L'Arche de Cuise

Mattias:  what will you do after leaving Taizé?



me:  i have a plan to cycle to india.



mattias:  india, wow,  do you know what you will do there?



me:  i am not sure. . .  maybe just cycle around
       and meet people



mattias:  mm.  
               it might be a good idea to have someone from the country to stay with, at least initially.

               i spent a year living in india, living with a community l'arche - which looks after handicapped people - and it was only by living with those people and sharing their everyday lives that i really got to know them.  the indian way of looking at the world is so different from the european way.  they totally accept the caste system.  most of the people in the villages in the south of india have very simple lives - their houses are materially empty (apart from the television set, and the mobile phones everybody has), but they do not resent the people who are rich; they are not even interested in them.  their acceptance of their place in the caste system is part of their acceptance of whatever happens to them in life.     it took me a long time to get used to their gestures.  they wiggle their heads from side to side to say yes.....

the more mattias spoke and recounted his discovery of the indian way of looking at the world, the more i realised that i wanted to travel in that way; that is to say, not to remain an outsider, cycling my bike, wrapped up in my own world view, but to share the lives of others somehow, to be involved in their everyday.   the voluntary work maettias spoke of sounded interesting, and so when i heard from the sisters at Taizé that volunteers were needed at a l'arche community north of Paris, i decided to go there.
i wanted to be with the people.


there are twelve of us in our house: six young assistants and six personnes acueillis, which means guests, which means persons with a handicap.

Laurent's eyes widen with curiosity and wonder.  he points to himself and then thrusts his arm outward, pointing to some indeterminate place, unknown to everybody but Laurent.   "petit, badi"  - his own language, which he speaks with a tone of urgency.  his voice lowers "oooooh", there is alarm in his eyes,    then a sharp intake of breath, and renewed curiosity and surprise in his eyes.  sometimes his whole face creases into a huge benevolent smile, and he regards one of his companions with great tenderness.  at all moments of the day there is drool which dribbles slowly from his mouth to his chin and is caught by a hankerchief tied round his neck.

before mealtimes everybody holds hands and sings a little song of thanksgiving. 
after the evening meal it is the time to light the candle and sit around singing songs.  there is a time of prayer, which Marie-Astrid adroitly conducts, going round each guest asking them who they can pray for and encouraging them to be thankful for the day. 

the response from the guests is normally to pucker their lips, or let out low grunts, or point insistently to some unknown place, but sometimes an attitude of listening can be discerned.  there is an air of reverence round the candle. 

Sabine puckers her lips and makes a sound by making her lips vibrate.  that is her favourite sound to make.   she mostly wears a sleepy, unhurried look, but sometimes she throws her head back and lets out a shrill sound.   her mouth is open very very wide at that moment. Sabine loves to sit cross-legged on the floor.  if someone has put shoes on her she will try and take them off.  if someone has tied her hair with a little band she will try and take it off.   the only time her movements are unhurried are when it comes to eating, and that is why at the table there must be a buffer zone the length of her outstretched arm between her and anything edible. 

the guests have been alive for around 30 or 40, or in one case 58 years. 
however, looking after them is just like looking after young children.

if i ever wonder about the usefulness of my life activities, i do not wonder here.
it would be impossible for any of the guests to live independently.
they need the help of the assistants.

Marie-Astrid has been alive for 24 years. she has been in charge of the house for two and a half years.  her age is unindicative of how motherly mature she is or how she knows what needs to be done in every situation.   she is a veritable mother to the six guests, distributing care and concern and caresses or stern reprimands when they are necessary.  the household lives and respires under her watchful gaze.

life is a feeling.

what does it feel like to be alive?

Francine has so much energy.  she does not possess very much control over her arm movements.  when another person is near her, she writhes excitedly in her wheelchair.   she wants to touch you, make contact.  her eyes are wide and blue and full of feeling.   she makes a lot of different sounds, expressing a lot of different emotions, without ever forming any of our words.   i realise that Francine would love to dance if she could. 

life is a feeling.

what does it feel like to be with this person?

