Bournagain

On Tuesday 7 February France beat a historical record: electricity consumption reached an all time high thanks to the toe-numbing temperatures we’ve been experiencing lately.

Although outside it remains sub-zero, the temperature in the National Assembly (parliament) this morning reached new heights.  It all started when Claude Guéant, the Minister of the Interior, declared in a discourse about the French Republic that:

Not every civilisation has the same worth.

It was one of those sound bytes that most of us probably wouldn’t have even noticed in context, but the phrase was bandied about the Internet and started receiving some very indignant reactions.

Guéant continued to stand by his statement, adding that those civilisations that defend liberty, equality and brotherhood seem superior to those that accept tyranny, the oppression of women, and social or ethnic hatred.

Hackles did not stop rising.  Many on the left of the political spectrum seemed outraged by the idea that there is a hierarchy of civilisations, that they are not all created equal.  Many are accusing Guéant of trying to make political mileage out of his statements in an election year, trying to bring extreme right supporters into the Sarkozy fold.  He has been accused of turning the clock back 3 centuries, of being obscurantist and dangerous, of fomenting ethnic conflict, of being xenophobic and racist.

It is not the first time that he has been under fire, having already declared publicly that the increase in practising Muslims in the country poses a “problem”, and that two thirds of school dropouts are children of immigrants.

But the mercury just about burst the thermometer in the National Assembly this morning when the socialist representative for Martinique accused Guéant of bringing back the same ideologies that produced concentration camps.  He basically called they guy a Nazi.  Following his outburst a large number of representatives, including the Prime Minister, left in protest.  The speaker of the house was unable to restore calm, and had to close the session.  There have been no apologies over the “Nazi” statement.  The socialists seem to be standing by their man, who has self-righteously stated in the most unequivocal terms that Mr Guéant will never again be welcome in Martinique, and demanded that he “apologise to all of the peoples he has insulted”.

Mr Sarkozy on the other hand has said the whole debate is ridiculous, and that it was simply good sense to suggest that a society that accords the same rights to all it’s citizens is superior to one that doesn’t.  Not everyone on the Right has been so supportive, however.  One former Prime Minister stated that Guéant “makes a better minister than ethnologist”.

This debate is a startling example of how Europe is losing the culture wars.  The great European identity crisis has reached the point that we have lost confidence in the most basic, foundational values of our culture.  People are willing to relativise them to such an extent that it is now viewed as morally wrong to suggest, for example, that liberty is superior to slavery, equality (in the sense of equal rights for the citizens of a nation) is superior to inequality, and that brotherhood is superior to every man for himself. While it is undoubtedly an oversimplification to suggest that one entire civilisation can be superior to another, the hysterical overreaction to the comments of Mr. Guéant indicate that we are so brittle and hyper-sensitive that we cannot countenance the very idea that there are ways of being and doing in society that are, quite simply, better than other ways of being and doing.  Is this post-colonial guilt gone haywire?  Or is it simply another example of the fact that cultural relativism has so dulled our intelligence that real debate is no longer possible.  Guéant’s comments were undoubtedly “inadequate” to quote Alain Juppé (another of the surprising number of “former Prime Ministers” we have in this country), but they certainly didn’t deserve the reductio ad hitlerum treatment they received in the House this morning.  A culture is in serious trouble if somebody can’t express a controversial point of view without being branded as a Nazi.

After 10 years of living in France we had never seen the Mediterranean, so as a belated wedding anniversary present to ourselves we jumped on a cheap flight and zipped down to Marseille for the weekend. We had heard that Marseille was just a big city like any other. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and you just need to know where to look. It was a visual feast – hard to describe, so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, although the colour of the water in the photos goes nowhere near the captivating blue of the Med in real life. In order, the Calanque de Sormiou, Cassis, Vallon des Auffes, the Le Panier quarter, the Old Port…

