Paris, je t’aime

Paris was lovely.

We took the high speed train from Avignon and arrived in Paris in just under two and a half hours. The Gare de Lyon was immense, and after finding our way onto the street, we struck out towards the apartment we were staying in (we found a 'couch surfer' for Paris, that is, a nice person who would let us stay in their house for free. We were really lucky- our couch surfer was great, and had the coolest pad ever. He was very welcoming and even gave us a key. unfortunately, he had to work in the bar on the ground floor every day so we didn't get to talk with him that much. but I digress...). We promptly discovered that Paris is really big, and what looked like a half an hour walk on the map was actually more like two hours... when we finally got to our host’s flat we collapsed and napped for a few hours, before heading out to see the cathedral de Sacre Coeur. That night we went in search of the Moulin Rouge, and found the red light district on the way. Whoohoo.

The next day we walked down to the Arc de Triomphe, and from there, down the Champs Elysees to the Seine. We stopped for lunch (I had snails) and then went on to see the Tower. It was a beautiful day; there were lots of people out and about, sitting on the grass and having picnics. As we wandered back along the Seine, we came upon the Mussée d’Orsay, and went inside. They have a stunning collection of impressionist paintings, and I couldn't decide whether I liked Degas’s dancers or Monet’s cathedral in blue better.

Day  number two was Louvre day. We got up early and walked for about an hour down to the Louvre, where we entered the secret (or not) side door into the Louvre mall and skipped the line at the pyramid. We only waited for about ten minutes to get in, which was probably the least amount of time we spent waiting in line in Paris. The museum was massive, with halls upon halls upon halls of art. We saw the Mona Lisa, of course, and a bunch of other famous paintings.... but I found a lot of them to look very similar, and I got tired of the paintings pretty quickly. Luckily there is much more to see in the Louvre, and we saw exhibits from ancient Egypt and Greece, which were pretty cool. After seeing as much culture as we possibly could we went up to one of the museum tea shops to grab a coffee, but quickly turned around when we read the menu. €5 for an espresso. Mais oui, c’est ça.  

After a nauseating lunch of greasy ham and cheese croissante, we went on a quest to find Shakespeare and Company, a famous English bookstore. Because we’re super smart and don’t need maps (not even in Paris) we set out blind, only knowing the area in which it should have been in, but not the actual street or number or anything. So we wandered around totally lost for a few hours, and then we started asking people where it was, but no one knew, and then we panicked a bit, and then we gave up, and then we stumbled across it. It was very crowded but very cool, but I won’t be able to explain the coolness. You’ll have to go see it yourself. So we got some books, and then went and sat in the park to read them.

Day Three, our last full day, we decided to visit Notre Dame. It was very beautiful, full of arches and chandeliers and the most intricate stained glass I've ever seen. There was a mass going on while we were there, but they still let us take pictures. After the cathedral we walked for about a year to get to the entrance of the catacombs. There was quite a long line, we waited for about forty five minutes, and about every ten minutes someone would come around and remind us that they stopped letting people in at four, so we probably wouldn’t get in. But we stuck it out and endured the line and the really loud Americans in front of us (we knew they were Americans because at one point one of the kids pointed at a sign and said “Look, dad, they have it written in French and American!”) and in the end we were the last two let in for the day. The crypts were fairly creepy, with sad poems written all over them, and rows and rows of bones... but the saddest part was seeing that some of the skulls had been vandalized  and hearing the obnoxious French people in front of us laughing and pushing each other around. Some people are just asking for a good haunting.     

That night we hung out with a girl from Toronto who was also staying with our couchsurfer. After a few drinks at the bar under the apartment, we decided to go see the arc de triomphe at night. We took the metro and were there in about ten minutes. The arc was all lit up, which was cool, but we were distracted by a sudden glittering on the skyline.... It was eleven O’clock, and we figured we could make it to the Eiffel tower by midnight and see it sparkle up close. We walked for about forty minutes, and saw the tower lit up with rows of yellow lights, and sat on a curb to wait for midnight. We were not disappointed.  On the hour, first one, then two then ten then hundreds of little lights began to flicker. The effect was dazzling.

On our last morning in Paris, we went to visit the Père Lachaise Cemetery. It was called the ‘city of the dead’ by one of our guidebooks. A city it was. Many of the graves were topped with house-like mausoleums, and it even had street signs. It was overgrown and beautiful in a creepy kind of way. We saw several famous graves, including Chopin, De Balzac, and of course Morrison.

After a light lunch in the park and a nap (not in the park), we packed up and headed for the airport.

