Inese Dūka

Part I: Dissection of a Catholic mind

Another month has passed with me walking around with the endless thought that I really should write something. Something about how I celebrated the New Year's. Something about the move. Something about my life here. But I'll see what I can do about it now…

New Year in Milan

Surprisingly enough I am very thankful to Kristīne for inviting me with her. Right after Christmas we went to Milan to join into something called Pilgrimage of Trust on Earth. This event is organized by the Taizé community. Kristīne had been to such an event in the previous year when it took place in Lisbon. But this turned out to be somewhat different, mostly due the very different weather conditions. If in Lisbon it was quite warm and people tended to spend their evenings out in the streets singing and playing guitars together, then here it was quite impossible because together with most of the participants arrived winter with snow… But nevertheless once we got talking to people these discussions at some point or another turned a bit more heated. Religion is a tough topic to talk about. Especially if you have been brought up to regard religion as one of the taboo topics for conversations with strangers. But here everybody was speaking their mind exactly about that. It would've been all nice and quiet if all of the people involved were Catholics. But there were Kristīne and myself. And it seems that we managed to stir up some controversial discussions in our discussion groups. You know me - at times I am rather direct in my way of speaking. Especially if that's how I can get people to talk. So I talked. And annoyed a Croatian guy named Hrvoje (he was our group's leader). Then his friend - another Hrvoje - offered his opinion and it turned out to be rather similar to mine. ;-)) So we ended up having quite an agitated discussion. But of course afterwards we agreed to disagree and thanked each other for the discussion. Even though at times I wanted to leave the room because I could not accept what was said, I still am glad I was a part of it because it reminded me what it was that I believed in.

Unfortunately there didn't arrive an opportunity to get into 'deeper waters' with the two Hrvojes. But another opportunity came and his name was Alfredo. For some reason he was willing to let Kristīne and me dissect his mind. I started my interrogation already at lunch and we ended up having dinner together all three of us discussing many aspects of a Catholic life. Especially how the values Kristīne and I had clashed or coincided with Alfredo's values. At times I had a feeling that we might have gotten ourselves into something that we can't really handle. But we still managed to leave the restaurant as friends. Perhaps now with a better understanding of each other…

So all in all it was most definitely a very valuable event to have attended. And besides everything what I have already said, I also was very glad to have seen Kristīne doing something that she enjoys. It was a nice gift from her to me right before we had to say god-bye for at least a year…

A short account of life in Brussels so far will follow. Hopefully rather shortly… ;-))