Dispatch from Champagny-sous-Uxelles: Thursday May 25

Dispatch from Champagny-sous-Uxelles: Thursday May 25

(This post is actually coming on May 28, since this is my first chance to get to the internet--not very prevalent in rural France.)

Let’s see, it’s Wednesday, no Thursday already. As most travelers experience, at least those first few days, I’ve still got a case of severe dislocation. Not that’s it’s anything but pleasant. I’m disorientated, unplugged, removed from the normal cues that tell me when, where, and what. Which means the sabbatical has really begun.

Our prayer book tells us it’s also Ascension Day, one of my favorite Christian festivals. It’s the day we can breathe a sigh of relief and really believe it when we say that everything will be all right. As the Psalm sings, The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad. Of course, I’m not in Darfur, but in Burgundy on a lovely spring morning, so it must be a little easier to sing that Psalm with confidence. But I hope the Darfurians can sing it too, with perhaps even more conviction.

Let me go back a few days. We arrived in Geneva Tuesday morning (May 23) after a rather pleasant flight on Air France (though Jeanne has a rather different take on that). Geneva is so close to the French border that there’s a Swiss side and a ?French side to the airport, and we were on the Swiss side. Now the Swiss have this idea that some unknown country exists to their west, where people have opinions which they would rather not have anything to do with. So any map you might get at the car rental agency is only for Geneva and Switzerland. What about France? “Well,” the clerk said,” looking down his Swiss nose, “buy one there.”

Which we did, immediately over the border, well after we got lost twice already. The map, however, was of limited use, covering the whole country and not, therefore, pinpointing the exact corner where we were located. We soon discovered at least one reason for Swiss disdain. The roads, while ostensibly numbered, lack any real signage. Hence, there sill be signs pointing you to, say, Aix de Chapelle, but no road numbers that corresponded to anything on the map where the road numbers only show up every five inches or so, which always leaves one wondering. So, we began our journey through the French alps, which are quite lovely, on a great four lane highway. We expected to fly through our expected two-hour journey to our destination. Then, suddenly, to our complete surprise, we were on a two-lane switchback road behind a rather smelly open semi which we suspected was loaded with excess manure, or sewer sludge. And we could not find a road sign. Yet, everyone on a while, like a mirage, this sleek modern highway appeared overhead, sweeping over the deep valleys where we chugged along behind lines of trucks. So we went on, thinking there must be an entrance ramp, a sign, something. Mais non! Finally, or so Jeanne will tell you, we stopped at to ask directions to this Valhalla in the sky. “Bien. Deux kilometres.” And sure enough, there it was.

The other mistake we had made was to Google the directions from the Geneva airport to the tiny town which was our destination. Don’t every do that in rural France. Either the French have supplied perversely false information, or the Google people got their information from the movements of General Patton’s troops. In any case there was no relationship between the directions and actual highway reality. We took must have taken at least 25 wrong turns, and that’s a conservative estimate. We went through charming towns, busy cities at rush hour, and lovely rural highways, hardly seeing a numbered highway; only the sigh to the next town, which didn’t always appear on our map. Now, here’s the miracle. Never once did Jeanne and I come to blows, or even utter a harsh word. This is what I call the grace of God. It has nothing to do with sanctification, since we were two zoned out people.

We finally did arrive in Champagny-sous-Uxelles around six on a gorgeous late spring evening. After two more wrong turns and asking one old toothless woman, we finally arrived at the B and B of Madame De Bresse. We pulled through the high brick wall, parked under a gigantic chestnut (I haven’t see one of these since I was a child) in front of a 1830 French chateau, a big old rambling mansion with 14 foot ceilings, and a room which made us feel like we ought to be wearing velvet dressing gowns rather than polar tec (it’s still cold at night).

It’s what you would imagine of the French countryside-- set in a wide green valley surrounded by wooded hills in the Burgundy wine-growing region of eastern France, about fifty miles north of Lyon (Macon is the nearest big city). Taize is located about 15 minutes to the south, just north of Cluny (site of the great Cistercian monastery of the 12th century the French mostly dismantled for stones in the 1820s.

This Ascension morning we made sure to make it to Taize. We did make a short visit late yesterday to get the “lay of the land.” There were relative few people, which surprised us. Perhaps, we thought, it was the time of the year. Te surprise was that this Ascension morning, the place was jammed, parking lots full. We mad our way to the “church,” really a polyglot of relatively low flat buildings imaginatively added on over the years with sliding doors between. It’s rather dark inside with low hanging lights, a few stained glass windows along the top. The “front” is decorated with a series of long taught banners of various shapes and lots, lots of candles. The atmosphere is very quiet, meditative—typically Taize.

We made it for the 10 a.m. Eucharist for the Ascension. Every section was open. There must have been at least 2000—mostly young—people spread through the whole series of rooms, all open to the center of worship and the small altar. A leader appeared a few times through the service, but it was mostly led by the singing from the white-robed “monks” who sat (knelt, or lay prone) in the center in front of the altar. A sign with lighted numbers signaled the next chant, as we moved through the rather typical liturgy. It was the worship they had developed at Taize years ago, and continued, a worship of quiet, solemnity, and simplicity that still captures the imagination and the spirit of young and old from allover the world.

The songs and short liturgical responses were sung and said in Latin, German, Spanish, French, English, Swedish (I think), and Russian. Nothing was repeated or translated, but there were translations in the songbook. It made me feel a little like heavenly worship where, as it says in Revelation, God will gather before the throne people of every tribe and tongue and nation.

The only drawbacks for an old guy like me was that I was sitting cross-legged on a hard (concrete) floor for an hour and quarter, and it was hard, the first time at least, to keep up with the songs in so many languages. It’s a little like visiting a strange church for the first time.

One final note to the day. There is nothing, nothing in the US like the quality of a simple country French restaurant. Served with a local wine, even a pizza, as we had last night, turns out to be a gastronomical delight.