I’m now a grateful refugee from Turkey with solid, functional bowels and clear sinuses. I’m in Paris, in a little hotel in a quiet alley on the left bank, a block from the Seine and a couple of blocks from Notre Dame. I’m happy to be out of the cradle of civilization and back in the king-size bed of civilization.
The East is a girlfriend from your youth who has the wisdom and warmheartedness of age but keeps trying to pull you into a relationship that’s over, and that serves no purpose except the false sense of security that comes from capture. The West is a hot young mess who promises more than she can deliver, but she’s fun, highly creative, and, above all, you’re free.
In the East, where the natural upward movement of expression is suppressed and bounces back downward, the main available outlet becomes the lower one. I don’t want to exaggerate the importance of our Turkey toilet trots, which were barely noticeable brown droplets in the whiteout hurricane flush of spiritual energy that we were traveling in, but we are made in the image of God according to the Western scripture, and the body is reflective of the spirit of whatever culture we’re inhabiting. Now that I’ve left the sticky East for the unglued West, I’ve been getting up at 8:00 am to go to Mass every day to do spiritual exercises in the new/old, lighter and brighter Notre Dame, where my focus is consistently pulled upward into the airy vaults and blue stained glass.
The way to really appreciate Notre Dame is to be sitting at Mass in the quiet early morning, where names of God are being sung (I ignore all the interpretations and interpolations and just listen to the Name), before the hordes of tourists arrive. I don’t understand all the French, which is better because I can just hear the names…Jesus, Michael, Gabriel, Mary, Raphael…recited by the priest, and chant the equivalent names inwardly.
It’s amazing that so few people go to Mass at Notre Dame. It seems that they feel that spirituality is such a foreign land, where their credentials are no good, that they would rather walk around the edges of the cathedral with the loud swarm of tourists than sit in a quiet spot in the center, where this magnificent creation can be savored. They actually wait outside in long lines for a later entry while we’re inside at Mass, when they could just go on the shorter line with an earlier entry and sit comfortably. That’s a metaphor for how the human race approaches God.
Although Turkey is sort-of-partly European, it’s still partly the old world where, especially as you get out of the cities, Mommy is clothing-caged. At Notre Dame Mommy is up in the clouds. And after Mass I bring Mommy down to earth again through a breakfast pastry orgy, and/or juices at the Paradis des Fruits around the corner from my hotel. Then it’s on to museums or just walking the streets and gardens and Seine, enjoying the upward and downward yo-yo movement of Spirit moving freely through the world, weaving its way through the masculine and feminine principles, my physical energy self-governing and less downward-bound. I recall J-R talking about the energies of the body and how, once we are anchored in the Spirit, we get to play with them, moving them up and down the chakras like a yo-yo, and he added “with lights in it.”
I’ve posted some shots of Paris here. There are some nice ones of the Luxembourg Garden, which reminds me of the song of the same name by east-west merger Sean Lennon, and it plays in my head the whole time I’m there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDwkzM7eMw
The phantasmagorical lyrics and unexpected twists of melody are just like his Dad, John the Beloved Beatle and modern martyr. Did you know that Sean and Charlotte Kemp Muhl just had a baby, a John Lennon grandson? The weird weave of the loom of the Lord…