Gerard has a wide peering distrusting look in eyes.  he slumps in his wheelchair and he cannot help shaking his head from side to side.  he communicates by finger gestures or by answering yes no questions.  when he makes an eager breathy exhalation, it means 'yes'.   when he makes a less eager, lower breathy exhalation, it means 'no'.  
nobody can tell when the moment will come.  the moment comes sooner or later and Gerard breaks into a loud gleeful laugh.   his is always a contagious glee.  it comes as a relief after his reticence.

some mornings, wandering cries can be heard from the bedrooms down the stairs.  it means that soon it will be time to get the guests out of bed, give them a bath, dress them, have breakfast with them, brush their teeth and begin the activities of the day.

Jean-Claude meanders into the sitting room with his wheelchair.  he is the grandfather of the house.  his capacity to communicate with words is the greatest, but he often keeps his choice of words to a minimum. often he surveys the situation and murmurs, "bon, bon", and then, louder but shielding his mouth with the back of his palm, "Merde"
Jean-Claude's use of the word merde is different from that of other people's.   mostly he means hello, he draws attention to himself, he extends himself in an act of convivial communication.
he comments on the weather every morning.   "il fait beau"   :it is a fine day.
when he mumbles "brouillard", it means that the weather is overcast.

Jean Vanier, who founded the first l'arche community in france in 1964 says, i believe that each person, in his or her unique beauty or worth, lives out a sacred story.

each person is a sacred story, whether handicapped or not.

Gégé loves most of all to sit holding an object between his fingers and watch it swing back and forth.  any object will do.  it is usually a little cuddly toy, but it could be somebody's slipper, a piece of straw left over from the christmas nativity scene, or a paper serviette from the mealtime.
he penetrates with his gaze.  when it alights on you, you know that he has intellectually beheld you.    Gégé never speaks, but in moments of contentment he emits a low growling purr, a large smile on his lips.


each person is a sacred story.
it is good precept on which to found a community, with which to approach any human encounter.

have a monastic time

Joost laughed and said:  meeting up with a girl is not the best reason for going to a monestary.






after a pause i said:  meeting up with you was the main reason i came to this monestary.

the monestary was an orthodox one, Saint Antoine le Grand, hidden at the end of a wooded valley ringed by towering cliffs in the Vercors region of France.  i would have felt a little daunted, i think, by the orthodox way if it were not for Joost and his words before i went into the church on the first night i arrived.  he said:  there are certain ritual gestures to observe; you'll pick them up; just copy what everyone else does; that is what everybody does all through life anyway.

the gestures were bowing low to touch the ground in front of icons of Mary and Jesus at the front of the church.   and then making the sign of the cross, and then bowing again, making the sign of the cross again, then kissing the icons, and making the sign of the cross again, and touching the ground again, and making the sign of the cross again.   the church had a dome in the centre from which hung an enormous glittering chandelier, studded with candles, which was made to swing round and round by one of the monks with a long pole half way through the service.  the gestures were to bow low and make the sign of the cross when the monk came near who walked solemly round the church shaking the bells and at the same time releasing sweet-smelling incense.  Joost said the purpose of the incense was to purify the sins of those congregated.  the reason for the bowing was to show that one has come humbly before God; one even bowed before the oldest monk with the big white beard and kissed his soft white hand - that was also to show one's humbleness.  one older woman wore a skirt and a shawl and was particularly devout she spent the whole time bowing and touching the ground and making the sign of the cross.   the few permanent monks who remain at St Antoine le Grand have long beards which are silhouetted against the few candles distributed around the church.  the candles are periodically put out and relit.  the light conditions inside the church are nothing other than dimness.  every interior wall or roof or dome is covered in icons - large paintings depicting scenes from the bible.  i read that in total St Antoine has 600 square metres of icons - the largest quantity in Western Europe.  the monks gather round a lectern and sing and chant for hours.  sometimes call and response liturgy, sometimes one monk does a solo, his voice warbles, oscillates, he is not afraid to go off-key, his voice is joined by the others and a plaintive harmony fills the whole church.  the refrain from the liturgy which i most often heard was:  "Gloire au Pere et au Fils et au Saint Esprit maintenant et toujours pour les siecles des siecles Amen".   they pronounced amen ameen.  they often raced through the words as if they wanted to pronounce them as fast as possible.  it made me understand how the phrase religious mumbo-jumbo came about.   the first night i arrived it was an unusually long service - something over four hours, i think - although i lost my habit of keeping track of the passage of time, and let my sleepy tending-towards-subconscious-way-of-thinking merge with unusual sensory experience of being in that church.  the plaintive harmony of those words along with the dimness, the candles, the incense, the silhouettes of the long beards, the great solemnity of all their movements, the bowing and the making the sign of the cross in the dimness filled me with fascination.  my question was:  Why have these monks decided to dedicate their lives to chanting in the dimness in the church like this?

