Letter from France
Dear Friends of Cleveland Park Church,
Susan and I just returned from our eighteen day trip to France and I would like to share some photos and thoughts with you.
Our first week was spent with Jim Carafano and Diane Schulz at a B and B near Bayeux France in Normandy. Jim is, of course,
a scholar of the battle of Normandy and helped me understand much more fully the realities and the history of the Second
World War in that small but lovely corner of France. Here, near the B and B, is an example of the hedgerows through which the American forces had to fight.
Susan, Jim, Diane and I went on an excursion to Utah Beach and Ste Mere Eglise, both key locations on D Day. Note the
paratrooper in the church tower. The people of Ste Mere Eglise keep the statue there as a memorial to their liberation from Nazism.
It has been my opinion that the two world wars and the holocaust are the shaping events of my own life and theology.
This visit was a time of learning and meditation on the those events.
Jim and Diane gave Susan and me a special treat by bringing us to this Abbey Church, just south of Bayeux and north of
the kick-off point of Operation Cobra, where the American forces broke through the German lines and began their drive on Paris, the Rhine and
Germany. Susan took this picture of pastoral peace at the end of a day in which warfare was the theme.
Bayeux is one of the great sites connected with William the Conquerer. His half-brother Odo was bishop of Bayeux and commissioned Saxon cloth workers to embroider the famous Bayeux Tapistry, commemorating the story of William's claim to the English throne and the 1066 invasion. It was made to hang in his Cathedral here in Bayeux.
Susan and I took a day's excursion the Mont Saint Michel and its marvelous Abbey. Truly one of the most remarkable sites in all of Europe, the abbey sits on a small island in the bay, surrounded by tidal flats. It is a delightful window onto the technology, aesthetic and genius of the Middle Ages whose Biblical understandings are becoming very interesting again in the 21st Century.
From Normandy we went to Chartres, outside Paris, between Normandy and the Loire Valley. The Cathedral of our Lady of the Assumption at Chartes was one of the most popular pilgrimage sites of the Middle Ages. It possessed what was thought to be the garment Mary wore when giving birth to Jesus. Modern study has shown that it was actually a veil, but does date to the time of Jesus. It has been observed that the Chartres Cathedral is a book of Medieval theology in which most of the pages are still intact. Indeed the greatest part, including the divine windows, was build in a thirty year period and has a consistent plan and execution. The building itself, its statuary and its windows all tell the salvation history of scripture.
Christ is over the Royal door of the west entry. Notice Jesus is in the center surrounded by four figures a man, an eagle,an ox, and a lion which represent the four creatures around the throne of God in Ezekiel and Revelation, the four Gospel writers John, Matthew, Mark and Luke, and the four main tribes of Israel Ephraim, Dan, Ruben and Judah.
Inside, the windows continue the story. This is the Noah window which I look forward to sharing sometime in the coming months. It was given by the carpenters, among others.
During this summer in Chartres, several buildings are being illuminated. The North Portal (most recently cleaned) is illuminated to suggest the colors it may have been painted during the Middle Ages.
The statuary within the cathedral are as fascinating as those without. Here is the Annunciation with Mary hearing the news of her coming pregnancy from Gabriel.
I hope to use this set of biblical scenes to illustrate sermons during the liturgical year.
he South Portal tells the story of the Last Judgement with Christ reigning and the saved ascending into heaven and the damned into torment.
The sheer number of exquisite carvings is remarkable and separates Chartres from the other Gothic Cathedrals. It escaped unharmed the ravages of religious war, architectural fads among the clergy, Revolution and the Second World War.
From Chartres we went to Paris for a delightful four days. One of our favorite museums, The Museum of the Middle Ages at Cluny features the famous set of tapestries called the Lady and the Unicorn, five portraying each of the senses and a sixth entitled "To my sole desire." An hour among these tapistries washes the eyes with beauty, opens the mind with symbolism, calms the soul with peace, and revives the heart with mystery.
At the Louvre, Susan and I were much taken with this funerary statue of Philippe Pot, Seneschal of Burgundy (15th Cent.). The realism of the knights representing his eight quarters of nobility was a great surprise to us. This masterpiece, which would be the central attraction at almost any other museum, is rarely visited, according to the very friendly nearby guard. Indeed, we took photos at our pleasure, never having to contend with more than one or two other people and having it to ourselves for more than a half hour!
There are two other moments I'd like to mention, neither accompanied by a photo.
On my first Sunday in France I went to a Protestant service in the seaside village of Courseulles, the center of the Canadian landings at Juno Beach. The service would have been familiar to us all. I was warmly welcomed, invited back and engaged in lively conversation. The church had been totally destroyed in 1944 was was not rebuilt until the 1980's. The people there would have fit in our church wonderfully. They report that Protestantism in general and the Reformed Church in particular are growing stronger and more numerous in France. Their optimism was encouraging and the pastor, a newly ordained woman, preached a strong sermon.
On my last morning in Chartres, I went into the church to take just a few more photos. Instead I stopped and watched a funeral in progress. The mourners payed their last respects at the end of the mass by leaving a flower on the coffin and for some, making the sign of the cross with holy water. They then greeted the widow and her teen age children. The priests mingled in exactly the same manner that I would after a funeral, greeting various people with a word or handshake or hug, looking out for those in special need and just being available. The Chartres Cathedral is not a museum but a living church serving its community with the assurance and promise of salvation in Christ.
There was much more to our trip than this brief email can convey. I hope to use these several weeks to enrich my teaching of adults and children, my preaching and my writing for the next several years.
Letter from France
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