This is Scareface, our couchsurfer's awesome cat. 

the Arc de Triomphe

the ceiling of the Arc 

a Ferrari we could drive for only 89 euros per 20 mins!

My awesome lunch of escargot 

Brock's boring lunch of not escargot

can you see the price for that pen? It's 3900 euros. 

The idea is that you write your initials on the lock, lock it to the bridge and then throw the key in the river and your love will be protected forever. 

Notre Dame

The pantheon, Once a giant church, now houses the remains of distinguished french citizens...

the front of the pantheon

in the catacombs

the bulbs on the tower were put there by a team of 25 mountain climbers. 

the are 5, 000, 000, 000 lights on the tower

Au revoir Paris, à bientȏt. 

Taizé

Finally, a post about my experiences in Taizé, with apologies for the delay.

I've been apprehensive about writing this post, mostly for fear of being unable to translate my experiences accurately into words - people at Taizé speak about an ambiguous Taizé "feeling" or "vibe" that's hard to categorize and nearly impossible to replicate back in the real world. But I figured that if I kept putting it off I'd never write it, so here's my best shot. Be forewarned, this one's a bit long.

First, a little background. Taizé is a monastic community that was formed by a Swiss protestant monk named Brother Roger in 1949, when the first seven additional Brothers were committed to the order. Today there are over 100 Brothers, most living in the community of Taizé but some living in small groups abroad. It's an ecumenical community, meaning that there are both Protestant and Catholic monks living there, and apparently they've got some sort of special recognition from the Pope to allow for this arrangement.

Sometime in the 60's, groups of mainly youth started coming to Taizé in increasingly large numbers, and so the Brothers began organizing week-long visits for them; now tens of thousands of people come every year, still mostly youth, but with programs for adults as well. The week I visited, there were around 700 people, but the following week they were expecting 4 to 5 thousand for Easter.

Another interesting factor about the week I chose was that it happened to coincide with the German spring break, so the vast majority of the people there were from Germany; only after learning this did I realize my luck at having met one of the few other native English speakers, a girl from the States, on the bus on my way there.

In exchange for a bunk and three daily meals, plus afternoon tea (!), they request a donation of 7-10 Euros per day, and a couple of hours of volunteer work in the community daily, which I'll touch on in a minute. So really, my week ended up costing about $100 cdn, plus the travel there and back (train, mostly, with a small and phenomenally cheap bus from the nearby city of Macon to Taizé).

Perhaps outlining an average day will help to convey the experience:

First and foremost, the entire day is structured around prayer. At around 8 the bells on the tower start ringing like crazy, summoning everybody to the church, which is a large concrete building onto which several wooden wings have been added, with doors that can open to accomodate larger numbers.

The Church

Likewise, there is a midday prayer that takes place directly before lunch, and an evening prayer that ends the day at 8:30 pm. The prayers generally take between 30-45 minutes, and for me were one of the most meaningful parts of the Taizé experience, in that my day was entirely built around these times of silence and prayer. I would usually try to arrive 15 minutes early, just to sit in the silence (there was no talking allowed!) and reflect. The monks sat in a rectangular strip in the middle of the church with the other people sitting around, and something that really struck me was that everyone was facing the same direction, towards a small altar and a cross and some candles - there was nobody visibly leading the prayer, nobody at the front running the show. Prayers and songs were started by monks with mics, but they did so from their places, such that you could rarely tell who was speaking. 

The prayers were dominated by the singing of simple chants, sometimes with piano accompaniment, which were generally only about 1-2 lines long and repeated again and again, lulling you into a very hypnotic sort of state. There were spoken prayers and some Bible readings as well, interspersed, and it was amazing to note the vast number of languages used: English, German, French, Latin, Polish, Italian, Portugese, etc, etc... it seemed like all of the monks spoke about 5 different languages. But my favorite part of the prayers was the time for silent prayer, usually in about the middle, where the last song lingers off and nothing else starts up, and you see everyone around you start to bow and pray in their own ways. They allotted usually around 5-10 minutes for this, and it was great to have this time - you've got nowhere to go, you might as well pray, right?

Cameras weren't permitted during the prayers, so here's a shot of the church in action, lifted from Google.

The last thing I wanted to touch on regarding the prayers was the Saturday evening prayer, which is a "candle" prayer. Each person was handed a white prayer candle on the way in, unlit, and there was a large candle situated just behind the Brothers. After a couple of songs, Brother Alois (the community's leader), lit his prayer candle from the larger one, and used it to light the candle of a small girl. She in turn walked around lighting the candles of the Brothers and visitors within reach, and each person subsequently lit the candle of the person next to them. From where I was sitting, near the front, it was a mesmerizing spread of little pinpricks of light, all through the church, until everybody's candle was lit. It reminded me of the proverb "A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle," which I've found attributed in some sources to James Keller. I thought the symbolism was beautiful.

