Błudowo
by Ken Arneson
2013-05-10 13:31

The Random Wikipedia Wheel of Fortune takes us today to Błudowo, a small farming village in northeastern Poland. Błudowo lies in a administrative district called Gmina Młynary along with 27 other villages. Gmina Młynary has a combined population of 4,593. Based on that information, Błudowo probably has a population of about 100 people or so.

This, via Google Maps, appears to be the center of Błudowo:


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Błudowo has, it seems, at the intersection between the main road and the path to the village church, a large crucifix, over 10 feet tall. This very tall crucifix has a eensy-weeny teeny-tiny small little Jesus on it. For all I know, it may be the highest crucifix-to-Jesus size ratio of any crucifix in the world. What does it mean?

Perhaps here’s a clue. Up the path from this crucifix, there is a little brick church, which contains this image on its ceiling:

bludowo

“Ecce agnus Dei, qui tollit peccata mundi” is Latin for “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” It’s a quote from John 1:29 of the New Testament, uttered by John the Baptist when he first lays eyes on Jesus.

It is interesting to ponder why God’s cleansing of sin is depicted as a lamb in the Bible, and why Błudowo’s church chooses to emphasize this image. God redeems mankind not as a tiger or a lion or a bear or an elephant or some such mighty animal, but as a lamb–a small, humble, meek and utterly ordinary animal.

Błudowo is not Berlin or Moscow or Stockholm or New York or Paris or Tokyo or Washington DC or Silicon Valley, where the inhabitants may feel it is their role in life to change the world. Because of its central geographic location between much larger powers, it has seen the flags of Poland and Prussia and Sweden and Germany and the Soviet Union all come and go through the area. It has seen the suffering that such tall ambitions can cause. Through all that, perhaps Błudowo through all these centuries of conflict around it redeems itself by not trying to be more that what it is meant to be: is a small, humble, meek and utterly ordinary village.

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