the first sentence of the laminated sheet of paper in the room they gave me read (in other words):  a monastery is a place where men get together to look for God.

i was interested in the word choice
chercher Dieu
they were searching for God - the candles, the incense, their low quavering chants - were focussed on the God element of life, the part nobody can put their finger on but which they feel compelled to glorify nonetheless.

i wondered why they had chosen to cloister their lives in that secluded valley like that, instead of looking for God in the streets and paths of the world; in human encounters.  they were very welcoming towards me with my desire to witness their church liturgies and also sit with them at mealtimes and eat in silence.   one monk in particular had eyes which twinkled with friendliness.  he had an engaging presence, mixed with a somewhat timid reverence.   he reminded me of mister tumnus the fawn.  although i realised that their monkish ways would only fill me with fascination for a certain limited period of time, i saw the goodness of such a relentlessly God-focussed establishment, where they welcome visitors from the world who wish to refocus on the Essential of life without the distractions of the world.

human relationships are the essential element of life, people have been telling me, i have been thinking

i would never have discovered the orthodox monastery if it were not for wanting to meet up with Joost.   meeting Joost was a little bit like meeting myself in another body - we are so similar in our gestures and ways of talking and then letting the words subside and then only saying things with the eyes.   in the kitchen the coffee filterer became blocked and when it spilled over and made a mess on the floor we both stood there wondering what to do. we both regarded the mess on the floor for a while, wondering what to do.

one afternoon we decided to go for a walk and climb up to the top of the cliff which was the only part of the valley which was sunlit.  we followed the tumbling crashing burn for a while stopping often to say things like "we are like water molecules whose river journey will be over when we reach the sea".  we picked our way over fallen logs through trees draped with luxuriant green moss and began to ascend a large loose scree slope which led to the top.   at the top we sat still on a big rock with our eyes closed for a long time and then i began to hum the Taizé song

de noche iremos, de noche, que para encontrar la fuente
solo la sed nos alumbra, solo la sed nos alumbra

(by night, we will go by night, to find the source
 only our thirst lights our way, solo la sed nos alumbra)

first of all i found that song overly sombre, but then i realised that thirst was an essential motif for that which drives us in life, that which gives our actions motivation and sense.

first of all i met joost's mother when she walked into the kitchen at Taizé.   as i was showing her how to make tea she was giving me a look of profundity and as we talked and she told me that she was Dutch and that she used to be a teacher before her illness, she continued to give me a certain look of profundity and then at one point she said:  you remind me so much of my son.
he is nineteen.  he is tall and has a thick black beard and little dreadlocks.  he is on a big walk from Holland to Spain, staying at lots of monasteries en route.  maybe he will arrive at Santiago de Compostela one day.   as she was telling me these things about her son i realised that i would like to meet him.  she also described him as 'lost' but after i had met him my only thoughts were that he was truly seeking and that in fact it was nothing but good not to get distracted by the ways of the world, and instead to go searching for something that you know you have to search for.

i was also glad to have some more monastery time after finding out that Taizé closes down for the christmas period.  before leaving Taizé my friend Xavier came to see me there and it was freshening to see the Taizé chants and sitting in silence as i imagined they were seen through the eyes of someone with has had no contact with religion whatsoever.  it was the last night before everyone left and so we got together for a big dance session to the music of Marie on the accordion and Fiona with her balkan folk inspired clarinet improvisation, everyone enchanted to learn the steps of the good fun dance which is maybe called the grand old duke of york.  other people taught the steps to other traditional group dances, and it was only at the end of the night that i could remember how the gay gordons went but by then everyone was too tired to learn another new dance those still with energy went jigging round the room anyway, Maria always on the accordion.



