Living Cemetery

The day after the roof top experience, I joined the group for a hike. We ended up in a dainty uninhabited village with a tiny graveyard. I meandered past the few tombstones and discovered that this was the burial place of some of the persecuted French protestants during Louis XIV's anti-protestantism purge. I found a mother and her son buried next to each other, the mother's tombstone embellished with "Dieu est amour" (God is love) while her son's "l'Eternel est mon berger" (the Lord is my shepherd). I passed two other tombstones and found buried side-by-side Monsieur and Madame de Cazenove (most likely related to the still-living Monsieur de Cazenove) also with their favorite verses neatly engrained in the marble. 

I've always been afraid of cemeteries, where dead bodies decay under fertile soil. Yet, as I wandered past the tombstones of these children of God, the peace I felt literally transcended understanding. I was reacting so contrary to nature that I was confused. 

Later on, though, I realized the tangible verity of eternal life. I had felt such comforting peace because I had, in fact, been walking among the living.

Rooftop at Night

During the first night at the castle, one of the Youth Interns took me up to the highest point of the castle: the attic library. We climbed up the "Blistery Tower," stumbled across the roof in the rain, and mounted another flight of wooden stairs. I heard his voice but could not see him, for the room was darker than night. I heard him walk on before me with his hands stretched out in front of him like a zombie, mumbling, "If I remember correctly, the light switch is...here." 

As if at the snap of a finger, light flooded the room, evaded the darkness, and brought sight. There, in front of us, sat five enormous wooden chests of age-old letters batched together with crispy ropes, tattered Bibles and dusty New Testament books, and stained newspapers with headlines about the economy during the Great Depression. He couldn't contain himself, opening up one chest after another, grabbing one book after another from the faithful old shelf, and calling me over to see a Bible from the 1400s or a geology textbook from the 1600s or a wrinkled black-and-white photo from the war. I had no words to say; I tried to capture the room with my camera. But neither words nor pictures could justify the verity of history.

We came down from the attic and stopped to crawl on top of the roof. There, we stood in wonder, staring at the dimly-lit towns situated on top of precarious cliffs in the distance. Nothing disturbed the silence except the light breeze in our hair, the gentle rain pitter-pattering on our jackets, and my occasional snifffle. If I had found a sleeping bag, I would have slept on the roof in the rain that night. I just did not want to come down.

***

Some say that the hardest part of a hike is the ascension but at the top you'll find that the view was worth all the pain, sweat and blood. 


No, I disagree. 


The hardest part, in fact, is leaving the solitude, peace, and beauty of the peak and returning to endless deadlines, superficial coffee dates and unproductive meetings, to our broken friendships of jealousy, selfish ambition and betrayals, to the attractive model who vomits herself skinny and cries herself to sleep, to the wealthy businessman who drinks himself to sleep, to the drug-dealers who wake up screaming from a nightmare, to beggars whose helpless eyes we avoid. The hardest part is having to leave somewhere seemingly perfect for a descent towards what often feels like Hell. 

And yet, wasn't that what Jesus did for us? Jesus, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who has no need for the selfish love, meager help, and superficial praise of human beings, chose to give up His heavenly crown for a crown of thorns, give up His throne of glory to die naked on the cross, give up His power to save himself for man's powerlessness in the face of death. 

Why, Jesus, why? Why did you die for people like me, who profess to always remember you and yet forget you, who promise to obey you and yet disobey you, who are willing to listen to your voice and yet ignore you, who tells others to trust in you and yet doubt you ourselves, who condemn Peter for denying you three times and yet deny you daily? Why do you love people like me, who hide your glory, who steal your fame, who take the credit for what you've done, simply for our own fifteen minutes?  

And yet I hear you say, "so that by my crown of thorns, you worship a God not of gold or silver but of humility and sacrificial love. So that by my shameful death on the cross, you are no longer held hostage by guilt, shame and self-condemnation. So that by giving up the power to save my own life, I save you and give you eternal life."

If you find another King like Jesus, another God like my God, I will give you my soul. For now, my entirety belongs to Him.

Octogenarian Bachelor

To mark the beginning of my third month in France, I spent the weekend on a church retreat in Cevennes, a mountainous region about two hours outside of Aix-en-Provence. We stayed in Monsieur de Cazenove's fifteenth century stone castle, ate cereal and drank English tea in a fifteenth century dining hall with gold-framed portraits of fifteenth-century ancestors, played Apples to Apples with the kids in front a crackling temperamental fifteenth-century fireplace, fell asleep to the muffled piano melody of "Humoresque" seeping through the walls, and floated off to Lala-land on fifteenth-century pillows. 

