Good Friday Meditation

Remains of a crucifix from a bombed-out church during WWII

Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
 He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
 But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
 All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

~Isaiah 53:1-6

***

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

  Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

  The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

  The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

  The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

~T.S. Eliot, "East Coker"

***

Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again.  No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.

~John 10:17-18

Parisian Vignettes

Notre-Dame's rose windows are exquisite, but the best part of the cathedral is the park behind it. 

We grab crepes at a nearby stand and then choose a bench in the sunshine.

There's good people-watching here.

A couple is taking bridal photos, the groom so happy that he could burst.

A family from Texas has three small boys and a toddler on a leash. The dad drops the leash to snap pictures of his family, and the toddler runs up to the camera to see the results. As the family moves on, the dad picks the leash back up. The toddler dashes off at high speed, is caught by the leash at the wrong angle, and topples over. It must be a fairly regular occurrence, because she picks herself up, unconcerned, and continues her exploration.

***

While Mom and Dad search the Left Bank for a cafe, I embark on the metro to Montmartre. One thing stands out instantly about the metro: there are stairs up, down, and all around, but no elevators or escalators that I can find. Not that I need them - I enjoy stairs - but it is a huge contrast to the handicapped-friendly transit system in Munich.

When I find the right train going the right way, I slip in. I assume that the jazzy music I hear is a recording, but then I realize that a saxophonist has carved out a pocket of space in the jam-packed car, and I enjoy his art until it's time to get off. 

When I disembark I am stunned by the crush of people. This hill was once a hot spot for famous artists and bohemians in Paris, and it seems that every tourist in the city has decided to check it out today. Souvenir shops line the cobbled streets, and I jostle through the crowd as I head toward Sacre Coeur, the church with a panoramic view of the city. 

I pass a square with rows and rows of street artists. Some of them are the usual tourist fare, but others are true artists. I saunter through, admiring their work and watching the portraitists, and then I head on my way.

I had planned to go into Sacre Coeur, but the line is so long that I give up the idea and simply enjoy the panorama. I can see Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and streets crammed with quintessentially Parisian houses. 

I snap a picture of Paris's sinking house and move on.

Suddenly the streets are empty. All the tourists in Paris are congregated one block away, but here there is nothing but a blackbird singing, a gentleman bringing in his trash, and high school kids congregated on the steep steps that characterize Montmartre. 

It's just like any city: real people live here. For us it's an enchanting travel destination, and for them it's the daily life of home. 

As I head to another metro station, I am suddenly surrounded by fabric outlets. Wire baskets with scraps line storefronts, and inside I see bolt upon bolt of fabric. 

Montmartre is a hill of contrasts: tourist trap, residential retreat, fabric lovers' paradise.

***

***

At first I wonder if the cat on the easy chair is real - it is so still and undisturbed by the bookworms milling through the store. Then I notice the signs:

"Aggie the cat stayed up all night reading: please let her sleep now."

Aggie is real, all right, and her presence is the finishing touch to the whimsey and wonderfulness that is Shakespeare & Company, the famed English language bookstore on the Left Bank of the Seine, just across from Notre Dame.

The store (whose history is well worth reading in the link above) is open from 10 am to 10 pm, and when we arrive at dusk, there is an honest-to-goodness line out front. Mom says:

"Isn't it wonderful to live in a world where people are willing to stand in line to go to a bookstore?"

I am already happy to be standing in line, but when we are finally admitted to the store, I become just a little giddy.

Rooms that link to each other every-which-way are filled will floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and books  overflow into stacks on the floor.

I wander in bliss.

Upstairs there are rooms filled with beautiful used books, seating, and the aforementioned cat. As I browse, I hear piano music. At first I assume that it's a CD, but when I hear Matt Redman's "10,000 Reasons," I go to investigate.

A little upright piano is squeezed into a nook, and one of my fellow customers is playing.

So I sing. Because that's the logical thing to do when you're in a bookstore on kilometer zero in Paris, France, and a stranger is playing "10,000 Reasons."

After all three verses and refrains, the pianist thanks me for singing, I thank him for playing, and I continue to browse. Eventually, I leave with my prize: A Gentleman in Moscow, stamped with the Shakespeare & Company stamp, slipped into a canvas Shakespeare & Company bag.

***

I step onto the bus and wordlessly hand the driver my fare.

He looks at me, smiling, and says, "I'd like a ticket, please."

It takes me a moment to realize that he's gently chiding me for treating him like a machine, not a human. 

