Since moving to Brussels, I was until recently the only Christian I knew here. My faith, which I’ve often described as “I don’t know, maybe Christianity,” was like a wall collapsed in after its beams disappeared—something of significant weight, but devoid of real form, function, or purpose without some supporting structures. It was too big a thing for me to prop back up on my own.

After this winter, this isn’t true anymore. I’m not the only Christian I know. My wall is back off the floor, a couple of beams put up. I think I’m en route to a proper church community, not simply slinking in and out of different places on Christmas and Easter to consume a bit of tradition. This might be an inflection point in my life. To remind myself of this time, of the people and moments that compose it, a few vignettes from my Alpha course follow.

The Modern Jesuit wears New Balances

Last fall, I registered impulsively for an Alpha course at the ecumenical Chapel for Europe. I’d been to the Chapel for Europe a couple of times already in my irregular church-going and had signed up to their newsletter at one of these times. The first time was an Ash Wednesday mass during the Covid resurgence of winter 2021–2022. The priest didn’t want to touch people’s foreheads to make the traditional ash cross, so he instead sprinkled ashes onto our scalps. I feared I had black dandruff for the rest of the day. As someone drawn to haphazardness in my organized religion, I was charmed.

Friends had told me about their positive experiences with Alpha, yet I was more nervous than expected when I showed up on the first Wednesday night, dropping forks and food and struggling to make small talk. “Let’s not talk about work,” I said when someone asked me about mine, keen to get away from the standard Brussels networking chat. We then fumbled about for a new topic.

Somehow, it seemed like every other person on that first night was a Jesuit. The course was run by the Jesuit priest stationed at the Chapel for Europe, assisted by one Jesuit in training on his practicum, and attended by one “baby Jesuit” at the start of his studies and one other guy who I thought was a Jesuit but it turned out just worked for a Jesuit organization (I didn’t realize until months later). I’m not sure how I mixed this up, but I imagine it was somewhere around “let’s not talk about work.” I remember looking at him that first night, thinking it was so strange to see a Jesuit my age, wearing jeans and the same New Balances that I’d been thinking about buying on Vinted. 

All that to say, it was an intimidating share of the convinced faithful—and people who already knew each other—on that first night, but no matter. I’d been enchanted by the Jesuits by means of Silence, The Mission, and Malcolm Gladwell’s series on casuistry in Revisionist History, so I was frankly a bit starstruck.

The course was to be co-run by the aforementioned Jesuit priest, Bernd, and an Anglican pastor, Sarah, who had converted to Christianity as an adult and had a slightly more charismatic bent to her. As we learned on this first evening, the structure of a typical meeting within the Alpha course is to start with dinner, then watch a twenty-minute video from the creators of the Alpha course. The Alpha course’s current rendition was created by Nicky Gumbell at Holy Trinity Brompton London, an Anglican church with an evangelizing mission. Following the video, we’d then dedicate the majority of our time together to a discussion over the theme of the week.

During the first few weeks at Alpha, I felt off-balance. We were talking about things that I hadn’t thought about in a long time. I had a lot of conflicting answers, from evangelical and reformed traditions, few of which were really my own. When I spoke, especially about the way I grew up, I felt possessed by this more intense version of myself, whose voice shook unexpectedly. I realized after a few weeks that I was hurt and a bit angry still about how I’d grown up. In response to my perceived intensity, and countering my embarrassment and fear of rejection if not the most agreeable version of myself, I was received graciously and with reciprocal openness. I kept coming back.

An Exchange of Gifts

During one longer session later in the course, we had a quiet time of prayer and reflection in which we were invited to pray to encounter the Holy Spirit if we felt comfortable. The different backgrounds of organizers Sarah and Bernd were thrown into charming contrast on this day. Sarah proposed that she and Bernd pray for each of us if we wanted, starting with the two of them praying for each other. Bernd clearly felt a bit awkward about it —“we don’t have so much a tradition of praying for each other like this,” he said later—but was game to give it a try. I apologized for my tears when Bernd later prayed for me. “Don’t apologize, they’re a gift,” he said. 

When we shared our experiences with each other afterwards, another woman in the course likewise excused herself for crying. Bernd elaborated further upon his previous statement. “Saint Ignatius saw tears as a spiritual gift and a sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence.” If you, like me before this course, are unfamiliar, Saint Ignatius of Loyola founded the Jesuit order; this is thus quite high approval of tears. What a gift it was to me, to be introduced to a new faith tradition that has such a generous interpretation of an expression of emotion by which I’ve typically felt embarrassed.

Life after a Miracle

In the second-to-last week of the course, the topic of our video was healing—miraculous healing, in particular. I’ve always been skeptical, so I watched with a bit of emotional distance. As we set up our discussion circle, it was clear that most other people felt the same way. I should mention that the course’s attendees had filtered down to a comfortable eight to ten over the weeks, and while the church I grew up in is a bit more evangelical, almost everyone else still attending at this point grew up in a Catholic environment (practicing or otherwise). Like personally praying for one another aloud, the others didn’t quite know what to make of miraculous healing, at least the sort presented in the video. Our circle was silent for a few moments. 

“Is this sort of approach to healing common in Protestantism?” one fellow attendee asked me, as we collectively sought a starting point for our conversation. With Sarah absent, I had become the representative of Protestantism. I was not up to the task. “What a niche topic,” another person remarked. We were floundering.

“I do have an experience like this,” one man eventually spoke up. He was a regular attendee’s guest who came but the once, and we later found out that he was only there to network with the absent Sarah. He shared his story of being miraculously cured of his cancer. We all adapted our tones to be a bit less skeptical of such a possibility.

Another man questioned the randomness of miraculously healing. Typically the most stoic and argumentative out of our group, his voice cracked as he shared the story of a colleague’s three-year-old child who passed away after he fell down the stairs and hit his head. It feels unfair, he said, and it leaves one unsure of what to pray for, what to hope for. 

The room was silent for a while, the joke-filled atmosphere that followed the video completely evaporated now. Bernd didn’t have any easy answers. He invited us into his own doubts and his attempts to balance faith and expectation when he visits sick people or conducts last rites. 

The man who shared about his healing from cancer spoke back up to take part in these questions. One of his friends had the same type of cancer that he did, and the man had prayed that the same healing would come to his friend as had come to him. It did not; his friend had passed away a month ago. Our visitor confessed that his gratefulness at being healed was embittered by guilt when others are not.

The Alpha course has since concluded, but I hope the church we ended up building through it will live. Our church was not a didactic thing that you could slide easily in and out of each week, leaving to a world that made a bit more sense. Indeed, I often left with more questions than I’d had going in. Our church was deeply personal, demanding a vulnerability with oneself and with others to go beyond theological debates to a discussion of our lived experiences. Our church was international, intergenerational, and interdenominational. Our church was funny, and it was raw.

Rylan Shewmaker

Rylan Shewmaker (‘21) calls herself a geographer, though none of her degrees substantiate this. After growing up in Texas and studying in Grand Rapids, she moved to Brussels, Belgium, for her master’s degree in urban studies. She still lives in Brussels and works for a housing non-profit. She enjoys audiobooks, bike commuting, sunny days, and learning new things.