Julie and the elephants

Last September, my niece Julie married Quentin. Yes, I was there – in my liturgical robe and for the first time pastorally involved with my French family. (( emotion mixed with pride in a totally not Calvinist way ))

A few months later, Julie officially became a veterinarian and was hired by the Musée de l’homme in Paris, in the research department. Her mission of 3 years : study elephants. This means living 4 months a year, in 2 installments, in a place where they live in the wild. (I regretted instantly that that hordes of wild elephants do not roam free in the Olympic peninsula)

A few weeks ago, Julie arrived in Uganda, in the research station located at the north of the national park of Kibale. She went along with a friend who studies chimpanzees. They flew to Entebbe via Bruxelles. We know she made it ok and now receive collective news when the internet accepts to collaborate.

Julie ready to fly off. All the suitcases are not hers! 

Her mission is to study elephants, but she is also in charge of working with farmers on the damages that elephants have been causing in fields and crops for the past 10 years. She met villagers about it, some of them upset and frustrated. Scientists have been coming and asking them questions over the years – for their researches, not for providing help. People affected by the situation feel, understandably, that they got forgotten in the process.

Julie’s project will be different: support will be included. But she cannot mention it yet because all the papers are not all signed, and she does not know when this program will be able to start.

Elephant met in the forest 

As for the daily life at the research station, there are ups and downs. Water and power come and go. The closest road across the forest is in construction – it will be larger. The pipes bringing water were buried along the road and suffer from the work being done so close. Water has been turned down a lot, which means no flush and no showers. Rain is rare, this is dry season.

The research station 

But Julie’s enthusiasm is intact. She is delighted with the discoveries that this new life brings, including meeting Jerome, a chameleon. He spent a few days with Julie and her friends, but after a standoff with a colony of ants, he went on to live in a banana tree close by.

Jerome 

To be followed…

There comes the time...

There comes the time where « next year » become « now »…

The time to reinvent ourselves

And fearlessly create!

God created us with an imagination

God created us creators,

in God’s image (Genesus 1:27).

Now, it is our turn to identify this divine spark in us

And make it fructify in 2018! 

Entering the New Year

Let’s enter the New Year and meet the blessing waiting for us…

Painting by Jan Richardson 

With every step

you take

the blessing rises up

to meet you

It has been waiting

long ages for you

Look close

and you can see

the layers of it,

how it has been fashioned

by those who walked

this road before you,

how it has been created

of nothing but

their determination

and their dreaming,

how it has taken

its form

from an ancient hope

that drew them forward

and made a way for them

when no way could be

seen.

Look closer

and you will see

this blessing

is not finished,

that you are part

of the path

it is preparing,

that you are how

this blessing means

to be a voice

within the wilderness

and a welcome

for the way.  

Jan Richardson,
Blessing the Way, from “Circle of Grace”p.37,

Wanton Gospeller Press, Florida 2015. 

Jean-Paul Sartre and the Nativity

We are in 1940, in Germany, in a camp of French prisoners. Among them, some priests asked Jean-Paul Sartre, who had been a prisoner with them for a few months, to write down a short meditation for Christmas’ Eve. Sartre, the atheist writer, accepted. And he offered to his companions those beautiful lines.

“You have the right to demand and see the Manger. Here it is. Here is the Virgin, here is Joseph, and here is the Child Jesus. The artist poured all his love in this drawing, maybe you will think he is naïve, but listen. You only need to close your eyes and listen to me, and I will share how I see them from inside me.

The Virgin is pale as she looks at the child. Worried wonderment is what should be painted on her face, a wonderment that only appeared once on a human face, because Christ is her child, the flesh of her flesh and the fruit of her womb. She carried him for nine months. She gave him her breast and her milk will become the blood of God. She holds him, and she says, “my baby”!

But sometimes she is taken aback, and she thinks “God is here” and she feels a religious fear growing for this mute God, for this child, because all mothers have been taken aback in such moments, by this fragment of their flesh that is their child, and they feel exiled as they face this new life that has been done with their lives and that is inhabited with foreign thoughts.

