À la prochaine! . . . the monks are away

A certain symmetry has presented itself in our last few days in Paris. The nuns and monks next door at St Gervais have departed and there will be no daily liturgies this week. In August they were away, with the rest of Paris, . en vacancesThis time they are going away for their annual retreat “in the heart of winter”. We discovered this by chance (or providence!) on their website, when checking to see if Vespers was being celebrated on Sunday night. So we were able to sing and chant with them for one last time, until a hoped for return one day. So, adieu friends, à la prochaine.

Yesterday too was our last Sunday morning at the American Cathedral. I sat alongside John in just about the same spot we sat on our first visit in August. Then we had felt an immediate sense of welcome, now nearly six months later I am tearful because we are leaving people that we have come to love and a place that has provided an anchor in the sea of delightful challenges that is Paris. “The city of lights” is a phrase that will always echo with the Dean’s gentle warmth and with the light that the Cathedral community added to our Paris sojourn. And it was a real blessing yesterday when it was Zachary, the Dean, who proclaimed the very last words of the liturgy, which encourage us to return to the world refreshed by our feast of “word and sacrament”, finishing with a duo of Alleluias. We respond: Thanks be to God, Alleluia, Alleluia.

Vespers, with the soon to depart monastic community, ended in almost exactly the same way, so that the very last words we sing with our brothers and sister of the Fraternities of Jerusalem are Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

There have been many Alleluias in this last week. The morning star in the east and the moon setting over the Seine as I walked to early mass. Lunch with the good company of two Australian friends from the Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop. The sweetness of langoustine. The richness of crème brulée. The mob Sunday afternoon roller bladers swarming over Pont Alma. The long walk home through the Tuileries in the grisalle, the greyness of the afternoon. A man taming the birds. Buskers adding the sound track to the film of our lives. Then there is quiet last supper with our Swiss friends at Lutetia, our “local” on the Ile St Louis, and the nearly-sixty party for Naomi who is celebrating, eating life as she fights cancer. The party is held in the extra-large third floor studio she and Andrew are sharing this month, an unexpected gift with Paris lined up to view: the Seine, the Iles, Notre Dame, St Chapelle, the flash of the Eiffel Tower, the floodlights of the Bateaux Mouches. The constant flash and hum of traffic, the bli-blip of the Sapiers, the occasional siren, remind us that this city is not just history, but peopled with folk more or less like us.

As we party happily on, I watch a man fishing in the clothes bin below with a long and shiny metal hook. Success! He examines the catch, stows a coat in his plastic carry bag and continues on his way. Then I think of a Sunday, long ago, in a far away town by the Pacific Ocean and the street friend who embellished the end of our liturgy with his own flourish of enthusiasm: Alleluia, Alleluia, bum!

Time to head home.

Last Saturday

How much can you see? I found myself thinking about this yet again after two hours in the Louvre. It is a museum designed to defeat ordinary human capacities. The collection of course is ridiculous in its extent. But what beats us every time is the building itself. The idea that you could just duck across to re-visit those wonderful Botticelli frescos before going home is thwarted by the fact that you can’t find your way out of the Marly courtyard, even with a map, and end up in medieval French sculpture, which you must, at least briefly, look at. And surely we don’t have to go through the (obscenely) sumptuous recreations of Napoleon III’s apartments (complete with the view to the Champs Elysées) again? The shape of the pyramid and sortie (exit) finally appear on a wall. Perhaps we could exit the Richelieu wing, cross the pyramid courtyard and go directly up to the Denon wing. Even this idea involves an Escher-like series of ascents and descents. The Louvre is a place of stairs (pity those with mobility issues). In the end, I give up on Botticelli for the day, and opt for a slice of pizza. It is already 8.30pm and I’m louvred out again. The fact is I want to devour Botticelli, not pizza. What will seeing that fresco for the third time mean? I really want it on my wall.