After morning prayer was breakfast! It was a simple breakfast, the same every day, a couple of rolls, butter, chocolate sticks (it wasn't until Tuesday that I figured out you're supposed to put the chocolate in the rolls), and tea or hot chocolate. Another remarkable thing about Taizé was that, despite going there without knowing a single person in advance, I didn't spend a single meal alone. I shared some delightful dinners with my roommates, a pair of Germans visiting with a church group, and really great guys. I also shared some with my small group, which I'll talk about in a second. And when I had nobody to sit with I sat down alone, and within minutes was joined by somebody new.

The eating/common area, mostly outdoors, which made for some chilly meals when it was raining.

At 10:00 I went to my volunteer assignment, which ended up being, of all things, a "cook!" When I was signing up I was practically begged - as a "strong-looking man," to choose it, a designation which baffled me until I saw the giant pots and the canoe paddles (I'm not kidding) used to stir them. There were a couple of long-term volunteers, lovely ladies from Switzerland and Poland, who coordinated four guys, consisting of myself, my two German roommates and a third German guy. Our jobs were basically to do the heavy lifting/stirring, so we weren't so much cooks as assistants, but it was a blast to cook lunches for 700+ people, kilograms and kilograms of food. Highlights included chili sin carne, featuring delicious pineapples, and couscous, among other things.

After mid-day prayer and lunch I tended to go to "song practice," which was an opportunity to join a small choir of 20-30 people practicing the four-part harmonies for the chants. And after that was Bible study.

Our Bible study was a large group of at least 60 people, and led by a Portugese Brother named Brother David. He was a very animated, excited, small person, and I was really interested by his utterly holistic take on the Bible passages we examined. When thinking of monastic orders, I tend to get images of very rigid interpretations, but Brother David was extremely eager to look at the passages in different ways and concede that they could have different meanings for different people in different times. I think talking about each of the passages and our ensuing discussions would require another couple of posts.

Talking with Br. David took about 45 mins, after which we split off into predetermined small groups (mine being the one designated English-speaking group, featuring myself, another girl from the States, and a bunch of fun folks from Germany). At first we were a bit tentative, chatting and getting to know one another and going over the questions associated with the reading until it was time for afternoon tea. But by the end of the week we were skipping afternoon tea and eating dinner together, sometimes talking about one of the topics at hand, and other times chatting about other things. In retrospect I couldn't have asked for a nicer group. 

Another fun connection I made was with a girl from Belgium. I stopped her ecstatically on one of the first days because she had a big Canadian flag on the front of her jacket  - she seemed sorry to disappoint me that she wasn't from Canada, but her siblings have both spent time in Canada, hence the jacket. In the end it wasn't a disappointment at all (though I never did find a single other Canadian), and we had a great time time chatting on most of the subsequent days. Hopefully Lauren and I will have the chance to meet up with her in Belgium towards the end of our trip.

I think that pretty much covers it for now; I'll probably have to make a supplementary post with all of the things I forgot. I've really been having a hard time talking about the experience, because it was so much more a feeling than anything I can put my finger on. For the whole week I just had this remarkable sense of inner peace that seemed unshakable, a sort of serenity that I honestly don't think I've ever felt anywhere else. A last interesting thing was that I went there as a Christian, and in that sense it was wonderful to be reminded of God's presence so often in everyday life, and to experience this very unique kind of spirituality that Taizé embodies. But I'd say about 50% of the people I spoke to didn't self-identify as Christians; contrary to what I'd expected, I don't think I met any people who I'd tend to label "hardcore" Christians, but I met many, many people who said they were searching, or curious, or they just loved the atmosphere and weren't sure what they thought. So it ended up being less a place to reinforce beliefs or feelings, and more a place to explore and change and, if you can stomach the cliche, to feel more than you think.

The monastic community of Taizé is on a hilltop. Below the hill on one side is the actual village of Taizé  and on the other side is the village of Ameugny, both of which were fantastic for peaceful early-morning or late-afternoon walks. I'll leave off with some pictures of them, both exceptionally beautiful places. For more info on Taizé you can head to http://www.taize.fr/en, though the wikipedia article has some basic info that's tricky to find on their own website at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiz%C3%A9_Community.

-Brock

Taizé

Ameugny