Down memory lane

Well, since I referenced my trip across the Atlantic on the QE2 and since the album of photos I took happens to be out, I snagged some shots. They are not high quality partially because the originals are not and partly because I took them with my iPhone. But they will give an idea of what it was to sail across the sea in 1977.

Comme j'étais jeune... this was the telegram that announced I had been booked passage on the ship for the student fare.

Blurry shot of the QE2, looking miniscule compared to the recent shipwrecked liner.

View of the QE2 before embarking (somewhere between 34-45th Streets, NYC).

The former WTC as we left NY harbor on 1 September 1977.

Looking toward Hoboken.

Our cabin somewhere way below. It was on the outside of the ship so we did have a porthole.

This photo makes the cabin look bigger than it was... but it was perfectly adequate for two people.

Above deck on the one sunny day.

Hoowhee, look at that exhaust.

Looking at the stern.

Somewhere inside...!

Our dinner table (we were assigned a table and ate with the same people every night). As you can see, this trip catered to the 20-something crowd.

Meanwhile, outside... this had to have been our safety drill. I do remember the watertight doors shutting behind us as we went to our muster station.

One of the better moments at sea when it was not pouring rain or going sideways.

I would go out just for the sake of going out, even though it was wet. I felt like some Hollywood movie star in this film of crossing the ocean to new adventures... and that is where the James Taylor song would come into play.

Tugboats greeted us as we approached Cherbourg, France.

All of a sudden, after five days at sea, we had disembarked and now were standing in France. My sea-legs stuck with me for several days; I was more dizzy on land than at sea.

Looking back at the good ship that had safely carried us across the Atlantic.

Last view of the QE2 before descending into la gare, and chaos.

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Surely it is because of this trip that I so appreciated working at the Seamen's Church Institute and visiting seafarers. They are the unsung heros in all this; cruise lines tend to treat seafarers as indentured slaves — I did not know that at the time but came to learn of it when I worked at SCI. I have far greater appreciation and respect for the stewards and cabin attendants than I did at the time.

So prayers for those who lost their lives while at work on the Costa Concordia.

Another burial

It's hard not to think of all the people I have buried since arriving at Trinity... fifteen last year, two this year thus far, eight to ten the year before. A generation of The Episcopal Church is dying literally before my eyes. Of these funerals, I have actually known the deceased in four or five cases. The rest are phone calls the office gets from one of the three funeral parlors in town. In these cases, the deceased are members of the communion of saints and what I call the alumni/alumnae society — those folks who twenty-thirty years ago had a connection with the church but since then have fallen away. No matter how much I entreat the survivors to come back and check up on them, they don't. I am beginning to wonder if I should hang out in the graveyard?

In any event, today's interment was in a beautiful graveyard on a beautiful day in May before the black flies have emerged (and they will be FIERCE this year for all the rain). The cemetery is on Rte 103 in Cuttingsville; it looks across the road to Hateful Mountain (dunno why it's called that). The maple tree leaves are just about to open fully so they are wonderfully effervescent. [These photos are pulled off the web because the winter 'house' that curators put over the statue and door to the mausoleum are still up.]

What distinguishes this graveyard from others is the mausoleum at its entrance. Local tanning magnate John Porter Bowman's daughter died in 1879, the following year his wife died and two years after that he built this mausoleum complete with his statue, a grieving husband and father bringing flowers to his daughter and wife. He then built his house (now a B&B) across the road so he would not have to go far. It is reminiscent of Victor Hugo's poem, Demain dès l'aube....

Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.
J'irai par la forêt, j'irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées,
Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.

Je ne regarderai ni l'or du soir qui tombe,
Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j'arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.

Tomorrow, at dawn, in the hour when the countryside becomes white,
I will leave. You see, I know that you are waiting for me.
I will go by the forest, I will go by the mountain.
I cannot stay far from you any longer.

I will walk the eyes fixed on my thoughts,
Without seeing anything outside, nor hearing any noise,
Alone, unknown, the back curved, the hands crossed,
Sad, and the day for me will be like the night.

I will not look at the gold of the evening which falls,
Nor the faraway sails descending towards Harfleur.
And when I arrive, I will put on your tomb
A green bouquet of holly and flowering heather.

Joyeuse fête du muguet

And Happy May Day.

After a long hiatus

It has been ages since I put up photos of the cats... that is largely because when my computer died, I lost my Photoshop application and I still haven't found the installer disk so am without and am not happy with how iPhoto works. So while I have lots and lots of photos of the four, I haven't gotten them shrunk down in a satisfactory manner.