Still a bachelor in his late seventies (or eighties), Monsieur de Cazenove lives alone, spending most of his time in his petite study room, decorated with Persian rugs and Chinese tapestry, the walls lined with hardback novels, dusty science textbooks from the Enlightenment period ("Lumières"), and Bibles dating all the way back to the 1400s. On his desk rest a glass of red wine and a plate of stale bread and melting cheese. 

After dinner on the first evening, I went on a search for this humble figure and finally found him at the castle entrance digging through another stash of books. I slowly approached him from behind, whispering, "Monsieur de Cazenove?" but he didn't seem to hear me. I cleared my throat and tried again, but to no avail. Finally, I forked up enough courage to shout at the old man: "MONSIEUR DE CAZENOVE." He immediately spun around, and I felt presumptuous. 

I tip-toed forward awkwardly, my fingers laced together, like those of a nervous bride walking down the aisle. His gentle grey eyes looked down at me, waiting patiently for my question. I attempted to smile but my dry lips stuck to my teeth. I smiled again, this time asking: "Est-ce que vous connaissez Wellesley College?" I wanted to know if his family had anything to do with the Cazenove dorm that I had been living in for the past three years. His eyes shifted to the side as he tried to make sense of what I had said. I had most likely butchered every word, even "Wellesley College," which I had tried to pronounce in a French accent. 

"Ah! Wellesley!" I could almost hear the snap of the light switch in his brain, as our language barrier crumbled and fell onto the cold stone steps. "Venez, venez." He beckoned me to follow him. I almost curtsied, but then I remembered that we were in 2010.

Monsieur de Cazenove muttered to himself as he dug through his pile of magazines and newspapers. Finally, out of the sporadic mutterings came an epiphanic "Ah ha!" He handed me a 2006 issue of the Wellesley magazine and told me to flip to page 5.  A black-and-white photo of a smiling Monsieur de Cazenove flanked by two Wellesley women on each side reflected the dim candle light. The girls had studied abroad in France on the Wellesley-in-Aix program and, on their return, had written an article entitled "The Cazenove Connection." 

I've never wondered why I was assigned to the Cazenove dorm my first year, never wondered why I stubbornly wanted to stay in the same dorm. Sometimes, some things in life just remind me of how short-sighted I am as a human being and how far God sees into the future. Sometimes, some things in life remind me of how witty God is. His sense of humour has no comparison. 

Confession

To those of you who I have misled into thinking that "Marianne is having such a great time in France!", I lied.

To those of you at home (wherever that is), at Wellesley, at work, at church, who might be thinking that I have forgotten all about you and don't need you and don't care about our friendship: please don't believe it.

To those of you who think that study abroad is a break from school: prepare to dive into real life and swim as fast as you can.

Recently, a conversation gave me the opportunity to summarize the past three weeks:
":) Hope France is going well :)"
"Thanks! It's harder than I expected it to be, but God is good! =)" I replied, trying to sound positive.
"Harder academically, or what?"

"Harder everything really. 

Relationally, it’s been hard to forge close intimate friendships with the time given and the relatively more closed French culture. I've also had a hard time getting along with one of my closer friends who has hurt me a lot since we got to France and has refused to apologize for any of it but becomes defensive or nonchalant each time we talk about it.

Academically, it's been straining and discouraging too. The classes have been disappointing and very long (3 hours each) but at the same time I can't seem to be able to write a French essay the way it should be written (they have a very strict structure). I recently switched out of one of my literature courses because it was just too disorganized, the professor hardly taught anything, and the books and one film we discussed had to do with homosexuality, pederasty, men raping infants, betrayal of people and of owns own country, and all-around blasphemy. As much as I tried to read the books from the point of view of a literary critique, I found myself shouting "shut up" every two pages of one of the books. 

Spiritually, I have been okay. God has been sustaining me although I often feel like He loves and blesses other people more than He loves me, especially the friend or sister in Christ whom I don't talk to anymore, whom people at the French church seek out by asking me. Sometimes, when I'm tilting my buttocks up in the air to avoid sitting on the toilet-seat-less and soap-less toilets at the university, I evaluate my life and feel like I'm in Hell. But, sometimes, I'm just so happy to be away from everything and alone with God in this desert, this hiding place, where only God only witnesses everything. I feel like God has made this time in France a time for Him to get rid of a lot of my fears, pride, selfish ambitions and desires. I think that, through these disappointments by friends and human beings and how none of my friends can help me when I need help, He wants me to depend on Him and Him alone, to find my source of strength and comfort and confidence in Him, to step out in faith in Him and not in myself and definitely not in other people. With that said, I find it very tempting to simply trust no-one which is no better than trusting everyone. 