It’s not that often that I get really frustrated, but this week dealing with the public service just about sent me into orbit. I needed to register a car – should have been a simple enough procedure. My expectations have been honed after 10 years of playing “the France game”. I know the rules, and not a few little techniques to help you get ahead a few squares. I know that there are a number of absolutes that cannot be avoided: such as the fact that the number of supporting documents your application is missing is inversely proportional to the amount of time you spend studying the list. There is ALWAYS at least one missing. The other absolute is that deciding when to turn up to hand in your application is rather like Russian roulette – you seem to have about one chance in five that the service will be closed without any forewarning on the day you take time off work, pay for a carpark (miles away) and show up. There is an even higher likelihood that the day before the mysterious closure it will be totally impossible to connect with a person on the telephone who is able to tell you the opening hours for the week when you sensibly phone ahead to make sure you don’t get caught out. I know how it works – and I know that there is absolutely no point getting frustrated, it’s just the way it is.

But my stoicism seemed to have left me when I most needed it this week. I had prepared everything carefully, went into town by car because I had another appointment afterward (always a bad idea), found an expensive carpark, and walked to the Prefecture. The usual building was still closed for renovations (which seem to have been going on so long I foolishly thought they must have finished by now…). So I retraced my steps and wandered around looking for the temporary shelter of our local outpost of the Republic. I went in, obediently took a ticket, looked up at the screen and discovered that my number was not the radar – not even on the far distant horizon. So I hunkered down thinking I would get a bit of work done on my smart phone. Smart phones are very useful insofar as their owners are smart enough to have charged them up before leaving home, which sadly was not the case that day.

So I sat, surveying the crowded room and the curious dance of people craning their necks, eyes fixed on the numbers flashing on the screen, until all of a sudden someone bolts up and hurries through a dark passageway into the unknown. Gradually the numbers began resembling my own, until my own bingo moment came a full one and a half hours later. I sat down at my booth, handed over my dossier which had been checked and rechecked for the required papers. Exactly 37 seconds later my little pile was handed back to me, incomplete. I had forgotten to enclose a photocopy of my wife’s ID card. My head nearly hit the desk … Il y a TOUJOURS quelque chose qui manque! Without the slightest sympathy I was informed that it was impossible for me to leave the application and just drop off the wretched photocopy later on. I would have to come back and go through the whole rigmarole again.

As I stomped back to my car my mind was full of the lamentations of the righteously indignant. I was internally shaking my fist at the universe – it just seemed so inhumane, that we are imprisoned in the web of a faceless, robotic, all-imposing administration and can’t get out. It was as if my whole life was being reduced to a pile of paper destined for the shredder. It was just so wrong, yada yada yada.

I was still steaming as I was driving through our neighbourhood later in the afternoon, when I saw a sight that put everything in perspective. As I turned the corner a woman raised her head and looked straight at me. As I drove past in my nice new car (the reason for the afore-mentioned visit to the Prefecture) I just had the time to notice that she was a Rom, with a huge blue plastic jerry-can at her feet, struggling to fill it at a fire hydrant. She would then have to lug her precious water several hundred metres back to the camp where she lives in a caravan, probably with 4 or 5 children, in the former carpark of an abandoned warehouse. This place is reputed as an eyesore, rubbish and graffitti everywhere – a piece of land that has been tied up in some legal dispute for at least 10 years, and left to go to ruin.

I know that living this way is part of their culture and identity, and that pity is an emotion that can be patronising. These people live off the grid, and it is sometimes tempting to think how nice it would be to avoid the endless paperwork required to live legally in this country.

But I couldn’t help comparing my life with the life of this woman, thinking of her daily existence (subsistence?) and I heard a still small voice speak to my heart: Have you any right to be angry?

Today was a great reminder of how much you miss when you don’t take the time to appreciate the beauty of your surroundings.

On the one hand, France has an absolutely fantastic road and rail network. The high speed trains get you to your destination quicker than flying if you count the time messing around in airports; the autoroute system covers the whole country and although the tolls are expensive the roads are fantastic – everything is designed for speed.

But I normally dread the boredom of the drive to and from Paris – 4 and a half hours of monotony, and in addition to the high cost of petrol you feel like you’re shelling out megabucks for the tolls.