Meanwhile, this past weekend, I went to the 125th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Glee Club at my alma mater. While there, I met a woman who is a grad student at my grad school, studying in the same field, medieval French language and literature. So here is a class of 2005 with a class of 1979 from the same college. May she obtain her Ph.D. in far less time than it took me (she is a fourth year student).

Her experience is a positive one, good adviser, loving the material. I loved the material but had a dreadful adviser. That can make all the difference in the world.

Otherwise, it has been busy and I have been recovering from all the running since February. I did not realise how tired I was until last week.

Cinéma realité

I just finished watching Le Grand Silence, Die Große Stille, Into Great Silence, a beautiful film on the monastery, La Grande Chartreuse, 25 kms outside of Grenoble, France. The film isn't for everyone — there is very little talk, almost no music (other than the Chartreusian plainsong chants), and no narrative voice-over to explain what is going on. Instead, one enters into the deep silence of this incredibly ascetical order devoted to silent contemplation, where a monk's cell becomes his desert and where he spends most of his time as a hermit within community. Watching this film is almost like seeing Andrew Wyeth still-life paintings put to video. It helps knowing the rhythm of the daily office hours and basics of monastic life.

Way back in 1976 with my French 'family' I went to La Grande Chartreuse. Given the solitary nature of the order, visitors do not enter the actual monastery; instead, they visit a museum that has a miniature monastery in which a monk's cell is replicated and where one can hear their music. Beyond the museum is seeing the sheer severity and beauty of the site with cliffs rising high behind the monastery.


Although I was underage at the time, I did manage to bring back two bottles of Chartreusian cognac for my father.

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This is the first film I have downloaded from iTunes and I can't say I am 100% pleased: it is awfully grainy in places and there are even spots in the film that made me think I was watching an old reel to reel film (little spots and streaks). I think I may buy the CD from the distributor; I'll only be out $10.00.

The Feast of Pentecost

[candles representing the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit before the liturgy]

Two threads always leap out from the readings for me on the Feast of Pentecost: language and its diversity, and the Holy Spirit, its representation and the gifts we receive from the Holy Spirit.

The reading from the second chapter of the Book of Acts, typically read on the Feast of Pentecost, always lets the imagination run wild with its colourful description of languages and peoples. The lucky reader who manages to get through this list of names — Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamhylia, Egypt, Libya, Cyrene, Rome, Jews, Cretans and finally Arabs — deserves a prize for tackling the unfamiliar. And yet that is how it must have seemed on that fiftieth morning after Easter, an out-of-control situation with the unfamiliar.

As a lover of language, and one who has been graced with the ability to listen and communicate in two other modern languages, I delight in this annual reminder of the complexity of human communication. My mind still remains amazed that humankind has found so many diverse ways to communicate. According to Wikkipeadia, not the most scientific source, there are 898 languages in the world.

Experiencing this diversity even on a small scale, such as I did three years ago about this time at a hostel in southern France, at the foot of the Pyrenees, was wondrous. Thirty-two tired pilgrims came together for dinner. The host of the evening, a Basque, alternately sang Basque songs for us and led us in song. Part of the evening also consisted in having people from different countries sing a song from their land… in English, French, German. It was a bit crazy at times, for some a bit of a shock after the solitude of the quiet day of solitary walking. But the activity underlined our diversity, at the same time that we engaged in a universal human (and creaturely) activity — eating.

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Isn’t it surprising that Christian iconography has depicted the Holy Spirit — that energising force that first created the world at the time of first beginnings and then at second beginnings turned the world upside-down — as a dove? This Spirit that sighs too deep for words, this Spirit that is the truth that guides us into all truth, this Spirit that endows us with manifold gifts is cast as something so gentle as a dove. Yet this icon is readily recognised right off as the Holy Spirit.

On the same segment of our pilgrimage walk, on a day when we could find no church that offered a mass because there are so few Catholic priests, we stopped at a little church along the way. Many churches in France have their doors open, a lovely gesture of hospitality.

This church was very simple with relatively little adornment. What was so remarkable about it was its painting of the Holy Spirit in dove form over the altar. The dove, flying surrounded by clouds, in a blue, starry sky evoked peacefulness. Indeed, a pilgrim, who had passed through the church’s doors earlier on in the day, wrote in the little book that many churches have for pilgrims to note their prayers, how steadying it was to see the Spirit flying over the altar in the church. Its pictorial evocation underlined the Spirit that imbued that holy space. One could feel that this was a church that was loved and where God was loved.

