Day 05 - Paris: Cluny, Anniversary along the Seine (Quartier Latin, Rive Gauche)

On Monday, after a relatively late sleep in,  the entire entourage traveled together to the Musée de Cluny, France's national museum of the Middle Ages. This was one of the favorite museums for many in the family.

One of the most striking things about the museum is how counter the actual art runs to the typical Renaissance and Enlightenment narrative about the so-called dark ages. In addition to the cathedrals, the middle ages were rich in artistic endeavors and the artists very skilled. The miniature tradition is especially impressive. But the art does take time. You have to get up close to see how carefully some things are articulated, how expressive the art can be. (Some are included in the accompanying slideshow -- including a religious scene we just don’t see depicted much in our art over here, but many more images are included in the “Best of Religious Art” album.)

We bought lunch from what we did not know at that time was a franchise, the boulangerie and pâtisserie, Paul. They’re even in London. The lunch was very good and we took it back to the gardens attached to the museum to eat.

Because it was our anniversary, Jen and I broke with the rest of the company and set off for a walking tour of la Rive Gauche (the Left Bank) and le Quartier Latin. (Wait .. you got to have your Anniversary in Paris???? Yes. Paris.)

As we made our wandering way, we visited both the Eglise St-Severin and la Sainte-Chapelle. At St-Severin there was an American choir warming up and we were treated to a mini-concert as they warmed up.

Sainte-Chapelle is a fascinating site. One journalist and blogger on art writes of Sainte-Chapelle, “If you want to have your intellectual world turned upside down, if you want to throw away every preconception you possess about architecture, history and modernity, there's a church in Paris you really must visit.” Its grandeur is its stained glass windows. They are in the process of being restored, and there was no way that I could have gotten an adequate shot of them even if I wanted to without a shift lens or a 12 - 16mm lens. (Watch photographers struggle with the challenge with a quick google image search.)

But the most striking thing to me about Sainte-Chapelle was the fact that a government building, the Tribunal de Grande Instance, butts right up against the church, blocking the light from penetrating the stained glass windows on one side! I was just short of angry walking out of there. But the whole situation is probably a fitting metaphor for the secularism of France.

We had planned on finding a very nice restaurant for dinner, but neither Jen nor I were very hungry, so we had appetizers twice. At the first restaurant, we shared an order of moules-frites, something on almost every menu and almost always worth ordering (though some are certainly better than others.

The restaurant was right near the best pâtissier-confiseur we encountered in France. I believe Jen got some chocolates and caramels.

From there, we walked along left bank of the Seine, rediscovering the dancing culture we had seen from the boat the day before. Down the quai a bit from Notre Dame there are five, maybe six little amphitheaters carved out right next to the river. In each of these, there was some kind of dancing with instruction going on. In some of the amphitheaters only a few couples were dancing, others were full of couples. And around each there were crowds gathered, drinking beer or wine, eating dinner, conversing. This was 9:00 or 9:15 on on Monday night.

This was the first of the three encounters during the trip where I would say I experienced a feeling of genuine, organic community and each aspect of the moment was essential -- the dancing, the food and drink, the river, the people participating.

We wanted to join in … sort of … but, no ... we didn’t.

As it always will be when “we” pass up an opportunity to dance, the blame is mine not Jen’s. I am in sore need of a little more Harold Coulter in me. I could almost see Harold and Sue in my mind’s eye, jumping right in and dancing with the Parisians.

We walked back to the Quartier Latin and had our second appetizers. I had escargot for the first time and Jen had a goat cheese salad. I was expecting for the escargot merely to be an “experience” that I had to have and then get out of the way, but escargot is wonderful! A revelation! I love escargot! The texture is a bit like clams but the flavor much milder than most shellfish. Watch out faculty seminar.

And as for Jen’s salad, cheese served as a part of dish in France, it was almost always a more substantive and distinct part of the dish. The goat cheese was not crumbled over the salad as it would be in the United States, but placed on top of the salad in larger slices. Cheese is more of a feature of anything it appears on, in or with than it is a condiment.

Day 05 Reflections

There is something distinct and intriguing about the Parisian culture and ethos that pertains to the many and intricate threads between morality, culture, art, restraint, beauty, freedom and joie de vivre.

There appears to be in Paris and Parisians a freedom and abandonment to the good life, to beauty, and to the goodness of the physical world. This was well represented by dancing on the left bank on a Monday evening. After all, what is life for if not to enjoy an evening on the banks of the river, eating, drinking and dancing while the sun sets behind the Cathedral?

In this is a simple profundity in this that we Americans, particularly American Christians, might learn from. Sometimes it seems that we are so caught up in what we are doing or ought to be doing that we lose our capacity for simply being -- especially being in the world as inhabitants of God’s good creation who were placed in a garden to enjoy it.

Furthermore, this is intimately wrapped up in a particular understanding of the body. The human body has been the most central subject of art at least since the ancient Greeks. For Christians, the dignity and goodness of the human body is significantly affirmed in the Creation account, shockingly reiterated in the Incarnation and ultimately to be ratified in the resurrection of the body and the marriage of heaven and earth. And there are close connections between the body, art, beauty, physicality, the sensuous world and the human person that are preserved in this Parisian culture -- dancing by the Seine, the gardens, the art museums, the sense of fashion and the café culture.

Again, I think there is something here that we could could learn from. Despite a theological tradition that should be rich with an appreciation for the body, American Christian culture and morality has a way of introducing Gnostic elements into our approach to the body that spill out in many ways. The invisible spirit is good; the material body is fading. Theology is good; art is suspect. Prayer is good; dancing is dangerous.

So we find ourselves culturally torn in two. The high path is prayer, hard work, and discipline. This produces an economic prosperity achieved and sustained through responsible spending and faithful tithing. Wine and fine dining, a night on the town, music, art, poetry and late night conversation (though we experience them to some extent) are not considered essential aspects of our being and are sometimes even looked askance at -- especially when they conflict with the supposedly higher values.

In America, then, the most ‘responsible’ people are often entirely absent from important dimensions of culture, art, leisure and life. We have created such a rift between our business and our religion on the one hand and our culture and humanity on the other that it almost seems necessary to choose between the two sometimes.

In short, Parisians seem to live a more integrated life.

To be continued in Day 06 Reflections with “On the Other Hand ...”

Click below to watch the slideshow or double click for more options. If you cannot navigate the slideshow, click here to go directly to the album.