Today, however, was a completely different experience. I picked up some friends from the airport in Paris, and as we weren’t in a hurry, we decided to take the slower national roads instead of the autoroute. It added two hours to the trip, but it was so worth it. Ten years I have lived here but often miss the beauty of this country because I’m in too much of a hurry. For my friends it is their very first visit to France, and their exuberant appreciation of the sights was infectious. I so enjoyed drinking in the beauty of the rolling countryside, snow-dusted fields, long straight stretches of tree-lined roads, picturesque villages, massive country mansions in various stages of repair or disrepair, and the contrast in architecture as you pass from one region to another. Admittedly the gorgeous weather helped, but a rainy day would not have done much to spoil the effect.

Is it really worth saving two hours but missing the sights we saw today? – scenes that make you delight in the abundant variety of God’s creation on one hand, and that remind you of that conviction that there is hope for humanity after all.

Is it a significant event when in a country of 64 million people, 18,000 marchers descend on the capital to stand up for a cause they believe in? Or 25,000 marchers? Or 3,500? These are the three

estimations I have seen for a march that took place in Paris last weekend – the first two are according to the organisers, the 3rd according to the police. Why such a huge variation? Either the organisers have grossly exaggerated, or the police have some specific reason for underestimating. Such a discrepancy couldn’t just be a mistake.
The media certainly didn’t think it was significant. In any case, the two major newspapers that I peruse daily didn’t even mention it. If the march had been protesting over redundancies in the public sector, changes in retirement conditions, or the famous pouvoir d’achat (buying power), it would have been all over the news. Instead it was over what the marchers consider to be a human tragedy that surpasses the one that was to explode into the world’s media two days later – that of Haiti.

The march concerned what a friend of mine who blogged the event calls “the calamity of abortion”. Marchers came from all over France, accompanied by delegations from several other European countries, to participate in an event called En marche pour la vie (marching for life). The object was not only to honour the 7 million lives that have been snuffed out in France since 1975, but also the millions of women who have been physically, psychologically and spiritually damaged through the process, and the many marriages and relationships that have been dislocated as a result.

This was not the first such march but the sixth, and numbers have been steadily growing. This year there were interesting developments. Firstly there is a growing number of medical personnel demanding that a conscience clause be in included in the relevant legislation allowing doctors to refuse to perform abortions. And secondly was the presence of a number of marchers representing left-wing political organisations – revealing that opposition to the IVG (intérruption volontaire de grossesse – the very euphemistic technical term for abortion – “voluntary interruption of pregnancy”), is not simply the domain of the political right, nor is just it an obscure notion of the religious fringe.

If you read French you can head over to my friend’s article. Otherwise here’s a brief snippet from his conclusion:

There is no question of us remaining silent. The witness of women who have been through it prohibits us. The silent cries of embryos killed in their mothers’ wombs prohibits us. Our conscience reproaches us…We all know about it! Before becoming who we are, we also were embryos! Why should today’s embryos have less right to life than those of yesterday? Let us help women in distress! Let’s invest without counting the cost to support them! But let us refuse the diabolical short-term easy solution… which in the long-term creates nothing but difficulties.

Credit to Onlyphotos.org for the photo.

I have got so much out of reading other people’s blogs over the years (see my list of bloggy heroes in the sidebar), but my own has suffered from a bout of indentity crisis to the point where it went into hibernation.

It was partly due to the challenge of living as a person of faith in a culture where everybody assumes that faith is to be completely restricted to the private sphere of life. This creates somewhat of a dilemma if your life’s goal is to follow Jesus who said not to hide your light under a bowl, but to put it on a stand so everyone in the house can see it – how can you reconcile keeping faith private with letting the world know what makes you tick?

For my work I spend a lot of time on the Internet, and it has become increasingly obvious to me that the only way to completely protect your privacy on the Internet is not to use it at all. Anything you put up there is available for the whole world to see. This was brought home to me when I was kicked out of a local community centre where I was running an activity. The director had been alerted to the fact that a dangerous cult leader had infiltrated their centre and was trying to brainwash their members. Some well-intentioned officer of the French religious police (the anti-sect brigade) had followed a rabbit trail from a press article about me, to my blog (via Google), to the mission organisation I am part of, and discovered that I was a threat to the well-being of all the patrons of the community centre. The humour of the fact that it was the yoga instructor that showed me the door was definitely not lost on me. Yoga, sophrology, tarot reading, doing spooky things with magnets were all kosher, but faith in Jesus of Nazareth was definitely not – not that I had even mentioned anything about my faith by that point.

