Were a Winged Creature to Pass Overhead

In this hidden church, some parts of history have been recorded, some have remained on their own, and others are now unknown to us. In my family, there was once a Dutch missionary. His daughter—my great-great-grandmother—read the Bible in Latin every morning. Their names have been lost over time, the gravestone left blank. But even when things disappear into history, they can still be imagined and felt, if you try. When I enter the space, I always see a large winged creature flying past the upper window of the Garnalenkerk. Like ‘God’—grasped through different aspects and names—in fragments, we reassemble and reimagine what happened in the past. We do this because, across all time, something within us as humans remains the same.

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The Garnalenkerk was constructed in the early 18th century and served as a secretly tolerated, hidden place of worship for Catholics during a time when Protestantism was the dominant in Amsterdam. The church earned its nickname because local shrimp peelers from the Jordaan neighborhood would attend Mass there, peeling shrimp discreetly during the service.