(Leon, Spain: 8250 walking-around steps)

Acts 9:1-19a
v. 5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied.

Today I went in the cathedral, wrapped in stained glass and bathed in rich afternoon light. An adjacent museum contained treasure after ecclesiastical treasure–paintings, statues carved from wood and stone, manuscripts, gold and silver items, stone from the cathedral, jewelry, a piece of fabric from the seventh century, a delicately written and decorated thousand-year-old enigmatic hymnbook full of notes without a key signature. Common themes in all the art, of course, were the birth and death of Jesus. I passed a display of crucifixes–Jesus’ death again and again. Betrayed in the altarpieces, tortured in the paintings, crucified in the statues, over and over, here in Leon and all around the world–there must be enough representations for every person who ever believed, and every trespass we have all committed. On the cross he felt the sting of every sin as he suffered the righteous wrath of God on our behalf. Thank you, Jesus, for the cross!
….See all your sins on Jesus laid: The Lamb of God was slain,
….His soul was once an offering made for every soul of man. (Charles Wesley)

************************

Enough of the albergue culture–the enforced bedtime business and getting kicked out the door in the dark of the morning. In our Leon hotel this morning we did not get out of bed until after 8:30. Then we went to the chocolateria for breakfast: cafe con leche for Maurice, hot chocolate as thick as melted Hershey bars for me, two pastries and–oh, look!–with the hot drinks came little squares of homemade cake that tasted just like the kind Grandma used to make. We bumped into Jonathan again, talkative and mostly pain-free. He has sent his art supples home, realizing he was never really going to paint, and expects to finish about when we will.

We walked over to the cathedral for a sello (an official stamp for our credencial) and ran into Rebecca on a bench out front. She has a beautiful sketch book in which she tries to draw something each day that she’s seen, then she also writes something and gets one of the sellos stamped on the page. Maurice says she’s a real artist (i.e., studied at an art school). Then we returned to our room to write, paint, rest and hang more laundry. Regular Canadian Tom and his girls arrived by taxi and are staying across the hall.

We took all afternoon to eat a late lunch at the Boccalino restaurant on the square. Sitting on the terrace facing the beautiful facade of San Isidoro, we had a fine salad, ravioli with a tomato cream meat sauce and a delicious tart for dessert, with bread and wine, of course.

I went to marinate for a while in the heavenly light that fills the cathedral through 1800 square meters of stained glass. Built in the 13th century when Leon was a city of only 5000, the entire structure (as the audio guide carefully explained) “invites the whole universe to join in the worship of God.” The museum, in several floors of ancient and asymmetrical stone rooms off the cathedral’s cloister, was full of stunning medieval art. No pictures were allowed, a rule enforced with plenty of cameras and multilingual announcements. But the museum guard locked us all in, so when visitors were finished looking around, they had to wait at the twelve-foot-tall door for the matron to return and let us out. A bit of a fire hazard, n’est-ce pas?

Meanwhile, Maurice went shopping and finally got a pair of almost just barely big enough flip-flops.

Plaza San Isidoro at night, from in front of our hotel