In fact the same thing happened at the end of our three day visit to Florence. We were in the Academia, where we’d seen the original of Michelangelo’s David – blissfully free of crowds on an early morning in November, and yes, it is a truly amazing work. And there was a wonderful exhibition of works intended for Florentine domestic spaces, including a collection of decorated “birthing plates”, a tradition that I’d never heard of previously. After the birth of a child the mother was given a plate of fruit for her well-being – though over time, and being Italy, the plate decorations overtook the actual fruit. Still, a nice tradition which I think we should revive. We should have left then, since our plates were already full. But there is always one more room around the corner, and who knows if we will ever return . . . By the end I had a burning desire to be blindfolded and led away: “No more! I cannot see anymore!” Sadly (for me at least) this became the story for the increasing load of Christian art. It is a great passion for me, but taken from its original ecclesiastical context and viewed on mass it all begins to lose its power. You just don’t know what to do with row after row of annunciations and crucifixions. (By contrast, the Fra Angelico frescos still in situ in the monastery of San Marco were a highlight of Florence.)

Where is the balance between the overstimulation of overload and sad, but inevitable, numbing habituation? (At this latter end of the spectrum Notre Dame has become so much of the daily landscape for us that we have to keep on reminding ourselves to be astonished.)

But then there is a Saturday, with its randomly chosen agenda offering surprise and delight. Uncharacteristically I managed to get myself out of bed in the dark and join the monks and nuns next door at St Gervais for the morning office. Our time of rising has become slack to say the least, and, given neither of us has to travel to work, we have not felt the need to adapt to the absence of light in these mid-winter mornings. But on Saturdays Laudes is at 8 am (with silent prayer for half an hour beforehand) instead of 7 am. As soon as I get out the front gate I remember why this is a good idea: the sky is inky and lightening into a Matisse blue, I can see the morning star, and the streets are quiet. The silence as you enter the dark church, though, has the shape of prayer. There is stillness until the bells begin to gently rock in the tower above. Then we stand to greet the day: Seigneur, ouvre mes lèvres (Lord, open my lips) et ma bouche publiera ta louange (and my mouth will proclaim your praise). The great silence of the night has ended. Will today be the day when we finally live with more than a fleeting mindfulness of the presence of God?

John and I have nothing particular on our agenda, so we toss around some ideas, and decide, in view of museum overload, to take a walk to a park we have not yet visited. We pluck out the relevant card from the box of Paris Walks and, following its instructions, head up the now familiar Line 1 of the metro to Charles de Gaulle Étoile, then one stop down Line 2 to Ternes, just down from the Arc de Triomphe. We find our way to a small but very chic market street, which, being Saturday morning, is buzzing with activity. We see our favourite Napoleon cherries and, even though they are clearly out-of-season imports we buy rather more than can afford (the French words for “stop”, or “a few less” instantly disappear from my vocabulary as the women places a large scoop into the bag). We breathe in the colours of the street, then stop to delight in the display of pastries in an Algerian Patisserie. We decide on an early lunch of warmed pastries stuffed with chicken and vegetables, and two small cakes for afternoon tea (one, blushed pink, is crafted in the shape of a fig!).

Map in hand we continue to weave through the streets toward Parc Monceau – classic Haussmann in this part of the city – until we reach the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, St Alexandre Nevsky. It was built in the mid-nineteenth century by the Russians living in Paris, a community that grew dramatically after the 1917 Revolution. The front facade has a beautiful mosaic of Christ, which at the time seemed familiar (in the way that icons do). Later I discovered that it was modelled on a mosaic in Sant’Appollinari Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy, which we had seen only in November. Our arrival at the Cathedral did not correlate with the specified visiting hours, but clearly something was happening. While John was hesitant,I suggested that being Christian was a good enough reason to enter. And so we stepped into the interior, to be greeted by the Divine Liturgy in full swing.

For all that is difficult about Orthodoxy, there is absolutely no question that everything inside the church conspires to mediate the holy: the soaring yet womb-like space, dimly lit yet warmly coloured with painted frescos; the icons, candles, incense swirling around the room; people - standing, bowing, crossing themselves, kneeling; and behind the iconostasis, through the royal doors, you catch a glimpse of the priest about the business of the sanctuary. I have difficulty with this – theologically, and especially as a woman. But the idea of the glimpse is, nonetheless, helpful. The holy is always seen slant (as Emily Dickenson once put it). If I close my eyes, though, done with seeing, it is a pretty good glimpse. Chant weaves through the air: a resonant bass, a tenor or two, and the welcome strong voice of a mezzo-soprano. Where is this harmony coming from? Another back room perhaps. This is not performance, the singers are not on show. It is a gift: open my lips . . .