Maybe iconographers instinctively knew that the Spirit needed to be depicted in calming imagery, rather than tongues of fire because of the sheer power and force of the Spirit when it is unleashed on the church and Jesus’ followers. The Spirit is still very active in our lives, lo these millennia later.

It is dangerous to ask for the gifts of the Holy Spirit but those gifts have already been given to us through baptism. And what are the gifts of the Holy Spirit? Strength, knowledge, piety, awe and wonder, counsel, understanding, and wisdom. They are represented by the seven candles burning by the font. Think of which gifts are your strongest today and which ones you would like to encourage. And then, as you return from communion, you are invited to light a candle.

Sharing in the gifts of the Holy Spirit — all the varieties and differences of gifts — ties everyone together in the work of God. Sharing in the gifts of the Holy Spirit unites us in the call to be children of the beatitudes, to imagine a life and community and actions filled with the spirit of Jesus with his simplicity, his humility, his prophetic courage, the will to serve and the witness he shared of his unique and intimate relationship with God.

All of us have been given individual and specific gifts. They are for us to use and decide whether we use them in a private or corporate way. Does the artist paint for the sheer enjoyment of it all, or does he or she design works that can bring healing to people? I think of the architects who designed the memorial at Oklahoma or the then-young Maya Ying Lin who created the Viet Nam memorial. Their talent could have been a private matter; they chose, instead, to create something for a greater cause.

In what way is the gift given each one of us used to serve the common good? For, as Paul says, the ‘manifestation of the Spirit is for the common good.’ How does the Spirit work in us for the rest?

Can we truly believe that everyone has a gift to share? Don Helder Camara said, perhaps speaking of monetary wealth, ‘None are so poor that they cannot give, none are so rich that they cannot receive,’ but surely his wisdom also applies to the gifts each one of us has received. Some of us think we don’t have much to give but the Holy Spirit surprises us into recognizing that we do have something to offer.

The Holy Spirit also helps us discern what those gifts might be. That process of discernment is life-long. What gifts you have today may be different tomorrow. It can change. The discernment can only take place if one’s heart is open, though. The Holy Spirit helps you keep your heart open.

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This morning, the feast on which we celebrate the power of the gift of the Holy Spirit, the priest will not be the only person invoking out loud the descent of the Holy Spirit. Together, as a congregation, with one voice, we will say the epiclesis as printed in the bulletin. Let the power of those words said in your own voice fill you. Receive the Holy Spirit and feel the Spirit entering into your soul.

Let your soul be open — as a person with open hands, palms up, as the celebrant’s outstretched arms — to receive the Holy Spirit and whatever gift comes with the Spirit. Let the Holy Spirit descend upon you and fill you. Do not be afraid, because if you are, the Holy Spirit cannot do anything in you. Trust. Feel God’s presence indwelling in you, helping you remember Christ’s teachings. Know that receiving the Holy Spirit, while life-changing and potentially chaotic, while turning your life upside-down and bringing new languages of heart to you, enables you to do far more than ever thought possible. As you receive that Spirit, give thanks for the Spirit working in us who is infinitely more powerful than we can possibly imagine.


Candles at the end of the service

Demain dès l'aube... je partirai

[with apologies to Victor Hugo]

It's that time of year when my heart turns toward the Camino (unlike the kings whose hearts turned to war in the spring per I and II Kings). Sadly, there is no Camino walk on the horizon this year — a move, new job, General Convention, Executive Council cause me to forfeit that trip; instead, we'll walk the Long Trail this year because we won't have to spend two days getting to and from the starting and end points.

Maybe in 2010 we can go back and do the Camino en entier all at once in one fell swoop... and perhaps we can tack on Finistere. We know that it took us about 30 days to walk the Camino in Spain so I could save up my unpaid days and tack them onto vacation. Walking the Camino all at once would use up all the vacation days but it would be worth it.

I would like to do the Camino to know if my body can sustain that type of walking beyond 17 days which I think is the longest slog we ever did. I read last night about people doing pain pyramids: days of 30-40-50-40-30 kms. That would only work on the Alteplano but I suppose if one got up early enough and were in shape enough, it would be possible... and yes, painful.

Having moved, I am not eligible for sabbatical for several years, even though it has been exactly five years since my last one (I walked out of GOE reading to enter into sabbatical). I have to hold onto that possibility for even longer.

So tonight I just dream about the Camino, thinking of all those people who currently are getting ready to start in a month or two.

Summer's coming!