This experience was partly what lead to my bloggy identity crisis – I wasn’t sure how much I should be putting out there for general consumption, and it was easier just to give up writing altogether. The kind of behaviour I witnessed at this community centre might seem extreme – and I hasten to add that many of my non-believing friends also found it very peculiar. However, it is a completely logical application of the assumption that faith should be private – which incidentally was never the intention of the separation of church and state. La laïcité – that untranslatable concept which is a foundational value of the French Republic – should be about protecting French citizens who adhere to a minority faith from being disadvantaged, protecting us from having religious beliefs imposed upon us, and allowing free exchange and debate on the subject of religion. Instead it has become an innoculation against any faith other than the majority faith of the culture, which is difficult to name, but can be expressed in a series of -isms (individualism, materialism, existentialism, evolutionism, republicanism à la française, laïcisme etc.)

But why should that stop me from blogging about things that are important to me? If somebody reads something on my blog that s/he finds offensive, the little red circle (for Mac users) or the little red ‘x’ (for the unconverted) is only one click away. I now see blogging as one way of being a whole person – not talking psycho-babble here – I mean that there is a huge temptation to modify your words and actions to suit the circles you are moving in. I have a tendency to be much more open about my experiences in God with those who share the same faith as me, than with those who don’t. This is normal, but that doesn’t necessarily mean its good. I use religious jargon when speaking with other Christians, which I would not use when talking with work colleagues, for example. This is part of “hiding my light under a bowl” because the language we use can exclude people. Being whole is about being the same person whoever you are with, which is why blogging is such a good discipline, because it makes you think about how you communicate. Everything I put up here I have to be willing for people from all the different spheres of my life to read (well, theoretically at least – the odds of people finding my blog amongst the 36 squillion blogs out there are almost as great as the odds that the universe evolved from nothing).

All that to say to anyone who stumbles onto my blog that I’m back (Hi Mum), with a spruced-up blog theme, and occasional postings where I will think out loud about living in France, faith, family and mission, not necessarily in that order, with lots of unfinished thoughts, digressions, and useful links to people I admire.

I’m writing this from Montpellier where I’m waiting for a bus to take me out to a Christian community in the Cévennes hills – a historic area where many huguenots (French Protestants) took refuge during the wars of religion. Some weeks ago I received information about this gathering from Connect Europe:

As many of you know the spiritual situation in France is still more problematic and difficult as may be in other countries. Right now there is a little team of friends coming together who have the dream, aspiration and vision that God wants to change something, that in France a new kind of community based church will emerge, that will influence the French culture and will have something to give to Europe and what God is doing there…

This immediately caught my eye as I’ve been following the activities of this group for a while through various blogs (Marc’s Messages, Andi’s Perspective etc…), and it’s the first time they’ve had a gathering in France. Ordinarily it was going to be impossible for me to make it because of other commitments. And the SUDDENLY, everything opened up, I found cheap plane tickets just yesterday, and here I am! Not sure what to expect, but really looking forward to connecting with people from different parts of France and Europe who are seeking to “connect, pray together, build bridges” and work towards new (old) ways of being church and community in Europe.

Came across this excellent new acronym the other day from a blog post that turned up in my feed reader: WBKWWAD, which stands for “we barely know what we are doing”. It expresses so beautifully how we are feeling at the moment about doing mission in Europe. It was in the context of an interesting account of churches starting up in Starbucks shops – church life seems to be springing up in the most unlikely places these days. Apparently it was an American sociologist, Ray Oldenburg, who first coined the term “third place”, to refer to a place where community life happens outside of our “first place”, which is the home, and our “second place”, which is our place of work. He stresses the importance of informal public gathering spaces in the health of a community – something that is sadly lacking in the suburban deserts of large American cities. I haven’t read his books – although we do share one thing in common, both having studied in Minnesota (where the cold does wonders with the brain cells, apparently…) You don’t have to think too hard before you realise that there is more than a little wisdom in this concept, and between the lines some probing questions about the way we usually do church. The churches we have been involved with for 20+ years have been gathering spaces, yes, but neither informal or public.