Humbled, I ask for a ticket, and he teaches me to make the request in French: "Un billet s'il vous plait."

***

We are in the Musee D'Orsay, the world-class art museum housed in what was once a train station. I knew that I loved this museum, but I had forgotten how much. 

As we wander the impressionist exhibit, I mentally add up: I have seen paintings from this museum on loan in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Berlin, and Munich, and now I'm back at the Musee D'Orsay itself. Not too shabby.

This famous clock is one of the "most Instagrammable spots in Paris." While stylish people jockey to get the perfect Instagram shot, others snooze on a funky multi-person recliner. Who has their priorities right?

I find the Monet that I love and get Mom to snap a photo. A poster of it was prominently displayed in my college dorm rooms and apartments.

Art museums generally feel like home, and this one more than usual. 

I get distracted from the art by a tour of first-graders. They file into the room and then sit on the floor in front of a Renoir. Usually first-graders are wiggly, but these are captivated by their teacher, who is holding them enthralled with a story about the painting. He speaks quietly, but he holds their complete attention. I am impressed, and I wish that I could understand the story he's telling in French.

We take a break in the museum cafe. When the waiter appears with our hot chocolate, he apologizes: he has put so much whipped cream on top of the beverage that chocolate is spilling over the sides of the glasses. The hot chocolate hits the spot, as do the pastries that we ordered with it.

Dad quips that the statue behind me is putting on deodorant.

***

Art is everywhere in Paris. In churches and museums, on street corners, even on the tarp that conceals a construction site.

The city itself is a constantly-morphing piece of art. 

***

Poetry Corner: "Prayer I"

by George Herbert

Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age, 

God's breath in man returning to his birth, 

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage, 

The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth 

Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r, 

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear, 

The six-days world transposing in an hour, 

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear; 

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss, 

Exalted manna, gladness of the best, 

Heaven in ordinary, man well drest, 

The milky way, the bird of Paradise, 

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood, 

The land of spices; something understood. 

Write 100

For the life of me, I cannot consistently maintain any kind of habit tracker/countdown.

I've started multiple times in my life: I've made charts to break habits, make habits, record progress on a goal - you name it, I've done it. When I was 13 I decided to journal every day for a year. It went ok, though there were several weeks where each entry consisted only of the sentence "I'm going to bed now." About halfway through the year I lost the journal, and that was that.

The most recent flop was a countdown until March 28th. I have friends coming to visit then, so a few months ago I made a countdown to get pumped that they're coming. I am most certainly pumped, but if you were to get your information from my countdown you would think that their visit was months rather than weeks away.

There are ways that I can motivate myself to do things, but tracking progress is not one of them.

So when a close friend of mine from college announced that she was launching a project called Write 100 - a challenge to write at least 15 minutes a day for 100 days straight - I applauded her, but had zero intention of taking part.

In addition to the aforementioned inability to follow through on those sorts of trackers, I tend to think of writing challenges like that as being for long form writers, and I so do not write long form.

To sum up: I consistently fail to follow through on any sort of long-term progress-tracking project, and I don't have a long form writing project.

Obviously Write 100 was not for me.

But over the past week I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

True, I don't write long form content, but I do write - journal entries, blog posts, handwritten letters. I have far more things I want to write than I ever commit to paper (or word processor).

And while habit trackers haven't worked for me before, I think part of that is due to the lack of outside accountability.

So when an acquaintance in Munich said she'd do the challenge with me, I decided to go for it.

Here's the deal: starting now, I'm committing to write for 15-30 minutes every day for 100 days. That writing could be in the form of blogging, journaling, or letter-writing. It could be on a scrap of paper while I'm commuting, in my journal, or in the computer lab between classes. It may NOT be in the form of catching up on emails, writing lesson plans, or editing things I've already written.

I'm kinda sorta really excited. I've had all sorts of ideas swirling around in my head that I want to write about, and now I finally have the structure to do it. It was almost overwhelming sitting down to write today: I didn't know where to start!

So I'm starting with this post.

Hopefully one result of this challenge will be that I post more frequently. But even if that doesn't happen, it helps me that y'all know that I'm attempting this. Every little bit of incentive and accountability helps!

Also, if you're interested in joining the challenge, check it out here! There's a whole community of writers setting out on this thing together, so why not join in? Print out the calendar, set a timer every day, and write. You don't even have to start today - there are two calendars on the website: one that's date-specific for the spring challenge, and another that you can start any time you want.

And with that - 1 day down, 99 to go!