That evening, lured by a poster in the foyer of our studio advertising a free concert, we wander over to the Left Bank to Saint Séverin, a thirteenth century church noted for its “flamboyant gothic” style. Its most notable feature is its double aisle which wraps all the way around the nave and is held in the centre of the apse by a spiralling column that looks like a tree, with its branches, fourteen of them, spreading out to support the vault. The apse is a veritable forest of columns. It is good to have an excuse to sit here in the woods for an hour as we listen to a quartet of voices weaving a mass in honour of St Jerome by the Josquin Desprez, the polyphony a perfect match for flamboyant gothic. The church is named after Séverin, a sixth century hermit who lived in the area: I imagine him laying under a tree, gazing at the stars shining through the shadowy web of branches above him.

The concert over, we walk into the wintery Paris evening past St Julien le Pauvre (late twelfth century, now a Melkite Greek Orthodox Church) and the small gated park that sits by its side. Somewhere in the darkness, perhaps in the tree that was planted in 1602, a black bird is singing, yes, singing in the night.

This, I now realise, was my last full Saturday in Paris. Senses redeemed, I could go on hearing, and seeing, for a long time yet.

Bonne année

Last year John and I greeted the New Year at St Bernard’s, Reidsdale where the population of bats in our vestry roof far outweighs the number of people in this tiny hamlet just south of Braidwood. This year we marked the turn on the year in the City of Lights, population 2 million. On New Year’s Eve 2009 we sat in deck chairs under some black wattle trees, drank chilled wine and watched the Monga mist come over the hill. We were tucked up in the nave of our church well before midnight.

This year we drank hot wine (vin chaud) in a café next to Notre Dame with a Swiss artist and her husband, then wandered across to St Gervais to join the nuns and monks for their vigil service. It was an equally beautiful way to watch the turning of a year: chants, readings, hymns, carols (familiar tunes bent into French words), and towards midnight a sustained litany. At each petition the assembée sang Kyrie eleison (Lord have mercy). Of all the things we sang that night this was the best, the strongest, our most harmonious effort. The simplest too, I guess. But it will always stay with me. At midnight the bells rang out and we sang the Gloria. The first food of the year was holy bread and wine. Back in our studio we drank champagne and ate French cheese with our friends. We went to bed at 3 am, knowing that we are truly and unaccountably blessed.

On France 24 the next day we find that the New Year fireworks were cancelled in Paris “for security reasons”. And that in Alexandria twenty one Christian Copts were killed and scores of others injured attending their New Years’ Eve vigil. Kyrie eleison.

Whiter than snow

Our Paris sojourn has delivered many unexpected gifts. Most recently, snow in quantities rarely seen in the city, especially so early in winter. How much more beautiful can this city get? And now, with the melting snow, the Seine is so high that the Bateaux Mouches cannot fit under the bridges (giving the local residents a temporary reprieve from their insane flood lights at night). What has come as the biggest surprise, though, is how much people have figured in what we had imagined would be primarily a duet in a city desert. The visits of family and friends have given us greater pleasure than we could ever have imagined. And there have been new friendships full of kindness and generosity. Shared meals in restaurants, introducing us to delights we would never have found, and in our studio, miraculously served around the small trestle table from our two-hotplate kitchen.

One memorable and random gift is sprinkled with the snow of early December. We’d just returned from accompanying our daughter Alice and her partner Greg to the airport, it was mid-afternoon and I checked my email. There was a message from the American Cathedral: can you do a funeral tomorrow for a family that want a female Episcopal priest? The next day was John’s birthday, but it was such an out of the ordinary request how could I possible say no? So, I found myself in the early evening sitting around the trestle table with a French photojournalist and his American wife listening to his family story and his desire that his mother be buried by a woman.

