Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Down the Home Stretch

My last Tuesday at La Sainte-Baume. (Posted a day late for Tuesday, February 8)

Emmanuel Robert left today. Returning home to start work. He works as a gardener in a private estate on the Mediterranean not far from here. He needed my physical address because he has no internet. He said I should plan on receiving mail the old-fashioned way from him.

Antoine, the seminarian from Paris is here for two more days. He went up to the grotto today for the Mass. Mass is celebrated every day at the grotto. People come from everywhere to pray. At lunch today, two older couples from the Toulon region were here. They were planning on hiking up to the grotto too. They spent the first 15 minutes of the lunch discussing the wines. The hotelerie places two bottles of wine on each table for the noon and evening meals - a local red and a traditional provencal rose. These couples analyzed and discussed the details of wines like New Englanders do about Red Sox players' trades. I'd rather hear about wines. Of course each meal brings new people and it means repeating the story of how this American can speak French. They could not get it that I am not an American who's been living in France, but a real French-speaking American. It took them about 10 minutes but they finally got it. In the meantime, Antoine, the seminarian is getting a kick out of this. He's in contact with all kinds of languages at his seminary. For someone to be bi-lingual, even an American is no big deal.

I spent the morning editing the English brochures that the Dominicans are preparing for their trip to the USA. Remember, they are carrying the relics of Mary Magdelene to California for a series of presentations to promote the devotion to Mary Magdelene. Their translations were quite good. French tends to use the passive quite a lot. Passive weakens English syntax in my estimation, but changing from passive to active can also drastically change the meaning of something. So we had to proceed carefully. I hope we can follow their progress when they are in the states.

After lunch I met Sr. Natalia for another piano lesson. We did a more complicated song today and she picked it up quite well. Tomorrow, we need to start adding the left hand. After her lesson, I practiced for a while. I returned to my room to find an e-mail waiting for me. I have made arrangements to play in the chamber music festival in Ischia. It was the only festival to be held during my time in Europe. Many others are scheduled in July through November. But today, a woman here in France, Helen LaTouze, with whom I had been in contact for several months whild planning the sabbatical, contacted me. She is lining up enough people to possibly do another festival in early June right here in Provence. She contacted me to find out if I was interested. What is exciting about this festival is that the performers can schoose the music. At the Ischia Festival, I will be receiving the music they want me to perform about a month before. I'm hoping that it is not too challenging. I don't want to be spending 5 hours a day practicing. The Provence festival could include music I have already learned, even the piece I played at the Mass on January 5th. I need to give this some thought. This Festival would be held at Pont Royal, not far from the area where Bob and Inez Roy stay every year. More possibilities are opening up even while I am here.

Dinner tonight was especially enlightening. At table wereAntoine and Patrick who is a layman and former navy man and currently works with the French Navy as a civilian. He used an expression in French that really caught my attention. He was talking about people who he had met here who were "toucher par grace". How elegant French is! The phrase literally means "touched by grace". He was refering to people who had life changing experiences here. It is just an amazing idea. Theologically it is also very significant. It implies that God is the one who initiates the change. We so often approach faith with the understanding that it is all about what we do. The truth is: God initiates. God is the one who comes to us. Any opportunity for us to know God happens because lets it happen. We are so indoctrinated by our culture that ways we have to be in control, we have to take charge of our lives, we have to know all the buttons to push. Faith grows because we have responded to the initiative that God places in our lives.