it was lovely to be part of Xavier's family christmas meal at his grandparents' place.
it was also strange, to be the observer of a family gathering.  i was reminded of how unique family relationships are.   i could feel all the connections which linked everyone, everyone sharing a common upbringing many moments spent together so many things that do not need to be said because everybody understands everybody so well.  brimming communication in between all the words.  when it came to the jokes and the puns i was lost because all my efforts are still geared towards how to speak french correctly, nevermind playing with the language.   everyone wanted to know a scottish joke but all i could think of was the bear that walked into the bar, and when the barman asked what he wanted he said:














a pint of beer, please


and the barman replied:
why the big paws.




that joke didn't work in french, however.



then i remembered the man who walked into a fish and chip shop and said:
fish and chips, please.

and when he was asked if he wanted salt and vinegar he replied:

no, its okay; i've got my bike.



is the point the fact that there is no point?
mmm, it makes you think though.
(the search for causal relationships)
the point is there is no point
maybe it is the scottish humour...


when i decided to leave saint antoine le grand monestary i really did want to return north to the monastery in Saint Jodard and meet up with Katie la canadienne.  i had met Katie in Taizé and she had told me with enthusiasm about the six months she spent studying philosophy at the monastery in Saint Jodard.  her blue eyes are the brightest and most engaging eyes that i have ever had the fascination of looking into.
but when i arrived she had already left, and it was only a few days later in paris after about a nine hour lift in the old car of Clement who loved only to roll slowly stopping in villages en route for a coffee he did not understand the modern fast cars and their urge to arrive as fast as possible on the motorway it was only after such a lift that i reached paris late at night and was able to meet Katie for a coffee the following morning before she flew back to canada.

i was glad anyway that she had brought me to la communauté de saint jean where they teach philosophy to the student monks in the little village of Saint Jodard.   apart from the shelter while the rain fell for a whole day, there was meeting Philip-Thomas, a young english trainee monk who loves scotland and bike trips and with whom i could speak candidly about all things.  one afternoon we went for a big exploratory ramble across the other side of the river Loire.  he told me that he had observed me receiving the eucharist during mass.  i had told him about all my doubts and he said that in fact the eucharist was a special ceremony, full of significance, only for those who Believe.   during the eucharist the Catholic priest evokes powers which transform the bread into the body of Christ, so that Christ's actual body is made present.     here and now.    and the catholic eats it, and it becomes part of his own body.
and for me the mystery of the Christ thickened.

i stayed up by candlelight till late reading the book Les Trois Sagesses which the dominican founder Pere Phillipe wrote.  the fascinating thing is that his mind remains ever full of curiosity (questions-as-yet-unanwered) in considering the philosophical question of being - the question that philosophical thinking is - while at the same time being fully committed to a life of faith in accordance with the ways of the catholic church.

fascinating.

father phillipe says that a lot of modern philosophy and question-posing is more focussed on answering the question how instead of the more fundamental why?

a lot of concerns in life are focussed on the process of doing things, instead of asking the question:

what is the point?

to be the sun

a woomba womba woomba womba woomba womba woomba womba we were singing while we were cleaning the toilets and then matthieu was walking around the kitchen strumming the four stringed guitar with a beatific smile on his face and juliette and i began to dance and that is when the feeling of joy came.
and after a shower i ran to the park i don't mind if i have barefeet and only a t-shirt and it is cold i have the green grass beneath my feet and the joy of running the joy of a beating heart
la joie de vivre
la joie de la joie
la joie de quoi
la joie du paix
the joy of being
the joy of being simple
the joy of simplicity
the simplicity of joy
Beauty in simplicity
the joy of language
the joy of creating
the joy of colours
the joy of music
the joy of fyuzik
the joy of invented words

the joy of the grass beneath one's feet


"You have the most beautiful eyes i have seen"

"no, Your eyes are the most beautiful"

mmm     Beauty


i said:  sensorial pleasures are like the icing on the cake of existential joy
rachel said:  i have to write that down



the woman who stopped and gave me a lift when i was hitchhiking to Taizé radiated happiness and warmth   she made me think of the woman of african way-back origin called papa in the novel The Shack.   when her companion said:  today is a grey day.  there is no sun  she, always smiling and radiating, said: moi je suis le soleil.