His mother, he said, had described herself as “neutral” when it came to religion. Thelma been born in the U.S. and whilst her heritage was Middle Eastern and orthodox, she was baptised an Episcopalian. She had spent most of her life in France, though, marrying Albert, a secular Jew of Georgian descent. Their only son was anything but neutral. Not because he was a devout practitioner of any religion, but because he had encountered evil. He had smelt it on the streets in Rwanda, seen its imprint in Bosnia. He understood how evil can creep in, catching us unaware, eating away the fragile bonds between us, destroying everything in its path. For all this, for all that he had witnessed evil’s dark presence, he also knew, and believed in, the power of love. His mother’s last years had been muddied by failing health, hers and Albert’s, and relationships had been damaged. Had evil crept in the door? He wanted prayers: for the safety of his mother’s immortal soul.

What can we say in the face of evil? If Thelma had been Jewish we would have said the Kaddish, a bold declaration of faith in God’s goodness and providence in the face of death. It feels stubborn and defiant, helpfully so. The Christian response is equally bold: resurrection. “Go tell my brothers”, Jesus said in his appearance to Mary Magdalene, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” God is just as I have shown you, he is saying, Love wins.

We gathered the next day at Montparnasse Cemetery, just a handful of us, a few metres from the starkly bare graves of Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, to pray for Thelma, for her ailing husband, her son and daughter-in-law, for eternal rest and for healing. The more than cold day was turning icy, and snow began to steadily fall. But we still told her story, and read Saint Paul’s words about the persistence of love, in English and in French. Then, into the silence of the falling snow, a young Polish opera student offered the gift of song. Eternity could hardly be more beautiful. We laid Thelma’s body in the grave, and one by one offered pink roses to the earth, with prayer. The last rose was placed by the soprano as she sang the final notes of her song.

“I’ve never been so cold,” John said afterwards. But it may be that I’ve never been so warm. “Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow,” David cried in the aftermath of the destruction unleashed by his taking of Uriah’s wife (Psalm 51.7). Standing in Montparnasse that day in the falling snow you could almost see our longing for redemption being met by the love of God.

By the time we got home my feet were wet and frozen. Now I have been able to purchase some boots, with grateful thanks to Thelma’s daughter-in-law. Albert died the following day. May they both, Thelma and Albert, rest in peace.

Toussaint

As many of you know I am an iconophile, a lover of icons. (Bliss when we discovered, through the nudge of some new friends, a wonderful collection of Greek and Russian icons in the Petit Palace – another of Paris’ amazing museums and one that seems to be primarily visited by locals.) One of the things I love about the Orthodox icon tradition is the tangible sense of the communion of saints. Walking into an orthodox church you see the saints – or their icons, which are intended to evoke their presence.

For most Protestants “the communion of saints” is a line in the creed. Indeed, growing up in a primarily Protestant environment saints were pretty suspect – they were the things Catholics had, and we didn’t. When I studied French culture in early high school I remember being impressed, and envious, that French children had a name day as well as a birthday, celebrated in conjunction with the saint corresponding to your given name. In the daily mass reading booklet that I’ve been using here there is still a “Bonne fête!” for those whose first names are listed each day. The correlation between saints' names and contemporary French first names has thinned however and the lists seem rather random!

Toussaint, All Saints Day, is big here in France, as it is in much of Europe. It’s a public holiday (France is definitely a serious rival to Australia as a “land of the long weekend”) and the florist shops are full of autumn flowering chrysanthemums destined for the graves of loved ones – our everyday saints. It seems such a helpful, healthy custom – to have a day, when we all, together, remember our dead. Permission to grieve, give thanks, remember, ponder, whatever is necessary this year . . . In the park next to Notre Dame I saw a woman turned toward the river weeping. A friend travelled to a cemetery with her step children to place flowers on the grave of their mother. The cemeteries are filled with the living and the dead, and with flowers.

