The week in Paris was not quite what I expected but that was more because of where I was at than because of the city. I arrived off a lousy flight – when was the last time a major airline ran out of toilet paper in one the restrooms? – and since I cannot seem to sleep on the plane by the time I got in at 730 local time I just wasn’t feeling good. I had taken a different flight than the rest of the group and so I needed to find them which in an airport like De Gaulle can be a bit of a challenge especially whne you don’t speak much French. Fortunately English is becoming the new Latin (i.e. the universal language) so I was able to get to the group meeting point and be on the shuttle to the hostel we were staying at. The Foyer is on the Boulevard St Michel right across from the Luxembourg Gardens in the heart of the university area. The Sorbonne, the Pantheon and several elite lycees (high schools) are very close by, as is Notre Dame. While I must admit to being put off ny the Roman Imperial architecture of many of the university buildings – despite the Liberté, égalité, fraternité inscribed on all of them, these are most definitely monumental imperial buildings – there are several small churches in the area which are quite beautiful and very moving to be in and this is the area that Hemingway lived in, that Joyce worked in – the bookstore Shakespeare & Co. is right across the boulevard from Notre Dame – and so I spent a good deal of time just walking through the various neighborhoods trying to get a feel of what it is like to be in Paris. I didn’t go to any museums until Tuesday simply because I understood that I was not in Paris, or indeed on this journey, to look at art or even really to be a tourist. I spent the time walking because I needed to reach some kind of understanding of what I was doing on this trip. I did get to the Rodin museum and Haiya and I spent Wednesday afternoon at the Louvre – after 3.5 hours we were both ready to leave – but for me the week was about getting my feet under me so to speak – getting my bearings in a new place, and really, a new life. I have left behind a very great deal and the week in Paris, I think, was about coming to grips with that, letting it go, grieving those things that needed it and preparing for the primary purpose of this pilgrimage that I have embarked upon.
On Friday, after most of the students had left Paris for their work sites, Lynn and I went to Chartres. This is a place that has had a large place in my consciousness ever since I took a class on medieval Gothic architecture my first year at Macalester – that would be January of 1977. In the class we read Henry Adams’ Mont St. Michel and Chartres which is his guided tour of the history of the medieval cathedrals in France from the Romanesque church at Mont St.. Michel through all the Notre Dames that were constructed throughout France in the 11th-14th centuries and ending up with the Thomas’ Summa Theologica. Chartres has the most beautiful stained glass of any of the great cathedrals – the blues are especially renowned – and since it is only 40 kilometers from Paris it was an easy trip to make.
And it was very much worth it, in spite of the fact that the west front was covered by scaffolding because they are slowly cleaning and rehabbing the cathedral, so that the great rose window was not visible. But we walked the labyrinth inside and took a tour of the crypts and took some time to just sit in this place of great faith, endurance and power. You have to remember that most of these great cathedrals were built by itinerant craftsmen and the people of the community they were located in. The masons would come and shape the stones, the architects would direct the building and the community would provide hospitality and labor – the stones had to get to the site somehow. For the most part these people are anonymous to us and yet the buildings they created not only still stand but continue to draw people from all over the world. Adams did not pretend to understand the power of the Virgin – he drew a comparison to standing before the great electrical turbines of the World’s Fair in Chicago in the 1890’s’ – he knew they had great power but had no understanding of how that power was generated – but he understood that there was force in Her cathedrals. And there still is great force there - for the first time all week I felt calmed, relieved of some of the burdens that I had been carrying, some for what felt like a very long time. I do not consider my a Christian and certainly not Catholic but at that place neither were required – grace and understanding were there for all, freely given to anyone with an open heart and the willingness to ask.
A few days earlier at the Rodin Museum I stood in front of his famous Gates of Hell and relied that although it is a magnificent work of art, I found the theology it portrays to be profoundly distasteful to me and also simply and completely wrong. I don’t know if there is only sky above us but I do know there is no hell below us. The Divine – describe however you will, name it however you must – does not punish. What punishment there comes from us. Religion, as Rudolf Otto teaches us, is a responsive posture, a response to that which is completely and totally Other - the mysterium tremendum, a response to our prehension that there is something else active in the universe, something beyond our abilities to fully understand and describe in anything other than metaphor. Whatever hell there is, whatever purgatory there may be, these are things and places that human beings have invented for themselves and then place themselves there. C.S. Lewis once described hell as a rainy bus queue in London where the people kept refusing to get on the bus that would take them away from that place. What Chartres demonstrates, beyond any doubt, is that the Divine presence is infinitely patient, infinitely forgiving and infinitely welcoming. Hell exists only in us and as George Steiner has observed, Hell has been much easier for us to create on earth than its counterpart.
Our last night in Paris was spent at the Tour Eiffel – a very long time in line for tickets and transport to the top, but it was so worth it. The view of Paris and the Seine at night made everything else disappear. It is the most touristy thing to do in Paris but it is such a magnificent sight. It was a splendid way to wrap up the first week before embarking on the marathon of visits that begins next.
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