Only in catholic churches people when they pray kneel down usually on hard church chairs, in the past you couldn't even sit, you had to stand up or kneel down. In protestant churches you sit or stand but you don't kneel.
Belgium is a catholic country and therefore all churches catholic, which is logic ! When I went for the first time in a catholic church I was a teenager and went with a friend to attend a mass she had to go, I went with her because I had never been to a mass and was very curious. I had a lot to see ! The colorful costumes the priests wore and all the paintings and crosses at the wall. I found the gymnastic he did rather funny and then at some point suddenly everybody knelt on the hard church bench and started to pray. I didn't know a single prayer in French and looked around me to see what happened. I was quite impressed to see everybody the head bent over a bible. But then I found something very interesting to look at ! The shoe soles ! I could see the soles from everybody. And that was very interesting when you are rather bored.
I was surprised to see a lot of elegant shoes with a hole in the sole, or cuts, or half loose. If my father would have been a shoemaker he would have been proud of me, because I could find him a lot of clients in the church ! Some soles were very dirty too probably one who came from a muddy street.
When I had inspected as many soles I could see from my place, I got fed up standing there because I had tried to kneel, but it hurt so I stood up. The others still knelt they must have got black and blue marks on their knees or they are so used to that it doesn't harm them anymore.
Anyway I left the church, I had seen enough and waited for my friend outside sitting in the churchyard on a bench, looking at the green grass, the trees and the birds and found God's spirit better outside then inside the church walls.
Linking to SOCS - Soles
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