Notre Dame was, of course, awash with special services. At Vespers the choir was filled with banners of the saints of France, most of whom really existed, flesh and blood like us in this perplexing and complex world. At the end of the service they were processed out – a strangely moving sight. The saints didn’t seem so distant really, homey even, embroidered simply on white satin cloth. In Australia we can now officially process with our one national saint, Mary MacKillop. Indicative, really, of our national differences. Here the pavements are thick with layer after layer of human history. In Australia our soils are scraped bare with age, subtly inhabited by our ancient indigenous people and then, yesterday, the rest of us arrived. For all the wonder of the cultural deposits of Europe, though, I am missing that sense of bare space, and especially its gift of silence.

On Toussaint at Notre Dame the great Emmanuel bell was rung. This only happens now on high feast days or to mark significant events – its vibrations are a threat to the fabric of the towers! Installed in the 17th century (how?) the Emmanuel bell weighs over 13 tons. The clapper itself weighs 500 kilos. Hearing this bell sound has been one of the most extraordinary experiences of our time here. The first time was on the Feast of the Assumption in August – and it was then a random encounter. This time we sought it out, checking the Toussaint timetable on the Notre Dame website for the “Sonnerie du grand Bourdon de Notre-Dame de Paris”.

Three times during the day, for fifteen minutes, the deep, resonant tolling of Emmanuel could be heard – joined by those of the bells of the north tower in a veritable symphony. We loitered as close as one’s ears would allow, John preferring the stereo effect from the Western portal, me turning up the bass at the corner of the southern tower.

The words “de profundis” must have been invented for this tone. I found myself searching for the sound's depths and heights. And wondering, on that crisp, autumn All Saints Day, is this the sound that reaches heaven? I could, suddenly, absolutely appreciate Karl Barth’s insistence that “one cannot speak of God simply by speaking of man in a loud voice." This was a very loud voice indeed. But in the end human, and if this is the best we can do, well, the scale of God is unimaginable. Which is why I love the silence, the particular silence that comes, uninvited, into being when the bell begins to slow, singing its final, gentle beats and comes finally to rest. You can hear then, just for a moment, the silence that touches the otherness that is God, Divine Mystery. Standing in front of Notre Dame, like Elijah on Mount Horeb, you find, as have all the saints, that God is not in the wind, or the fire, or the bells, but in the silence.

So, belatedly, Bonne Toussaint!

P.S. November 11th, another public holiday, has also come and gone, marking the 92nd anniversary of the signing of the armistice in 1918, the main day here for remembering all the war dead. The Emmanuel bell holds a special place in French consciousness and history. Its tolling announced on the night of 24 August 1944, that the liberation of Paris was underway. After all the time that has passed since two world wars were fought on this soil its impact is still close. A small village in the north had to be evacuated this week whilst some unspent munitions were exploded. The landscape there is scarred with the workings of war in a similar, though deadlier, way to the goldfields of Victoria. This Thursday, November 11th, the Emmanuel bell tolled at 11 am, along with all the church bells of France.

Autumn

It's autumn, my first European autumn since 1966. The best of my childhood memories include many from this season: apples and pears finally officially harvested (in contrast to the premature, clandestine, sour pickings of summer); then piles of golden leaves and a hedgehog caught up in the sweepings; the dark wooden shine of chestnuts bursting from their prickly shells; crisp days, soup for supper and the smell of bonfires. Here in Paris it has been damper than I recall and I have spent too many days inside at my books, but for the last two Sundays we have walked in beautiful autumn gardens, Versailles and the Tuileries. We’ve breathed in late flowering roses, feasted on the shifting tones of blue and purple blooms, watched for the turning of the leaves. Palace gardens set against the changing sky: a persistent steely grey last Sunday, and this week a changing drama of dark clouds and sunlight.

Autumn has brought many other delights. At the end of one fruitless work day last week we did a circuit of the islands and then secured a table in a café-bar that looks over the Seine to Notre Dame. With cooler days chaud vin had appeared on the black board, and so we basked in the last half hour of slanty sunshine sipping a warm brew of wine and spices. And on Saturday, an unexpected afternoon of pleasure: lunch and good conversation with friends of friends, here to celebrate a significant wedding anniversary. There have been wonderful concerts too, including Verdi’s Requiem performed by a bunch of medicos from Germany as a fundraiser for Medicins Sans Frontiers. Brilliant. The bass was, in his spare time, a professor of paediatrics. Europe is so cultured.