and it was true

ben rinnes

other people

the times when i fail to understand other people

are when i think that everybody is roughly the same as me,
- think in the same way as i do,
have had the same experiences as i have had

the factory

now that i am about to leave the factory there is a bubbling sensation inside me.  it is like bubbling boiling water, so full of energy that it cannot stay still.

i did not know what to expect when i went into the factory.   i wanted to always keep my heart held high.  often it was a baffling place to be.   billy shouted across to me one day "cheer up min, its nae that bad!"  part of me smiled at the appropriateness of the gregariousness of that comment coming from a glaswegian, but another part of me had to give a forced smile.  i could not give a fully natural smile because i was too baffled inside.

the bafflement arose from spending six hours each day with people i had never spent time with before, getting to know what it felt like to be with them and realising the limitations of communication between us.

my vision of humanity changed, became larger, more aligned with a certain portion of reality, less only focused on the positive exchanges of travelling always looking for friendliness.
before i thought:   "we humans can share quite a lot of things"
or at least: "we can share a few things",

or "at the very least we can share a smile"

a smile can communicate all that is most worthwhile communicating between people.

also eyes,
eyes can communicate all that is most worthwhile communicating between people.


it made me think of the essential inscrutability of people.
i thought:  this person would smile if they were able to...
something is preventing them from smiling
i cannot understand what that something is
but i must accept it.
i must accept that there are forces operating among people which take away their smiles.
a smile is a symbol.

being happy may be the goal here on this planet among all people,
but it is not the reality.

reality: i must accept you, confounding though you are.

at break time i love to go to the shower room and there have a shower in the dark.  away from the bright factory lights.  the water becomes hot and flows over my body.  i do not know where the water comes from because it is dark.  it is so eager to splash all over me.  pure refreshing water.   away from the hundreds of eyes of the factoy, surveying eyes, shooting darting flashing glances.

afterwards i can go back into the factory with my heart held high.

in the factory, the white coats we wear are like straight jackets; we are not free.
we are humans - nothing can stop us being humans; but part of our humanness has been taken away - we are not free.  the blue headnets we wear are symbols of our anonymousness, the protective gloves are to make us aseptic - we do not have real contact with the world.  
we are humans, but we pretend that we are not humans by behaving like cogs in a machine. 

in the canteen, before the shift begins, i sit and read a book.
andrew the pole always comes with a coffee and sits at my table and we always nod and say hello to each other.  
one day i look up from my book and find him looking at me with a steady calm gaze.  i return the same gaze     for several seconds    i say to myself i will not be the one to look away.   then he looks away and i return to my book with a smile.
one day he asks what i am reading.  it is anna karenina.   he tells me he studied it at school.   i love to read.  he says so does he.  
another day he tells me that three times he has seen the rolling stones play live, and once the kinks, but never pink floyd.
the next day i tell him i ask him what his favourite rolling stone song is.  i tell him i was trying to play "you can't always get what you want" on the guitar.  i hum the refrain in case his memory needs jogged:

   you can't always get what you want....
   but if you try sometimes
   you might find
   you get what you need....  ahhhhh, yeah

it is difficult to hum those words dispassionately, with mick jagger's passion in my head.
one day i ask him how long he has been away from poland.   he outlines his life to me.  he was a farmer for ten years.  he says he had to return to the city or his house would be reposessed by the government.  he builds momentum and tells me that for many years there was no freedom in poland.  he expands and talks about russia, about poland being the buffer between europe and sovietic russia.   he talks about the past and about napoleon.   occasionally i say something, even if it is only to comment that i know very little about history, but i realise that he is not curious about whatever i might say, he wants to tell me things; it is my role is to listen.   all the time his faded old blue eyes fix me directly, but however directly he fixes them, there is a distance, a distance of old age, of time, a lifetime, which veils over his desire to say things in this anonymous factory place.

