Anyway, I have my reader's card and I've paid for three days of access, so we'll see what I can find out tomorrow morning in the music department! So far I'll mostly be looking through Poulenc's collection of photo albums to see if he has pictures of Rocamadour, or recorded any thoughts about that trip. He may also have items from premieres of some of the pieces I'm interested in... we'll see!
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Yesterday I went to church at the American Cathedral in Paris, an episcopal church, after hearing from someone at the American Church that the priests were excellent. Also, a little research led me to believe the choir keeps singing through the summer... that turned out to be wrong, but I'm so glad I went.
Despite the fact that the service was of course as strictly liturgical as any episcopal service I've been to, there was a lot of intentional silence built in. At Prairie, and really in America generally, sometimes we worry too much about flowing from one element to another as if we're afraid of quiet time. Obviously intentional silence and awkward silence are different, but I appreciated, for example, that the readings all had space to breathe, giving us time to absorb and reflect. It literally said in the bulletin, "Silence is kept."
Additionally, the sermon was excellent. They haven't updated the website with Reverend Mary Haddad's message yet, but I hope at some point it will be online. She opened talking about the seemingly endless tragedies of the summer, and how all the politicians post their "thoughts and prayers" after every one. She brought up a newspaper headline that said "God isn't fixing this," and challenged us to reconsider our beliefs about the nature of God and prayer. The scriptures included the story of Abraham bargaining with God to save Sodom for the sake of ten righteous people, rather than the fifty God originally said it would take to save the city from destruction. That certainly is not the God most of us believe in today; Haddad pointed out that we don't live in the ancient world and it's okay. She then talked about an idea I don't remembering hearing about before: prayer as paying attention to ourselves and our surroundings, rather than a litany of words, or waiting for words from God. (If someone out there reading this wants to shout at the screen "I've said that so many times why don't you listen?" I'm sorry!) She closed with a moving story about being on the train the day after the tragedy in Nice. It stopped at noon to observe a minute of silence for the victims, and after her brain agreed that this would not make her late for her yoga class, she was able to pay attention to how she felt, to the people around her. When the minute passed, her eyes met with a twenty-something man across the aisle, and, unusually for Paris, they actually half smiled at each other. That moment, she said, was so much more meaningful to her than any spoken prayer, as that stranger had become her neighbor.
She said it all so much more eloquently than that summary, but it was perfectly timed. I'm just so glad I was there to hear it. All this sad news has been so hard to take.
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Last but not least, there are two other sites that I visited about two weeks ago that got lost in the shuffle. Before Mom and I left on our trip, I made a brief visit to the Louvre and Steve and I climbed the towers of Notre-Dame (at the first look-out point he said, "Did I ever tell you that I'm afraid of heights?" What a good sport!). Climbing the towers far exceeded expectations, especially since we ended up climbing just after sunset, but I found the Louvre overwhelming and not really worth it if I hadn't stretched my museum pass. I've never walked past so much art in my life.
Venus de Milo
If I remember correctly, this is from the Parthenon in Athens. We westerners sure did plunder... Understatement of the last millennium...
Tiberius, emperor of Rome during Jesus' time
Winged Victory; Greek sculpture of Nike from the 2nd century BC
Everybody gets so worked up about Mona Lisa, but there were several other Da Vinci's in the collection that were more interesting, I thought...
...ESPECIALLY this one! Who cares about Mona Lisa when there's La belle ferronnière?
I do love Raphael.
Raphael + St. George + dragon = winner
Eyeroll. I did wade through the crowd and get closer, but a picture seemed pointless.
Later that evening...
Loved these gargoyles so much!
Possibly my favorite picture of the trip.
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