#pretty churches

[ofthestar]

morning light!

[fictionalred-photos]

[darumavolta]

Two very different cities, two very different but beautiful churches. In fact the first photo is actually taken in Pentecoste, a tiny town 2 hours away from Fortaleza in the north east of Brasil and miles away in terms of distance and way of life from the second church which is in Largo do Machado in Rio.

[lemeute]

Eglise Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, Paris. (Regrettably I did not get to go inside, despite passing it in both the evening and the morning.)

[lemeute]

For all my complaints about Catholics having prettier churches, I do have access to this lovely (and tiny!) prayer chapel on the campus of my Baptist-associated university. Not that there are services in it, as the water is too loud to do much besides pray or meditate or maybe have a bit of a conversation, but it's a good place and it IS pretty. 

I don't know if other people would do this, but we climb up on the fountain and sit there, and the kneeling-style benches mostly get sat on or sprawled on. When it was first built people started writing on pieces of paper and tucking them between the stones of the walls--prayers, prayer requests, verses and quotes, stuff like that. And then we went home for Christmas break and somebody threw them all away.

I think I'm going to start up with the pieces of paper again, because it was really cool. Something new every time you went in.

It's my favorite place on campus, maybe excepting the hall where the humanities professors have their offices, and so I wanted to share it.