Quick Write No. 1

I've started a few posts in a desultory sort of way and they've gone nowhere. But I feel like writing, so I decided to offer a question for five minutes of nonstop writing. No more, no less. If you want to play, too, leave a comment with a link.

*****

If you could get on a plane right now and fly anywhere for a five-day stay, where would you go?

Paris, for sure. I want to go back to the Chapel of the Martyrs, and I want to go back to Notre Dame for a couple of days. I don't know whether I could go to St. Chappelle for another concert, because Vivaldi sounds so off these days that I cannot listen to any of his music. All of Paris would be off, without my Chicago Son who first got me there, but it would also be a place to feel connected to him. I want to go back to the Luxembourg Gardens and remember my younger and happier family walking the deserted paths in the freezing cold, and I want to spend another warm evening on the bank of the Seine. And I want to slip away for an overnight to Chartres, and be reminded of . . . so many things.

Camp Counselor Vignette

The Lovely Daughter called last night shortly after 11:00.

For the past several months, her calls have come from places like Prague . . . Paris . . . Dublin . . . you get the idea.

Last night, there was a sudden interruption of our conversation as she exclaimed, "Yikes! That horse scared me to death!"

Out in a valley of the North Carolina Blue Ridge, counselors have to go to the edge of the camp late at night to make personal calls, so as not to disturb the campers with reminders of the high tech world they have left behind.

So one night her telephone background is Le Louvre; another, it's a horse pasture.

She's such a terrific young woman.

The Adventure Moves to Paris

In case you can't tell, I have a tremendous amount of studying to do, which is why I am sitting here looking at The Lovely Daughter's photos.

I don't know whether the girls were talking about The DaVinci Code while they took pictures in front of The Louvre, but it seems from her album that they have been to Shakespeare's house, to the Harry Potter Steps at Oxford, and to the home of both TDC and the Mona Lisa. I am struck, as I always am, by how the narratives of our lives and those we adopt as our own all tend to merge -- and I'm really pleased that these young women are enjoying the sources of much of their art and literature and history as much as they are the cafes and pubs and nightclubs of three countries.

From My Chair

. . . I am enjoying the Lovely Daughter's adventures in England. She has been here:

and today she is here: and tomorrow she will take a train through this:

and end up here:

I took this final shot summer before last, so I am going to have particular fun imagining her next few days!

Who can identify all the images?

.

...

A Year of Churches

I've been thinking about that "Why church?" question that I want to address in the new year, and I've taken a look back at where I've been this year. It's been rather an amazing twelve months. (Most of these images enlarge reasonably well with a click.)

December 24, 2005: The United Methodist Church to which we belonged for many years and where we still spend Christmas Eve. When the congregation raises its 500 candles at the close of the service, the sight from the balcony is awesome.

The Chapel of the Martyrs, Paris, July 7, 2006: I spent an hour in this place where St. Ignatius and his first companions made their first vows together, thereby creating the Society of Jesus. I was nearing the end of my year long Ignatian Retreat-in-Everyday-Life experience, and I count that as the most moving hour of my personal 2006.

St. Chappelle, Paris, July 7, 2006: We visited in the late afternoon and returned for a Vivaldi concert that night. Listening to The Four Seasons in St. Chapelle was the perfect ending to a moving day.


Chartres Cathedral, France, July 2006: I posted many of my Chartres images last summer. Each time I look at them, a different one captures my imagination. I've already noted that one of the things I love about a great cathedral is the way in which it incorporates everything. Look at all the different forms stone takes in this one corner on the south exterior!

Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, July 2006: There are few experiences comparable to spending a day in the shadow of this extraordinary building. Of course, Notre Dame de Paris is awfully symmetrical, in contrast to the glorious conglomeration that constitutes Notre Dame de Chartres.

Iona Abbey, Scotland, July 2006: A completely different encounter with the sacred. From the Druids to the Celts to the Benedictines and Dominicans to the Calvinist Reformers to the Iona Community ~ we have all been there and it seems that we all still are.


Glasgow Cathedral, July 2006: Another day in the company of Catholics and Protestants, with an afternoon spent in a solitary walk around and through a cemetery full of Celtic crosses and Reformation proclamations. A rather exhausting place to be, actually, for someone whose idea about differences in belief is that we are called to handle them graciously and generously.

Ursuline Convent Chapel, southern Ohio, September 2006. I was there for a reunion with my boarding school classmates of 7th~9th grade. Who could have imagined the journey that I was beginning there, that sullen Protestant girl sitting in the pew and glaring at the priest through the endless Latin of pre-Vatican II masses?

******

Oddly, the one church of which I have no photographs at all is the one to which I belong and where I spend so much time! I'll have to rectify that situation this year, now that I have smashed the travel bank to smithereens.

Ten Things This Week

1. Teaching Chinese philosophy to ninth graders. Talk of Daoism led to talk of ecology which led to talk of other "ologies" which led to one young lady asking, "What is gynecology, anyway?" I provided a definition and then asked, "Is there anything else we need to clear up today?"

2. I saw five deer, all together, when I was out walking the other evening. One of them was very small, obviously pretty new.