Although we like quoting that “the church is the only institution that exists for outsiders” (who said that?), the reality is that our church involvement can make it unlikely that we will have regular, natural contact with those outside, because we’re too busy with what’s going on inside. This “third space” concept really intrigues me. We have been working to create a “third space” for a few months now (use the “Email us” tab above for details), and I’m sure there are other existing “third spaces” in our community that we haven’t even discovered yet, where we should be hanging out more. We don’t have Starbucks in France, but one lovely thing is that the cities are not (yet) too suburbanised, and even large urban conglomerations are more like a patchwork of little villages joined together. This is a feature of urban life here that I’m not sure we as the church have really seen the potential of.

If you have read this blog before you will have already come across my musings about the uniqueness of the French experience of the separation of church and state. The usual translation of the French word for this, la laïcité, is “secularism”, but this really doesn’t do it justice. After 8 years I thought I was just beginning to get my head around it when I read of Mr. Sarkozy’s recent visit to the Vatican. To my astonishment I learnt that ever since Henri IV back in the 17th century, every French head of state has received the honorary title of Canon of the Basilica of Saint-Jean-de-Latran, one of the churches of Rome under the jurisdiction of the Holy See. In France, the fact that Elizabeth II is still the head of the Church of England, is regularly deplored. So in our post-revolutionary secular republic, what can possibly be the reason for retaining this three hundred-year-old custom? Does the Vatican still consider France “the elder daughter of the Church”?

Mr Sarkozy is quite open about his adherence to Catholicism, and unlike the authors of the failed European constitution, he considers Christianity a determining factor in French national identity. Following the ceremony at the Basilica, the president extolled the virtue of a “positive secularism” that ensures freedom of thought on the one hand, but which upholds the Christian roots of the French nation. The nature of these “Christian roots” is the subject of another discussion (how “Christian” were they really?), but it is worth noting that this is a departure from the relative silence of French presidents with regard to matters of faith. The dyed-in-the-wool secular republicans will be very offended by Sarkozy’s statements; some Christians optimists will see this as heralding a return of Christianity to the public sphere. I don’t see it as anything to get excited about, although it is somewhat refreshing to see a public figure who isn’t so highly strung about the church and state thing. For further details see an article at Worldwide Religious News. Or for some of the shocked reactions of the Left, see this article in the Figaro (in French – have you tried Google Language Tools?)

When you’re a New Zealander living in France, people regularly talk to you about rugby. I received calls before the match “wishing me luck”, a number of people slapped me on the back jokingly “offering their condolences” in advance. This is ironic because overall the feeling here prior to last night’s world cup game was that the French were bound to lose.

This is a case of déja vu for me because exactly the same thing happened in 1999 prior to that historic defeat of the All Blacks by the French that was so totally unexpected. This was the historic defeat that would supposedly “never be repeated”.

I think I’m starting to understand something which may be indicative of a difference between French and New Zealand mentality (prepare yourself for a sweeping generalisation on that notoriously inexact science of cultural psychology…) : the French seem to do best, and are at their most passionate, when there is no real hope other than being defeated honourably. Being told that they will probably fail, which is, by the way, a standard pedagogical technique used by large numbers of French schoolteachers, seems to have the opposite effect of goading them on to success.

On the other hand, New Zealanders seem to do really badly when they have not fully grasped the strength of their opposition. I’ve noticed many commentators have already suggested that the run of matches leading up to the quarter-final where the All Blacks just walked all over the other team was psychologically very poor preparation for facing the French. Nobody in France expected the All Blacks to lose – along with 4 million New Zealanders!

I’m wondering if this is applicable to areas other than sport…

One thing for sure, there will be an interminable post mortem about this in New Zealand; the nation will be in sackcloth and ashes for weeks (it’s already started here at the country’s largest newspaper). Meanwhile, dans la patrie des Bleus, the celebration goes on…

Bravo les bleus! C’était un super match! All Blacks – great job. You didn’t lose by much. Take a break, go fishing – it’s only a little oval ball, after all!