English: Lightning striking the Eiffel Tower, June 3, 1902, at 9:20 P.M. This is one of the earliest photographs of lightning in an urban setting In:"Thunder and Lightning", Camille Flammarion, translated by Walter Mostyn Published in 1906.

Français : La tour Eiffel heurtée par la foudre, 3 juin 1902, 21h20. Cette image est l'une des premières photos jamais réalisées montrant la foudre dans un environnement urbain. Extrait de "Tonnerre et éclairs", de Camille Flammarion.

So, we've had our first loud rumble of thunder for the season. The weather has gone straight from winter to summer with no spring in between. We have had a week of temperatures in the 70s to 80s; the snow is almost all gone here but on the mountains there are still patches of snow in the shadows. The crocuses have croaked becausde of the warmth but the daffies are coming up and in some places are out.

Keep praying for Esther. I visited her this afternoon and she was so weak and tired she couldn't even talk with me. Her 98 year-old roommate (sharp as a tack!), Emilie, said the staff had just put Esther back into bed so I guess that means she had been sitting up all day. It is such a roller-coaster ride for a saint whom I love like a grandmother.

At the close of day...

all I can do is remember in prayer the following:

Dean, 41 years old, who died this afternoon from a short journey with melanoma that got him. He died in the presence of his parents and soon afterward was commended to God by a brother priest...

Naomi, who has had the door of hope cracked a little bit open because she has realised that some doctors just don't know how to communicate tough news to patients. She is not yet 'terminal' but rather has a small chance of 'cure,' nor has she reached the end of the road of treatments.... It's too bad that whoever spoke to her yanked her around for three weeks. Oh, she's not out of the woods yet, but as she wrote on her blog, ' We are not even ready to throw in the towel so get those rosaries back out and start the amens and prayers because we need everyone more then ever!'

Emilee, a 13 year-old whom I only know through the internet, who has been lingering for the past week, thereby giving her mother and sisters some extra time before she dies from Ewings cancer....

Esther, one of our saints, the other surviving Belle of the parish who fell Sunday and broke her pelvis. She will turn 90 on the 18th and, of course, her family had arranged for a big party for her....

my own spiritual well-being as I travel to NYC to the General Theological Seminary (my alma mater) and the Tutu Center for the conference on the draft Anglican Covenant. They've packed so many people into the schedule that I am going to need a caffeine IV to survive.

[photo: zillions of votives lit by pilgrims (including myself) at the start of the Via Podiensis, Chemin de Saint Jacques, Le Puy-en-Velay (Lo Puèi de Velai in the Auvergnat dialect of the Occitan language), France, May 2005. The Virgin of Le Puy is one of the rare Vierge Noires out there.]

Incroyable

An amazing photograph of a day that went awry as far as the planners of the Olympic torch process are concerned. Ce sont des gens qui ont grimpé la Tour Eiffel pour y mettre ce panneau (a bunch of people who climbed up the Eiffel Tower to put this banner there).

Quant à moi, je dis, bravo pour la communauté française.

Tibet libre!

Sans paroles, sin palabras

There's too much on my heart and mind to night to say anything so I leave you all with a photo of one of my spiritual places, the 11th-century abbatial church of Conques, France. It is tucked into a valley, like a shell which is what 'conques' means. It is a living church that still has a monastic community that worships there. And it is on the Chemin de Saint Jacques.

So, linger here for a moment and in the time that you would spend reading some nonsense from me, say a prayer for all those who have asked for them. And then have a gentle night.

Jeudi noir - Black Thursday

Alors, les syndicats font grève aujourd'hui. The unions are on strike today in France.

According to Le Monde,
150 000 manifestants en France selon la police, 300 000 selon la CGT. Overall in France, there were 150.000 protesters according to the police; according to the union group, 300.000.

9 h 10 : la direction de la RATP prévoit un métro sur trois vendredi

One in three metro trains is foreseen for Friday.
La RATP prévoit un métro sur trois vendredi 19 octobre et attend de fortes perturbations pour les RER A et B, les bus et les tramways, certains syndicats ayant reconduit la grève contre la réforme des régimes spéciaux de retraite. Selon une porte-parole de la RATP, un tiers du trafic des métros à Paris sera assuré.
The RATP (Associated Network of Parisian Transports) predicts 1/3 metros on Friday, and is expecting disruptions for the urban networks A and B, buses and trams. Some unions have redirected the strike against special directives and reforms for retirement.

