Everyday, we send out a Peace Portrait of the Day from the 1Mandala project.
Today’s peace portrait comes from Pere Jaques and myself.
There’s a bit of a story to this one. Pere Jaques is a Trapiste monk that I met on my journey through Belgium to Berlin.
This was a particularily special connection for me. I ended up staying more than two weeks at the monastery.
The monks took me in during a Winter blizzard. They insisted I stay and wait it out. In the weeks that I was there pure magic manifested itself. A group of 50 mentally handicaps let me take their dazzling peace portraits and a group of Flemish teenagers helped me translated the project into Dutch, not to mention the Abbey’s help resolving some major dental problems that begining to seriously ail me (blog: Thank God for the Pain).
Out of my immense grattitude for the help of the monks with my teeth this week I finalized the donation of a 2000 euro 1.5 x 1.5 metre painting for their monastery. I am proud and overjoyed to say that the painting, “Avec Grattitude No. 2” is now on its way to Belgium.
In another burst of beauty, what would have cost hundreds in shipping for such a big painting, manifested itself in a day or two: The Monks make their reknown Chimay beer at the monastery, and their Berlin distributer, Bierlinie GmbH has offered to take the painting to Belgium for us!
The smaller version of the painting “Avec Grattitude No.1” will now, fittingly go to the Dentist.
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