Collage Ripped from My Scrapbook: "Hegel's Philosophy of History"

I made the above collage when I was an undergraduate philosophy student at K.U.L. (The Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium), living as a Catholic seminary student at the American College (Amerikaans College) at 100 Namsestraat.

Looking at the above collage starting from the top lefthand corner moving clockwise here are the items:

1. A cutout of an illustration from a book on Hegel's Philosophy of History

2. An Audrey Hepburn First Class postage stamp from the United States Post Office

3. A tag for a GFCI outlet

4. An illustration of a stack of books seated on by what appears to be two magicians in rapt conversation. A third magician seems to be surprised (standing at the bottom)

5. An Andy Warhol First Class postage stamp from the United States Post Office (37 cents)

6. A memento of my many sojourns to the Studio (a movie theater) on the Bondgenotenlaan (the town's main drag) to watch movies. This is a ticket stub for a screening of Bladerunner.

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Memento: When I Was a Benedictine Postulant

A page from my scrapbook that dates from circa 2002

My Life Circa 2002

Taken from a page of my scrapbook dated circa 2002 — I had just entered the monastery of Saint Joseph Abbey as a postulant. I was about twenty-two years old (freshly graduated from college). I had started my scrapbook as a seminary college student. The page in this scrapbook marks a special time in my life. It was a time where I had an enormous amount of free time (ironically, since I was living in a monastery). A postulant is someone who has requested to be a novice in a monastery. It is the waiting period between "moving in" and being officially sworn in as a new member of the community.

In the Summer I Joined the Novitiate

After a few weeks of postulancy, the novitiate begins. That lasts for a year, after which the novice petitions the community to take the first set of monastic vows. During this time, the community of monks which I belonged to had voted on a new Abbot. His name was Justin.

An Explanation of the Pages Of My Scrapbook

On the left side of the book is the card that I had saved from Abbot Justin's installation as abbot of the community. I had written in the space below the holy card, "Justin Gerald Brown's Abbatial Blessing". On the facing page is a card that I had kept when I was a postulant. My name (as it is now) was "Greig". On the top is a postcard of a boy sitting amongst a hilly field accompanied by two pigs. My memory is hazy but I think I had picked up this postcard when I had been a student at the American College of Louvain in Belgium — I guess I placed it in the scrapbook as a memento.

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