17 h 25 : situation normale dans les aéroports Normal status in the airports.
La situation était "tout à fait normale" jeudi à 17 heures dans les aéroports d'Orly et de Roissy, a-t-on appris auprès de la direction générale de l'aviation civile (DGAC) qui n'a enregistré dans la journée ni retard de vols, ni gréviste parmi les contrôleurs aériens.
The situation is completely normal Thursday at 5 PM in the two Parisian airports of Orly and Roissy. There wasn't a single slowdown of flights nor striker amongst air-traffic controllers.

17 h 13 : environ 25 000 manifestants à Paris
Environ 25 000 manifestants participaient, jeudi après-midi à Paris, à la manifestation parisienne contre la réforme des régimes spéciaux de retraite, selon la CGT. Pour la police, le défilé syndicale comptait environ 21 000 personnes.
Approximately 25.000 protesters participated Thursday afternoon in Paris at a protest against the proposed special retirement plans. According to the police, the union parade consisted of 21.000 people.

Ah, nothing like a good old French strike.

When I lived in Paris in 1977-78, we had a Black Tuesday — I no longer remember which day of the week it was — in early December. We'd all been warned the week before that everything would shut down, including the electricity. The strikers/unions thoughtfully allowed all the Parisians to make their morning coffee and get their breakfast before turning off the juice. Then, it was spotty electrical coverage throughout the city for the rest of the day. The Métro was running maybe 1/8 trains and the few that ran went about 5kms/hour (about my pace walking the Camino). For yuks, I tried to take my usual route to classes. It took 45 minutes to go one stop so I bailed and walked the rest.

Traffic was a mess because the stoplights didn't work and there were no police around.

It was a quasi holiday because no one could get anything accomplished.

Nor did it make sense: I went into the PTT (post office/telephones) to buy some stamps. France always had beautiful stamps and one could ask for specific timbres de collection — collection stamps. I did, carefully chosing the number and cost of the stamps. When I asked the person behind the counter for several of these stamps, she said she couldn't do it because she was on strike. She could sell me the standard stamps, but not the special ones.

— OK, I said. I need four stamps at 80 centimes (or whatever it was).
She looked in her drawer and shook her head. Rien. She sighed.
— Oh, well, then I will have to sell you the special stamps because there are no regular ones at that price.
— Whatever (not as commonly said back then as now).

Such is la vie en France en grève.

My parents are flying to Paris, then Bordeaux tonight/tomorrow but they should be able to stay out of the fray since they are going to meet up with a tour group.

A nugget from André Gide (1869-1951)

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

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This quotation really doesn't need much explaining. I think it fits well to the current situation in the Anglican Communion.

I have read a lot of André Gide's works, starting with La Symphonie Pastorale, then La Porte Etroite (which has led me to pondering about Gide, since this week's gospel is on the narrow door), Les Faux Monnayeurs, and so on. I plowed through his journals and many other novels.

Perhaps my favourite quote from him, one that has always stuck with me and which I have tried to live is:

Le sage est celui qui s'étonne de tout. The wise one is the one who marvels at everything.

The rest of the quotation speaks about seeing each new day as a marvel. It comes from Les Nourritures Terrestres.

Yes. Gide's life was pretty wild — wild enough that thirty years ago, the details of his sexual doings were not mentioned in books or classes. Despite it, he was a wonderful lyrical author.

In any event, read, mark and inwardly digest this one nugget:

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

Défense d'entrer

Maybe this happened to other folks this afternoon that they couldn't get onto their own blogs and were getting 403 error messages from blogger or worse, a message from Google saying that their computer was sending out spam and, therefore, was being denied access?

Whatever was going on, it has been solved and we can return to our regular programming.

This photo, pulled off the web, is of le Centre Pompidou in Paris, finished in 1977.

It's a wild building built in the area of Paris known as les Halles (the market place). The old wonderful iron lace buildings were razed , much to preservationists' horror (same idea as the tearing down of Penn Station in New York City) and new structures rose up in their place.

The outside is inside and the inside outside. Everything is painted different colours. The escalators go up the outside of the building. It was finished in the summer of 1977.

During my year in Paris, I used to go over there every Sunday afternoon to study. Le Centre Beaubourg, as this is called, had the only open stacks library in the city and it was open on Sundays until 8.00 PM. It was a great place to go because it even had study carrels! So I would wander over there mid afternoon to put in a few hours' work. Some Sundays there were so many people that the building would be filled to capacity and they would shut the door to the escalator. They actually kept exact track of the number of the people and if one left the centre, then they would allow one person to go in.

Outside on the plaza there were always flame eaters and other bizarre pseudo-circus acts.

The place never failed to amuse and surprise.

Just a memory postcard on a Sunday afternoon....