cathedrals back home. At least none like this. But we also don't have La Sagrada Familia back home either.

Now, it's not finished yet, so don't get nervous about it or upset about the scaffolding. It's been in production since around 1884, or at least this stage has been, since it's the product of Antoni Gaudi's forty years of work. The designer died in 1926 and is buried in the church's crypt, having left the project before seeing it halted by the Spanish Civil War in 1935 and his designs and models burned for reminders of the old religion that had held Spain for so long.

But to me, this is anything but old. It's a church on the scale of a cathedral being built right before my eyes. These monumental projects always take a long time and to see the construction on the remaining ten towers (there's already eight up, but there will be eighteen- one for each of the apostles, one for each of the four gospel writers, one for Mary and one for Jesus, topped with a cross that'll reach just one meter short of the height of the nearby hill, because Gaudi believed that his work should not rival God's) and on the Glory facade, already seeing the Nativity facade around the back and the Passion facade by the entrance near finished. And that's just the outside.

Now, Gaudi packed tons of symbolism into the things he put in the designs, so much so that I don't really know what to tell you to look at first. Really, it's something that I can't and won't dive into. Ask me sometime and I'll do my best to point out things I know from the pictures I have and the things I've since read, but my recommendation is for you to go on your own and see this place. It's definitely worth what you pay to get in.

Oh, and the inside. I've started to see myself as a battle-hardened church viewer and this place even took me by surprise. I stepped over the outlines of the procession into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday

 and into the sanctuary and had to step out of the way to say, Oh wow softly as I stared up at the heights of the church.

The pillars were inspired by the kind of Gothic specific to this part of Spain, Catalan Gothic. I saw a couple of examples in Barcelona, particularly Santa Maria del Mar. But Gaudi also wanted to leave you feeling like you were in a forest and so the pillars throughout the nave are at differing heights.

The stained glass isn't all finished yet, letting in floods of white light all over the place. Even up behind the 1,000 person choir loft, the afternoon sun shone in.

 Especially from the skylight high over the altar, never to be covered with stained glass, pillars of light floated down into the sanctuary. It was just an amazingly pretty space.

And the best thing about it is that despite its grandeur, this is a place I could see myself worshipping. Not just coming to hear a mass in a language that I doubly wouldn't understand, as it would be in Catalan and not Spanish, the language that I can guess my way around. But here, I could imagine myself listening to the choir, watching the service progress. The layout of the church made sense and I felt at home even at the bottom of such a tall tower. I walked around with songs from my past times in choirs floating around my head due to the Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus encircling the bell towers on the way into the building.

I really just want to walk you through the space in a thousand pictures. It was only consecrated in 2010 by Pope Benedict and the inside isn't finished yet, but it's still amazing in every sense of the word. It also appreciates words. The main doors of the church, on the Glory facade, when it's finished, are coated with the words of the Pater Noster, Our Father, in Catalan and in languages from the world over.

 If a building could embody my ideals, honoring the environment we live in, the traditions we hold, the glorious God we serve and acknowledge the wonderful diversity of the global world we've all been thrown into, it would be this building.

Oh, and they have St. George. He's my favorite.

Also the patron saint of Catalonia. 

Clearly, the space's fate is sealed. I'm going to have to love it.

Basilica of the Macarena

Did you know that the Macarena was originally called La Magdalena, but that Madgalena is the Spanish equivalent of calling someone a ho (after Mary Magdalene, purported prostitute) so they changed the name to the Macarena after the area of Seville? Someone who knows these kind of things told me this before I looked it up on the wiki. Oh, you don't know what I'm talking about? Here. Enjoy. And please tell me why someone thought this was appropriate for my generation of elementary school kids. It'd be like Soulja Boy in schools today. Oh wait...

Anyway, the Basilica of the Macarena is in this part of town and it's dedicated to the less controversial of the Marys, Mary the mother of Jesus. The basilica houses a couple of statues of Mary, including one called Nuestra Senora de la Esperanza, Our Lady of Hope. It's brought out on Good Friday for the processions around town, which explains why she's crying.

Crying crystals.

Really, it seems like this entire building was only built to house this one statue. It's certainly an appropriate statue for this city- Our Lady of Hope is the patron saint of matadors and a favorite of Spanish gypsies who call Andalusia home. She's connected to the matadors of Seville by the story that one famous matador in Seville spent a large part of his fortune to buy the four emeralds the statue wears. When Joselito died in the ring, she wore mourning clothes for a month.

Looking around, there are scenes from the life of Mary in this tiny church, almost a chapel. Each alcove holds a new statue of Mary.

And the Baby Jesus of Prague! I knew he'd be back!

The only figure distinct from this is the wax figure of Jesus in his purple robe sitting down behind the altar in the chancel where la Macarena is housed. As you walk in, classical music plays, accompanying those who walk through the side door leading to the chancel to kiss the hands or feet of the statue of their Lord.

I don't often understand this kind of devotion. I mean, even Mary Magdalene wasn't allowed to hold onto Jesus when she met Him in the garden after the resurrection. Why should we hang onto figures of Him like this? But it helps, I think, to have something to venerate. I sat down for a while, looking to recognize scenes and wondering about the different ways of seeing a person. And wondering why Our Lady of Hope had to cry.