But none has been more cruelly and more quickly teared away than from this mother because He is God and He exceeds on all sides what she can imagine. And that’s a heavy trial for a mother to fear herself and her human condition in presence of her son. But I think there are other quick and smooth times where she feels that Christ is her son, her own baby, and he is God. She looks at him and she thinks “This God is my child! This divine flesh is my flesh, He was made from me, He has my eyes and his mouth is shaped like mine. He looks like me, He is God and He looks like me.”

And no woman ever had God for herself. A God very small that you can hold in your arms, a God you can cover with kisses, a warm God who smiles and breath, a God one can touch and who lives, and I would paint Marie in those moments if I was an artist, and I would try to convey the tender audacity and the shyness in her as she moves her finger to touch the soft small skin of this child God, as she feels his warm weight on her lap and as he smiles to her. So that’s for Jesus and for the Virgin Marie.

And Joseph. Joseph? I would not paint him. I would show a shadow in the back of the barn and bright eyes, because I don’t know what to say about Joseph. And Joseph himself is not sure what to say. He adores and is happy to adore. He feels in exile, a little. I think he grieves without admitting it. He grieves because he can see how much the woman he loves looks like God. How much she is already on God’s side. Because God came into the intimacy of this family. Joseph and Marie are separated forever by this fire of clarity, and all his life, I imagine, Joseph will be about learning to accept. Joseph himself does not know what to say about himself : he adores and is happy to adore.”

(From « Baronia or the Son of Thunder” a play written by Sartre about his time as a prisoner of war. This text is also included in « the Writings of Sartres” by M. Contat and M. Rybalka, NRF 1970)

Roots, wings and French words

I just learned quite a few things on the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral recently. The façade leans forward of about a foot, a tilting that took place on the 13rd century then stopped.

Viollet le Duc, the architect who restored the cathedral on the 19^th century added apostles carved in copper, set at the foot of the spire. 

And he represented himself as St Thomas, protector of architects. While the apostles look straight ahead, St Thomas alone turns back and looks at the spire.

The crown of thorns, the real one, can be found, we are told, among the relics of Notre Dame, protected by precious metal and fine stones.

I learned all that thanks to the French class that I facilitate on Thursday night. This class focuses on pronunciation. After all, if you have a good accent in French, you will be understood even if your French is not grammar perfect.

So I looked for ways to help my students to pronounce as well as possible. It is above all a question of rhythm. Putting the tonic accent at the right place in the word is essential. And I wanted us to also have a good time!

We sang. I looked for a new song every week where there would not be too much slang, where the singer would enunciate and with verbs at the present tense. I realized then how many French songs rich with conditional, imperative or subjunctive verbs were out there!  

We watched together « La Grande Vadrouille », an iconic comedy released in the 60s that is still watched and enjoyed in France. My own nephews know some fun quotes by heart, just like my brother and I did! So I wrote down the dialogue for the class to read it together. But a lot of the humor comes with back and forth between the characters and is not easily transferred in another language. When you have to say “you know, in French, this is so funny…” you know this is not working too well.

Eventually we found exactly what we needed : solid documentaries from the French TV, from the series “Des Racines et des Ailes” (roots and wings) can be found on Youtube. They last about 30 minutes and we go through them in 8 to 10 lessons.

We visited the Louvre and learned about its past as a castle, jail and safe deposit for the kings of the Middle Age before it became a palace for the royal family then the museum we know[1]

We went to St Malo, in Brittany, visited its mansions around the city and the islands facing the coast. We learned about its almost utter destruction during the last world war[2].

And we just finished “Notre Dame, au Cœur de l’histoire » (Notre Dame, at the heart of history) where we saw beautiful images of the cathedral as it looked centuries ago, painted with vivid colors and surrounded by narrow streets and many little homes[3].

Thanks to those Roots and Wings, my students work on their pronunciation skills… and we learn together more about my far-away home country.

