By Rev. Nicole M. Lamarche
It is so good to be back among you! I read a lot! I slept a lot, I watched five seasons of the West Wing. I am almost done rewatching the whole thing. That’s such a good show! I heard other people preach and I worshiped way out of my comfort zone and experienced awe and beauty and also being excluded. I give thanks for the ways we continue to grow our culture of hospitality and welcome. I can tell you again what you already know- it makes all the difference in the world to enter a sacred space and feel belonging. And I can tell you again how shattering it can be to enter a sacred space and to be made to feel like you aren’t the right kind of person- that you don’t believe the same way that you love or live the wrong way so you can’t take the wafer or you can’t stand over there or you can’t pray over here. You almost wonder if Jesus would be welcome? That’s all to say what you already know. What we have here is important and precious. May we continue to be a place where all belong.
If you are so moved, I invite you as you are comfortable, to take some deeper breaths -letting go of the lists or the worries or the worlds’ wounds, just for a time, to be open to receiving whatever word the Universe has for each of us today.
I invite you to join me in a spirit of prayer as we are all held by these ancient words from Psalm 19: God may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Where do we go from here? Many of you have asked some version of this question this week. And I want you to know that I am right there alongside you, with you, asking the same thing. Where do we go from here?
Where do we go from the place of hearing new texts and examining our traditions?
Where do we go from the place of asking whether it matters if not everyone was invited to the table during the process that created the Nicene Creed? I love that people are asking these kinds of questions!
Where do we go from the place of experimentation and novelty and new voices and fresh faces?
Where do we go from the place of having dared to open things up? Exploring a book outside the official 27 that were included in the New Testament, daring to read one of many books that were banned by Bishop Athanasius in the year 367?
Where do we go from here?
There were quite a few times on my pilgrimage this summer where I sat on the top of my roller bag or on a bench or on a stoop or in a train station or on the steps outside of a sacred space or in a coffee shop and I asked the Universe similar: Where do I go from here? What should I do now? And at some points along the path my question was: Once I know where to go, how in the world do I get there?
I had not realized how far into the mountains the Hostellerie de la St. Baume really was. You know you make a plan, maybe not thinking about all of the details.
This is the Dominican monastery dedicated to Mary Magdalene tucked in a beautiful forest in the middle of nowhere. on the top of a hill beyond small, winding roads, it was more than an hour from the major city and far from the major highway. Surrounded by a thick forest with little else around, it is not really on the way too much of anything. I was told not to try for a local taxi. The front desk at the place where we were staying really was no help at all.
As it got closer to my departure, I was starting to become a tad panicked, I am a slightly anxious traveler anyway and when you don’t speak the language and you don’t know where you are, it was all magnified. This was supposed to be the beginning of the super religiousy parts of the pilgrimage, kicking off the weekend of events leading to the feast day of Mary Magdalene on July 22nd the following Monday. Dear God, I know where to go, but how in the world do I get there?
I was in Aix-en-Provence with my dear friend Nancy who is a super traveler, a problem solver, a fixer of so many things. We have been friends for more than two decades and she had flown across the ocean to be with me to help me transition from being with my family to being alone in a place whose language I did not know.
Nancy is a first generation Vietnamese American and she speaks French and also loves French food. And one of my most favorite things about my friend Nancy is that she shows up. A while ago I told her about how nervous I was to be alone in France. I have traveled a lot, but never alone before this, never alone. She told me she would come for part of it and that she would spend a week or so somewhere in France with me and she ended the phone call with a near shriek, “I have Marriott points!”
It seemed like a lot to ask. But I said okay. But I decided to give in. I needed that help.
Nancy is a brilliant bright star! She holds public office, loving a nerdy thing like serving on the public utility board. She works in tech and healthcare and is an official delegate with the DNC. Oh we have a lot to talk about! That was before everything changed. And she kept saying it’s an act of God.
Nancy gets things done. She kept saying, “Let me help you!” Nancy said when I was fretting loudly yet again about how I would get to St. Baume.
She told me she had figured out how to get to a remote part of the Italian alps once and she could get anywhere. She assured me she would get me to St. Baume. I decided that once again I had to let her. At this point, my only hope was getting help.
Maybe you already know that the word baume in French means balm, which is an ointment used for healing. And I suspect that many of you know by now that often Mary Magdalene is depicted in art and icons holding an alabaster jar of ointment. This is why the area around two of her main pilgrimage sites have Baume in their name because of her. I think that part of what Mary reminds us and something I am still pondering, we might have forgotten but it’s there all throughout. A core piece of our tradition is healing. There are tons of stories in our sacred texts about healing, specifically Jesus healing others, which is what we see in the Gospel of Mark today.