Autumn has always been my favourite season. But after autumn comes winter, its darkness, the cold. As children this sense of the closing in of life, the coming of winter, is less of a weight. Is it because we live then more in the moment? Or perhaps it is because, then, we were not burdened by so much experience so can live more lightly.

Walking home from St Eustache after Verdi we saw, as ever, the other Paris. Men and women dossed down in doorways for the night, layered with sleeping bags, blankets, plastic. And when it rains? And is colder?

I have been pondering the beggars, the street folk and the homeless ever since our arrival here, and have made little progress. There is a beggar at the door of every church. Never has the story Jesus tells of the rich man and poor Lazarus at the gate seemed so vivid. To give or not to give? And what? I try at least to give the dignity of a greeting in my stumbling French to those I see regularly, but the questions still nag.

Around the quartier of Saint Paul, were we shop, there is stable group of homeless, mostly men. In the mornings they are usually gathered around a corner near a supermarket, where in ones or twos they take turns in looking out for each others’ bags and bedding. At night they sleep near our apartment on a wide veranda underneath the Cité des Arts building on the Rue de l’Hôtel de Ville, which runs parallel with the Seine. The veranda is a prized place of good shelter and at night it turns into a long dormitory. Is this a choice of sorts? There are government run shelters, but here, I’ve observed a sense of fraternity, care and community. Fragile though it might be, it’s something we all desire and call home. The roads to the street here, like everywhere are multiple; and the solutions?

One of the most loved figures of twentieth century France was Abbé Pierre (1912-2007), a tireless worker for the poor, for refugees, the homeless. In the cold winter of 1954, in the face of an increasing number of deaths among the homeless in Paris, he called for “An Uprising of Kindness” (insurrection de la bonté). A savy political operator he targeted the conservative rich and their wallets opened, helping the growth of the Emmaus communities, which provided shelter, food and hope for the homeless poor. The work of his foundation continues. When we first arrived in Paris we visited the Place des Vosges, an exquisite symmetrical Renaissance square that once housed the aristocracy, now simply the rich. Hanging from three of the windows (how did they get there?) were banners proclaiming the incidence of homelessness in present day France: “at least 100 000 live in the street”; “600 000 people have no personal housing”. Government statistics, like those on poverty, are contested. What can’t be contested though are “les morts dans la rue”, the deaths in the streets. There is a small collective based in Paris that since 2002 has collected information about the men and women who have died on the street or when living on the street. In 2009 they documented over 400 deaths. Their average age is 49.

I walked up to the Place des Vosges this afternoon to see if the Foundation Abbé Pierre banners were still there. They aren’t, but the homeless, in their various habitual spots, are. It is a bitterly cold afternoon and it is not even winter yet. And I wonder whether, living amongst them, there is still the Dominican brother that Timothy Radcliffe once spoke of – a true mendicant of Christ, returning to base just once a week for a meal and a hot shower.

Not Paris, Chartres

Last week we had a break from Paris. We’d been to Chartres before and loved it and so, even though it is an easy day trip from Paris, we decided to stay overnight. John found reasonably priced accommodation in a former monastery right behind the cathedral. It was perfect: predictably basic, our room had large casement windows and a view of the spires. It instantly felt retreat-like, which is what we both actually needed, so we re-booked for two nights.

Our first view of Chartres as we walked up the hill from the railway station was through a ferris wheel. An interesting juxtaposition that had me pausing to take a photograph (the first of many). Why the fun fair? After a quick visit to the tourist centre we discovered that we had missed, by precisely one day, the illuminations of Chartres which now run from April to September each year. Over the weekend, the season had closed with a special Fête de la lumiere, parades and music, and a last hurrah for the coloured lights ( http://www.chartresenlumieres.com/).

Illuminations have taken off. Back in Canberra I have delighted in seeing old Parliament House bathed in pink, and when travelling across town check the current colour the tower on Black Mountain. Even better was Brian Eno’s spectacular lighting of the Sydney Opera House last year. As we wandered around the old town of Chartres over the next two days we saw evidence of the illuminations – from the large glass and metal boxes that have become semi-permanent fixtures to the discreet footpath lights that mark the night walk through the town. It must look amazing!

