Paris

We made a wise decision in Paris, at least one. The Louvre is large. It looks large on the outside, more than my eyes could take in, but inside, it is beyond my eyes and legs and mind. If there were not signs, we would have been lost forever and had to befriend marble statues of Diana the Huntress in order to survive. (She would supply food and protection, of course, from the rest of the bloodthirsty statues, really, you have no idea how many battle scenes we stumbled into).
On a sign we saw a picture of the Mona Lisa and an arrow pointing forward, and we veered to right instead.
"I'm not ready to see her yet," Sheila said.
"Neither am I," I said.
"You guys are funny," Miranda said.
We found a small convoluted section of something Greekish-statues and other things.(I'm sorry, but there have been too many museums and enough art to make a mottled pile of marble in the back of my mind).  Convoluted means small alleys and half levels and a final spilling out into the main section again. Toward Mona. We soon followed a crowd. They stood before her diminutive, serene, mysterious face, a dozen deep and many wide, held back by security guards standing with their hands carefully together. Our camerawoman fought her way to the front while I stood on the side and finally understood why people were there and why pictures are not the same. That smile still lives in my mind, a mystery. I envy da Vinci the time spent with the woman who smiled that smile. Paris was worth visiting to see that smile with my own eyes.
Now, to the wise decision. Our feet were sore, and we found a beautiful tall gallery, white tiles and green potted plants, a garden of marble sculptures.
We sat down on a wide white bench and drew and wrote and drew. (Two artists and an aspiring writer). I sat under the rearing gaze of a wild horse and its rider. The form was so living the mane seemed to fly in the wind, foam to arise at its mouth.
I sat and wrote, "The glass of Paris is full of my reflection." I wrote of living near this Louvre and making it know me as well as I wanted to know it and its marble arches, marble myths, marble love stories. I wrote tiny, barely-seen stories of three or four sentences. I could sit and not create, surrounded by the remaking of so many tales. I look back and wonder how I did not wish for Aslan to come and breathe them to life, but such wishing would be selfish, because many of the victims would rather remain stone, I am sure. I wanted the wild horse to live, just to see if his wild driver would ever contain him. He reminded me of Maggie Stiefvater's cople isce, fighting the call of the sea.
A woman sat beside us for a few moments, and when we began to talk among ourselves, she alerted us to the fact that she was from the States, in the south somewhere. Her last experience with knowing someone's language without their being aware had been entertaining but also more information than she wanted. She-an English teacher from Kentucky or Tennessee, there with a friend-showed us some pictures she had taken of sculptures-mostly of soldiers or gods carrying swords and wearing helmets and nothing else. Her invented captions were very funny, if a little crude, but most of the sculptures were that way, so I can hardly blame her for making jokes.
So our wise decision was to sit down.
I saw women walk through in four inch heels and I thanked my Maker that I never have to wear those for any reason.
I listened to an angry Chinese father trying to explain to his wife and children the importance of art.
I wished the horse would let loose with a thunderous trumpet and that Jesus would come back and shine through the glass roof. I wished that right now, anyway.
I did not expect this: to enter the Louvre, you must enter the pyramid in front and go downstairs. The museum begins below the visible museum. The three smaller glass pyramids are skylights to the lower floors.
I have not spoken yet of the crepes and pastries. Paris has creperies-special crepe restaurants- and they make crepes filled anything you like. The savory ones are nearly as good as the sweet.
And bread. The baguettes are perfect to tuck under your arm and take on a picnic.
We stayed with a friendly but strict lady, Cynthia. Her husband, Jean Christophe, was very kind, and her little girls shouted "Bonjour" every time they saw us.
We waited for a long time to climb the Eiffel Tower, and indeed, we climbed it. I do not know how many stairs, but it was worth every one. I saw the moon in the sky while I looked across the city, and I thought, "how small the world is. The same God loves us all, and gives us the same moon to smile on us."
People are the same, the world over. They have different faces, different hands, different voices, but their hearts are the same. They long to be warmed by the true God, and those that have been warmed let it out in kind, kind deeds.
We heard Holy Mass in French at the Notre Dame Cathedral. I saw incense and a crowd of hushed, shocked tourists, and I grinned, knowing they could not escape the presence of God there. They never can, but I am sure each one of them knew in their hearts, so similar to mine, that He was there.
Outside the cathedral, a lady gave us rice to hold in our hands, and small sparrows perched on our fingers and ate the rice grains. Now I wonder if they were kin to the lastavica, Island of the World, because they seemed to speak to me with their fearlessness.

