While waiting for our flight to Georgia, birds swooped and chattered in the rafters above our heads, generously sharing their glee.
Over the plane's speakers, it was announced that our plane was under the charge of "Captain Sailor and the sky team." I smiled.
The radiant sunset reflected from the surface of the snaking river below and God brought me to Hebrews 1:3: "Le Fils est le reflect de sa gloire et lémpreinte de sa personne, et ill soutient toutes choses par sa parole puissante." God's word strikes truth into me at the perfect timing, always. always.
While in Georgia, I met Champ and Coy and Coach and downtown Atlanta. It was a peaceful, hectic few days. Caleb's parents are very warm and kind-hearted. Kia is beaming with health since last I saw her...we are thankful.
At the airport Friday afternoon, the uncertainty of standby tickets letting us aboard to France, we waited in anxious anticipation, trusting God. I curiously peeked behind me to watch the French yuppies, with their raw beauty and dreadlocked hair, an inspiring couple because of the adventurous freedom seeping through skin.
Above the Atlantic, I looked out at the awning darkness through the glass, sheathing stars, more stars than I had seen at once. The moon hung low, swinging on a string between them. Below, the sea slept, beneath covers of windblown cotton. Earlier, when the sun was falling and the edges of the Carolina's islands were scar-ed in a vibrancy of pink, I felt small and insignificant, but again awed by that glory belonging to God.
In Antony, France, imagine arriving at a quaint old home, falling apart, soon to be repaired. Now imagine Rosie, a Pixar-like grandma who greets you in English, English thinly brushstroked over French, sincere, shrilling delight in her quivering voice. A gray-striped cat prances onto her hunched shoulders as she opens the front shutters from the inside, then the sharp paws lift and leap onto the window's ledge, into a mound of fresh fallen winter. It's a picture you will not easily forget.
I walked with Caleb to the train station, passing school children, ecstatic about the snow: a foot of snow, more snow in Paris than in two decades. A Tom Sawyer of a boy with disheveled hair faced a brick wall, his arms outstretched. He'd twist his neck to glance behind him in playful unease, anticipating as a small horde of his rogue friends rounded snowballs with their bare hands, taking turns firing at him, barely missing the boy's exposed neck. It was a game. Our train was delayed. Caleb and I waited. Waited, waited in the cold stillness. Trains would pass without stopping, swiftly over the tracks, lifting a miniature tsunami of snow that would dash towards us. When a train sped near our station, promising another tsunami, Caleb strode close to the tracks, challenging the storm of snow that flung itself against, spinning, spinning around him. It's an image I will not forget; his laughing smile.
Riding the double decker into Paris (felt like I had entered Platform Nine and 3/4 headed for Hogwarts), head leaning on Caleb's arm, eyes wide awake despite the longing to sleep, hungrily taking in the trailer park, little fenced in lots vines enclosing, the cemetery, brick walls protecting statues of crumbling legacies, the graffiti, covering everything, names of people not wanting to be forgotten, the tall homes standing side by side like old friends, character in their bricked exteriors.
A Saturday at the Louvre: the mummies haunting their awakened chambers, the patterns etched on the pottery, the sculptures persuading me to learn their art, the vivid images stretching stories and stories high, the majestic talent. each room a window to peer through, to see shards of past lives, cultures, thoughts, making history alive, making me again feel small and insignificant.A Frenchman with black hair pulled tight against his skull, followed me around the display room that he stood guard, at first I concluded that I must look suspiciously mischievous to warrant this attention, but when he followed me into a dead-end alleyway of old sculptures, his raised eyebrows sharply pointed over black eyes, I decided I had seen enough Northern European art.
I sat on the marble steps beside the Winged Victory of the Samothrace (my favorite) and traced her lines with my pen, I imagined her alive, guiding her fleet, rough seas and sea winds whipping against her flowing gown. She is perfect.
I could write more, but I should rest now. I have been feeling sick today, but C is taking good care of me.
O but first! something I read today that resonated with me:
"When writing his autobiography, Lewis recalled certain early experiences that he realized were spiritually meaningful. One of these events occurred before he was six years old. In Surprised by Joy he explains: "Once in those early days my brother brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin which he had covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers so as to make it a garden or a toy forest. This was the first beauty I ever knew...As long as I live my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother's toy garden." Lewis suggested that this memory, along with the view of the "Green Hills" which "we saw from the nursery window," taught him "longing." After he rejected atheism, he looked back and realized that these experiences occurred periodically. He described them as "Joy" and said they must be "sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure." He later concluded that this longing was not for a "place," as he first thought, but for a "Person."" Walking in this Joy,
m