All in all, God is answering my prayers, which I prayed without knowing their impact and seriousness. Right now, I just want a break or a chance to start over or a way to get out of the sticky situations I've squeezed myself into. And above all I would love a renewed passion for the French language and French culture. 

Luckily, I'm going on a church retreat with the English-speaking international church this weekend so I'm praying that i will come back refreshed and recharged and rejoicing, ready to tackle my first midterm (3 hours) and finish up the last 10 weeks in France with a bang."*

Voila, my real study abroad experience. Off to pack now. In two hours, I will have wings to fly away from this cage, this broken rollercoaster stuck in mid-air, this choke on a fish-bone, this burp while you're sneezing, this cough while you're yawning, this constipation, this numbness and lackluster passivity of heart, mind, and soul. 

God, start the engine. God, rekindle the flame. God, breathe life into me.

*Edited 

Mono-

After my history class in Marseille on Wednesday, I saw the little girl with the pink t-shirt and bright green trousers again, except this time she was wearing a navy blue t-shirt and loose tan trousers, second-hand clothes from a brother or a male cousin, perhaps. 

***

Before muddy green mold starts growing on my blog, I shall submit another post of redemption.

Recently, I have found little motivation to write. As the novelty of tourism wears off like steam condensing on a bathroom mirror, I have begun to see myself more clearly from a French perspective.

I am in foreign country, a more-or-less monocultural country, a country where assimilation has replaced integration, where Asia and Africa are countries, where hyphenated identities do not exist, where my epicanthic folds, onion nose, and flat pancake of a face not only define my ethnicity, my culture, and my language, but also immediately stuff me in a box along with students from Mainland China, the Korean boss of the Cantonese-Korean-Japanese-Vietnamese restaurant, as well as the splatter of Cambodian, Indonesian, Filipino, and Malaysian immigrants.

Here, in France, everything is one-dimensional. Mono-identity, mono-cultural, mono-ethnic. Even the big and famous national Target-imitation is called Monoprix. (The other one is entitled Carrefour, meaning crossroads. Another big convenience store is called Casino, probably because you have to gamble all your money away on the week's groceries and a packet of cigarettes. The best way to understand the state of a society or a country is by looking at the names of its supermarkets and convenience stores.)

I recently participated in a French cooking class where I learned how to peel potatoes, chop eggplants, crush garlic, and create the most important element of a Provencal salad: the vinaigrette. While waiting for the concoction to flourish in the oven, I tackled the awkward silence by asking the chef a question that I pose to every successful career professional: did you always want to be a cook (or a doctor, lawyer, social activist, painter…)?

The most interesting part of the conversation went like this:

"Oh, you know, I have a Japanese assistant." She winks at me.
"Ah!" I reply in a surprised tone.
"And, I also have a Vietnamese friend. They're so wonderful!" She beams at me, showing her gold molar.
"Ah!" I beam back at her.

***

Granted, I have taken this opportunity to discover my roots, buying tofu, soy sauce, black vinegar and sesame oil from the local Asian products store and resisting the temptation to ask for the rice cooker on the highest shelf. The store also sells other "oriental" products, such as pancakes from Lebanon, Turkish delights, curry powder, Tunisian pastry, figs, dates, dried prunes, apricots, almonds, peanuts, rice, cornmeal, and Provencale desserts. At the beginning of the semester, I thanked God for this shop. But, since then, due to bad service, I have vowed never to return. Here is an example of bad service:

I, the trusting customer prepared to give away some hard-earned money, grab a brown paper bag to fill it with rice from China.

"Madame, madame!" His voice explodes from the other end of the store, accompanied by heavy mono-rhythmic footsteps, polluting the tranquil aroma of curry and ginger. "No, you cannot do that. We do that."
"Ah! Ok."

He snatches the little brown bag from my hands. Stunned, I thank him, thinking he's going to scoop me some rice. But he plunges the scooper into the sack of basmati rice, twists it closed, and holds it up to another customer. "Enough?"
I decide to make for the cashier and leave as soon as I could. The other shopkeeper, a very kind lady, asks him, "Are you helping this young lady (me)?"
"No." He shouts back.

She leads me over to the rice and scoops a sack-full of Chinese rice and heads back to the cashier with me. I ended up not buying anything because they weren't willing to accept credit card payments for anything under 10 euros.