But there is something I noticed when reading it this time, something that hadn’t stood out to me before and it’s this: help is part of the healing.
In the first story, it is a mother defying cultural norms to demand that her daughter be given the attention she deserves and in the second story it’s a group of people bringing a man to Jesus for healing. In both cases, the person is not bringing themselves. They don’t get themselves to the Source on their own. The people get the healing they need because others demand it, bring them there, advocate on their behalf, push, challenge, pull, do the work to get them there. They do not get themselves to the Source on their own. So what if part of healing, part of the healing that any of us need is being able to ask for help receive it? And what if healing our individual and collective wounds requires us to be open to this help arriving in surprising ways? From people you might not expect, from circumstances you hadn’t anticipated.
For me, I am coming to understand that part of this pilgrimage, part of what we have done together and are doing is about healing. What I mean is that I think that part of bringing the feminine and masculine back together in the spiritual realm is also helping to heal things in this realm too, right here, reminding us that we are not isolated parts. We are connected beyond what we understand. That we are called to bring our fragments together.
Once I gave in to Nancy’s insistence on helping me, she grabbed my phone and guided me through downloading new applications. “I hate this!” I said. She assessed my device. “No one uses Lyft in Europe!” She said. She chastised me lovingly. “They have a better record with women passengers!” “Oh my goodness!” She said, “How do you not have Apple Wallet set up!” She took over my phone, demanded passwords, told me that I needed to get my tech life together! And then I had hope.
It was our last night before going our separate ways and Nancy with her impeccable taste in clothing and food insisted that as things neared toward her birthday, she must have some canard a l’orange, which duck with orange sauce, is a rich French specialty, a cuisine bourgeoise where the duck is roasted with what is called a bigarade sauce. Nancy did research and called to ask questions in perfect French, clarifying that the restaurant would indeed have not just duck but duck cooked this certain orange sauce. I was impressed! She looked at reviews and then decided on a spot and made a reservation. We stepped our way up cobblestone streets to find it- a random non-fancy looking establishment with lots of stars she assured. me that for certain had canard a l’orange. We were seated in the very back and we squished into the small chairs.
After days and days together, on our final night, the night before I had to get myself to the mountains of St. Baume, and still hadn’t figured out how, my dear friend Nancy, a Buddhist began to ask me about Mary Magdalene. Where do I begin? Yes, there are a lot of Mary’s. No she wasn’t really who tradition made her into. She was a teacher, she got the message. “Well what is the cave about?” “Local legend says she spent time in the area and her final years in the cave meditating.”
Then suddenly, a voice to my left said in perfect English, “Excuse me.”
Seated next to Nancy and me in a random French Restaurant in Aix en Provence were Kathryn and Jeff who had had plans with friends back in Uzes, but they fell through; which left them killing time. They had tried to find some old cave art which they never did so they ended up doing something seemingly mundane but important like learning up the car they had borrowed. Then they got lost finding their way back to the highway. So they went to Aix, and there we decided to check out a restaurant, which they left because of a rude waiter so they wandered to a street fair where we bought some touristy hats where they asked a hat seller for a recommendation for a meal which is how they were seated at the table next to us.
“Excuse me!” Jeff said. “I heard you talking about Mary’s cave. Were were just at Mary’s cave!” I looked at Nancy through my tears. “It’s a sign!” This couple from Ashville, North Carolina who knows my friend Veronica have come to bring a sign to us right here in the back of the restaurant! I will get to St. Baume!
My requests for a driver through the app continued to be declined. The drivers would accept and then see where I wanted to go and drop me and then it would spin.
Where do we go from here? It turns out sometimes we have to wait a bit for the answer. But I do think all of my questions I do think I have clarity about some things and one of them is the fact that some of our most important work together is healing, healing ourselves, our earth, our communities, our bodies, our relationships, our spirits, our present, our future and sometimes even our histories. And I also have clarity about one other thing, help is part of the healing. Help gets us to the balm. Help is the balm.
Nancy left that Friday morning. I was alone waiting in the lobby, trying to get a ride, but still with hope. After numerous declined requests a driver accepted. I messaged to try and clarify if it was real this time. As the hour of departure near I hadn’t been canceled. Nancy kept in touch.
That afternoon I got in the car with a driver named Amor. I said “Is your name really Love!” Yes, it was Amor that got me to the balm, to St. Baume. Sometimes love, you have to wait for love in just the right form in a surprising manifestation to get you where you need to go.
Communal Reflection
May we continue to be open so that a window of light can surprise us. Help is the balm. May it be so. Amen.
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