---

[1] « La fabuleuse histoire du musée du Louvre» https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77Rw4gH3giA

[2]  « St Malo, le passé recomposé » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93wnyavtexQ&t=1668s  

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03YbQPKKt6U&t=134s

All Saints Day between Two Worlds

Last week was All Saints Day. I came across those lines by artist, author and poet Jan Richardson, who reflected on grief and on the closeness we keep with the people we lost.

“One of the things I quickly learned after Gary died was that death has a way of tearing open our hearts toward eternity. We are no longer residents of this world only; we no longer move only in this time. It is one of the strange and beautiful effects of intense loss. Even as I continue to make a new life in this world, I am keenly aware that my heart is held by one who lives beyond this world. And that means my heart lives both within and beyond the borders of what I can see and know in this world.

It is All Saints’ Day, and I am thinking about how this is a day to name this—how we live in these two worlds. Except that it’s not really two worlds. Somehow, now and eternity are bound together in a deep mystery. This is a day to remember that even in the pain of sharpest loss, somehow we all live in one world, and death does not release us from being in relationship with one another.

This is a blessing about that. On this All Saints’ Day, as we both grieve and celebrate our beloved dead, may we know how they endure with us, holding our hearts and encompassing us with a fierce and stubborn love that persists across time and distance”.

ENDURING BLESSING

What I really want to tell you
is to just lay this blessing
on your forehead,
on your heart;
let it rest
in the palm of your hand,
because there is hardly anything
this blessing could say,
any word it could offer
to fill the hollow.

Let this blessing
work its way
into you
with its lines
that hold nearly
unspeakable lament.

Let this blessing
settle into you
with its hope
more ancient
than knowing.

Hear how this blessing
has not come alone—
how it echoes with
the voices of those
who accompany you,
who attend you in every moment,
who continually whisper
this blessing to you.

Hear how they
do not cease
to walk with you,
even when the dark
is deepest.

Hear how they
encompass you always—
breathing this blessing to you,
bearing this blessing to you
still.

—Jan Richardson
from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

Images : the Longest Night and the Advent Door by Jan Richardson

Turning a page

Last Sunday of September, a few days after coming back from France.

I was listening to Aaron, UPPC senior Pastor, as he was preaching. I have been the Director of Spiritual formation at University Place Presbyterian Church for the past 4 years.

Showing a picture of the famous Michelangelo’s fresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, he pointed to the difference of posture between God, stretched arm and determined to reach his creature and dreamy Adam, almost languid, obviously less motivated to establish this essential contact.

I had never noticed Adam’s nonchalant attitude.

At that moment, to my own surprise, an idea – more like an evidence – burst into my mind. It was time to leave UPPC. You were wondering if you should be a pastor or a chaplain? You are neither here. It is time to move on.

At the end of worship, I was ready to resign. Then I thought: let’s not rush into anything.

Two weeks later, I had a meeting with Aaron and found out that, because of a loss of incomes (less giving from parishioners), several positions had been eliminated. Including mine.

I felt like I had been slapped. Head-on collision with my ego. What, they decided to get rid of me?

“This is not a question of performance, said Aaron. The HR team terminated all the part-time positions.” I was ¾ times and, like everybody else at UPPC, I did not count my hours.

“If you need to hate someone, hate me.” added Aaron, hand on his heart, more comfortable with the Renaissance fresco.

Am I that immature in your eyes, Michelangelo? I don’t need a scapegoat. And if I needed one, I would pick it myself.

But I wanted to stay clear of bitterness. A feeling of peace surrounded me when I mentioned that I learned a lot at UPPC, where I was also ordained 3 years ago.  

Peace and relief. Would have I ever left on my own? I don’t know. Is it easy to leave a church where it is so comfortable to work, surrounded by people you love ?

A page is turning. In our Pacific Northwest where fog is frequent, I am not sure what direction I should take.

Was Adam nonchalant after all?

Let’s put ourselves in his, well… shoes. Maybe Adam was disoriented. or anxious, worried  of not being up to the task? Being the first human cannot be easy… that or trying to find the right path in the middle of the rain forest…

But there is also joy, with a healthy dose of adrenaline, that comes with exploring the first pages of a new chapter that is only opening.