In the Middle Ages there were different attractions of course. In the ninth century Charlemagne’s grandson, Charles the Bald, donated a piece of cloth to the cathedral which was supposed to have been worn by Mary when she give birth to Jesus. It ensured that Chartres became a place of pilgrimage and thereby boosted the local economy. The Virgin’s veil was an effective fundraiser. Later Chartres emerged as the foremost scholastic school in Europe. The present, astonishing cathedral building dates primarily from the eleventh century. It is the last of a long line of buildings that had succumbed to pillage or fire. Whilst it suffered the standard re-dedication as a “Temple of Reason” during the Revolution, some citizens of Chartres saved it from planned demolition. If nothing else, argued the architect Morin, it would be very difficult to achieve. Indeed!

What do people come to see now? The building of course, the “most perfect” Gothic cathedral. And the glass. Chartres cathedral houses the most important collection of medieval stained glass in the world, including the famous Blue Virgin dating from the mid-12th century. And stone. The 12th Western Portals and the 13th century North and South porches: a remarkably intact ensemble of medieval sculpture. And, of course, for the contemporary spiritual seeker, the Labyrinth, the largest and best preserved from medieval France. And no, there is no evidence that medieval pilgrims circled round its paths on their knees (see http://www.labyrinthos.net/chartresfaq.html for some nice myth busting).

Pilgrimage is an oddly persistent human occupation. Moving in order to see better, more clearly, I think. The danger with modern tourism is, of course, that we see nothing, nothing at all, in the everything that we try to take in (a tendency typified by the pervasive phenomenon of taking photographs of artworks in museums rather than actually looking at them). A real pilgrimage, one that is open to discovery, seeing anew, takes courage. And here I think of a pilgrim I met today outside Notre-Dame de Paris. He wanted to look inside the cathedral but was not allowed in because he was carrying a large backpack. I offered, in a stumbling mixture of French and English, to mind his bag for a few minutes. He reached into his coat and pulled out piece of paper from his wallet. On it was written: “I speak only Czech.” We laughed and signed, and as we walked across to a seat where I could watch his bag he showed me the large scallop shell attached to his bag: “Santiago de Compostela” he said. I speak only Czech: it is a hell of a long way to Santiago from Paris.

On our visit to Chartres we saw the sign of the shell in front of the cathedral, and I think there were Camino pilgrims in the monastery-hotel. Were we pilgrims too? Perhaps in the way that Philip Larkin speaks of in his famous poem “Church Going” I could say that it “pleased me to stand in silence here” in that “serious house on serious earth”, recognising the hunger “to be more serious”. And in the gentle space of two days I did, I think, see some things more clearly.

The colour blue, or rather, all the colours of blue. I try to soak it in, to remember for later. And light, falling through the glass, sometimes sharply, sometimes softly, white, or glowing pink. Familiar Gospel stories told in pictures, considered, frame by frame, through the telescope of my camera. The four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, sitting on the shoulders of the prophets: interconnection, dependence. The angel that I’d photographed in 2006 still watching over the town from the green copper roof: fidelity, stability. Vespers with the Community of Chemin Neuf, their warm welcome, the hospitable liturgy. A song we know, the one we used for the blessing of St Bernard’s back home: Ubi Caritas et amor, Deus ibi est (Where charity and love are, God is there). I am singing “Alleluia!” in the cathedral that I first loved from a distance as an undergraduate history student at Sydney University more than thirty years ago. A feast of bread and duck paté shared in a park as the moon rises with my best and most patient friend. Two cranes circle the southern spire, consider the possibility of making their home here. The black sky etched against the cathedral’s soft gold stone. Sleeping in the light of a near full moon, watching it arc across the dome of the sky. The morning star.

And finally, there is an ordinary mass, with ordinary people, in the damp, quiet crypt, where we remember, with St Matthew, that we are les malades (the sick) and I am thankful, ever thankful, that Jesus says: “Je ne suis pas venu applier les justes, mais les pécheurs”, I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.