3. I really don't like living in a house where no cat lies curled up anywhere at all. Today I thought I saw her lying on the pile of papers on the dining room table. But, of course, she wasn't.

4. I'm spending Yom Kippur visiting Steel City Seminary.

5. Some people said some really wonderful things to me this past week. And one person said something really, really terrible. Win some, lose some, I guess.

6. I am struggling to upload pictures today ~ but here's one from Iona that suddenly popped right up. It's a view from what's left of the 13th century nunnery.

7. I've been listening to Vivaldi all week. Everyone should hear Les Violons de France play the Four Seasons in Ste. Chapelle on a summer evening but, barring that, a car CD player will do. (Yes ~ three links there ~ the second one is the music.)

8. Christina Yang has always been my favorite Grey's Anatomy character, but this week Miranda Bailey grabbed that slot.

9. The eighth graders brought a cake to class to celebrate the birthday of one of their number. It was a very large cake.

10. I saw the first juncoes of the fall yesterday. Regular readers know that I do NOT consider that to be a good sign. I know that Theresa loves winter, but I most emphatically do not.

Paris Here and There, In No Particular Order

Sunset, around 10:00 pm, and college students congregate on the Pont Neuf for the evening.

A walking street, lined by gardens and located atop an old aqueduct.


A memorial plaque in the Jewish Quarter. Translation: To the memory of the Director of Personnel and the students of this school arrested in 1943 and 1944 by the Vichy Police and the Gestapo, deported and exterminated at Auchswitz because they were Jews.


There isn't much left to remind us of what some experts call the seminal event in modern European history.

A World Cup celebrant.

Marie and Pierre Curie are among the luminaries entombed in the Pantheon, along with Voltaire and Rousseau. Next to their tombs, numerous scribbled notes, on metro tickets, sightseeing programs, and other scraps of paper, have been left by people who clearly felt moved to express themselves ~ many of them women scientists and at least one of them a churlish man scientist. The top note reads: "Thank you for your inspiration. From a scientist, a woman, an admirer." The bottom one reads: "Thank you both for your contributions to nuclear chemistry. You truly have been pioneers. From a scientist, a man, an admirer. P.S. Pierre, the guys are still better at science."

The ceilings of the Pantheon.

The view of Notre Dame from our hotel room.

A window at St.-Chappelle.

Luxembourg Gardens

The Pantheon from the front. Another victim of the French Revolution, it was originally founded as the Church of St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris; turned into the Hall of the Great Men by the revolutionaries, who removed its stained glass windows;and returned to the church by Napoleon, who was eager to aquire Catholic support for his dictatorship. It now serves as a museum and crypt.

The Fountains of Versailles

Notre Dame de Paris Miscellany

I have been impassioned about cathdrals ever since I wandered through my first ones, in Great Britain when I was about 12 or 13.

People respond differently to church architecture. My father has joined exactly one church in his life, the First Congregational Church in Williamstown, Massachusetts, during his college years, and claims that he was drawn in by the building. It is indeed, a magnificent example of pre-federalist New England simplicity. My current Presbyterian church is similar in form ~ albeit red brick rather than white clapboard ~ and insistent upon its claim to a Western Reserve of Connecticut (otherwise known as northeast Ohio) heritage. Both of them urge upon their congregations the austerity of the Reform and Puritan response to the Catholicism of the medieval and Renaissance periods in European history.

But the lavishness of a cathedral has always beckoned to me. The first church we joined here was a United Methodist congregation with a building modeled after a 13th century French cathedral. When we visit St. Augustine, I go to Memorial Presbyterian ~ not a cathedral (we don't have bishops in the Presbyterian Church, and a cathedral is the church seat of a bishop), but architecturally reminiscient of one. And given the chance, I will always be more than willing to explore the nooks and crannies, glass and stone, side chapels and altars and columns and windows and archways and crypts, of a cathedral.

This one, Our Lady of Paris ~ built 1163-1345 to honor Mary, the Mother of God ~ suits me just fine.

Notre Dame: The Gargoyles

When we walked over to Notre Dame from our Left Bank hotel on our first evening in Paris, I was completely taken aback, even though I've seen it before and knew what to expect. How was something so magnificent ever imagined, let alone created? I felt exactly the way I did when I first saw Michelangelo's David: like crying. Maybe it's because I have no imagination or capacity for creating things in three dimensions; architecture, geometry, sculpture, the mediums of stone and glass -- all beyond me. If the world had depended upon me for the development of shelter in any form, we would all still be huddled in caves, awaiting the full impact of global warming as we did the last ice age. Fortunately, the great cathedrals of Europe, all built within the same few-hundred years' time span, were not dependent upon anyone with my limitations.

Onew of my favorite things about the cathedrals is how they incorporate so much of so many kinds of things -- and the gargoyles are among my favorites of those things. When you visit Notre Dame, you can climb the North Tower, walk across the outdoor balustrade between the towers, and climb up and down the South Tower. Up on top, you can see the upper ranges of the cathedral, you can scan the rooftops of Paris, and you can make friends with the gargoyles.