anna karenina engrossed me and made the fifty minute bus journey fly by.  i did not know that a novel could be so well written.   the whole imaginative eight hundred pages flow like real life - one event arising spontaneously and flowing into the next, not like a lot of fiction where you know that the events did not really happen but are the product of the author's imagination.    it is a human novel.   events in the world are described, but the central theme is the human experience.   the personal psychological experience of each person, and also interactions between people.  a great deal of interaction is wordless.    one may think certain things have been communicated by reviewing the sum of the words spoken, but underpinning them, undergirding them, the solid base of every act of communication upon which an embellishment of words is constructed, is a feeling.   a shared feeling.  a pure, profound wordless interaction of presences. 
expressed and manifested much better through eyes or smiles or lack of smiles or half-smiles or an infinity of different types of half-smiles than by words.
tolstoy drew my attention to all this.  he wrote a sweeping novel which is a reflection of real life in all its majesty and absurdity, in all the little obsessions and worries and joys of all the characters.    most people see the world with a certain particular personalised worldview, and most authors communicate their worldview through what they write.   tolstoy struck me with his ability to enter fully into each character and describe the widely varying worldviews of each one.
he seems to have no overarching message beyond simply presenting the reality of humanity, in the form of a novel.   he documents our great capacity to love, the greatness of our capacity to love, as well as unapologetically documenting our capacity for cruelty; the poverty of the human condition, the poor, misguided, unaware souls that we are.

jack works taking the loaded crates out of the factory and one day he walked past me and said: life doesn't get any better than this.
i liked his comment that the central theme of life is its goodness and i liked his irony in suggesting that working in the factory was the pinnacle of the goodness of life.
i said cheerfully to him:  it is good to see someone cheerful
and he replied:  well, its either that or greet
and i liked to hear the local dialect word greet, which means cry


one day i find myself sitting next to a young woman on the bus and before i open my book she asks me "are you not going to read your book today?"  i say "i like to look at the sea here before we turn inland at portgordon"   she says yes i like to look at the sea too.
the conversation never flags until the factory and i realise that reading a book is only one way of losing track of time on a bus. 
conversing with a person is like reading a book.
one learns things.
her name is stella which means star in italian she is from bulgaria.  she says that she would love to work with children one day. children are so honest.  they mostly do not dissimulate.  they mostly do not hide things.  i say "it would be good if that openness and honesty was maintained all the way through adulthood"
communication is good when it is honest and an attempt is not made to hide things.

one day i am working next to antonio and i tell him that i learned a bit of portuguese when i was in brazil.  another day i am working next to him and i say "how do you say ..... in portuguese?" and "how do you say that in portuguese?"  and antonio becomes animated and ends up talking away talking away to me in portuguese. gradually the words start coming back and it feels so good, so empowering to have the ability to communicate through knowledge of such words.

the portuguese are among the friendliest factory staff.  anna maria works for quality control and when she learns that i speak some portuguese she encourages me, each day coming to me and saying bom dia carson como estas?  
one day she described me one day as timid and i asked her: do you think i am timid?  she said: .....introspective.   most young men your age are loud and want to show off; you are quiet and content to observe everyone. 

it is true, the air in the factory is thick with egos.

the air buzzes with machinery, each person is a buzzing ego.
when it is time to clock off, everyone crowds round watching the clock.
suddenly everyone writhes into action, pushing and shoving, trying to be first to clock off and get out of the factory, like some sort of frolicksome wild stampede, bubbling like boiling water.

one can't take this world too seriously
   but at the same time
you can take this world too seriously.


being alive is a poetic experience.


working at that factory has cast my hours of non-working freedom into sharp relief.   being a free agent in the world is replete with possibilities.   i realise the significance of everything.   even the significance of the action of a drop of water falling into a puddle of water in the garden,
especially a drop of water falling into water.
 
first the droplet forms on the edge of the gutter.  
it morphs  
and becomes detached    it is momentarily airborne, travelling downwards through space, pulled down by an invisible force, travelling through time or with time or accompanied by time.   enveloped in time, everything is enveloped in time

the drop
and the plop

a glutinous, ponderous, joyous plop.   joyful because of its richness and fullness.

a symbol of life

water
movement
a plop



there were lots of apples and bars of chocolate and it was a little sore on my belly to lean inside and grab them.   my headtorch illuminated the inside of the bin.
when i cycled off i realised there was a girl standing behind a car who had probably seen me and there was a young man who probably hadn't seen me because he seemed surprised to see me.
he responded to my grunted greeting and then shouted after me: "far are you gan?"
i said: "i'm awa oot"
and then i said: "i'm awa oot on a spin"
"you're crazy", he rejoined
and it felt good to be free

a schema for life

experience









thought









experience










thought









experience










thought




a thoughtful experience









thought