Unseparated

Hunger for God.
What is it?
Is it the reason for the ache deep in me that nothing seems to completely soothe? Reading that Holy Word, soaking it into my bones, seems to soften it. Lifting my face to the sky that seems to hold my Maker, lifting my consciousness to He Who is the object of my hunger, and so must be every answer I need-that fills me up, short moments at a time.
But who could know what the ache is? How can it be something that nothing tangible could fill, not words and not touch. It is always there.
I want to know why. Why, why, why do my days seem to fill with almost bitter yearning for a God who could break me? Who bends me until I think I will break.
The bitter becomes sweet with time, but still, it is an unanswered question. This hunger, this yearning, is different than any other. No bread can fill it, no human companionship, no vision.
I know the answer lies somewhere in my own creation. I am made to yearn for something more, but the sweet yearning grew into aching melancholy the day our ancestors first turned away from the Answer.

The hunger is what makes fellowship with Jesus so sweet. It is good. It rescues us from looking only inward rather than upward. I recognize that. But what is it?

I didn't expect to ever know. I thought it was a lifelong quest, a question that would rasp out between pants when I finally reached the Great White Throne. I was right. I will always be searching, but a part of it has been given to me through a story and a friendship and five week trek through Europe.

I read Michael O'Brien's Island of the World on trains and piazza steps and hotel beds. While I read the story of Josip, the epic, stirring, illuminating story of Josip, I thought about many things.
First, what is this hunger for God.
Second, why is it inescapably easy to connect with certain people. I dislike how this sounds. It does nothing to capture the magic of a true kindred spirit.
Third, what is love, what is love, what is love. I don't know why that is third. Josip did not distract me from that question. I don't purpose to talk about that, but perhaps it will appear.

So, hunger for God, and hunger for certain people.
I have a friend. I tell her that beneath her, through her, runs a deep current of...muchness. Words fail me. Being with her is like breathing in a rich, earthy, healing scent. I understand her somehow, and feel understood, just by lying next to her on a blanket, staring up at the stars. We do not have everything in common. Our passions are not the same, though similar in ways. Something about us is drawn together, something deep within.

I read Island slowly because I had to pause often to place each message of truth where it belonged. Josip undertakes his final journey, and his words to one he loves shocked me like a lightening bolt, an answer to my questions of yearning and connection.

"A man is himself and no other," Josip says. "He is an island in the sea of being. And each island is as no other. The islands are connected because they have come forth from the sea, and the sea flows between them. It separates them yet unites them, if they learn to swim."

We are all separate. We are all islands, never fully understood by another island. 

I pondered the other islands that surround me, and my thoughts stumbled on God, from whom I have come forth. He is the sea, He is the air, He is the way to unseparate myself, slowly, from those I love and long to love. He and I are unseparated.  He understands me, this lonely island. He allows me to understand Him, carefully, perfectly, making sure not to break me before He is finished with me.

This is the longing. I am made to be one with others. I am made to be one with my Maker. Always, whether I have tasted His perfect fellowship or not, even before I surrendered to His will, my very being longs to be one with Him. He understands me perfectly! How crazy! Nuts. Cashew, as my friend Sue would say.

And these people that float around me...sometimes the closer I get, the more I realize how separated we are. Compared to the unseparateness I can have with the Father. And yet the joy of kindred minds, hearts, and spirits is a great, great gift. A treasure I am unworthy to hold, but will cherish with gratitude.

I said I didn't purpose to discuss love and what it is, but I cannot resist. We float as lonely islands, growing close to and understanding those God has given us to understand. The loneliness is softened by these gifts. Just now, a great gift I have been given is to have a young man ask to understand me. To be close to me. When I look across the waves around me, I am most days so surrounded by islands that look back with love, I must strive to see the sea. But the islands ever move, sending the foaming sea far up my shores, and the unseparateness of my land and the God-Who-is-the-Sea is sweet, sweet fellowship.