May 7th--Centre Mennonite de Paris

Dear Mother,

It felt like we hit the ground running yesterday.  It has been a year since we last enjoyed extended conversations with Yves Garet, a retired theologian who volunteers at the Centre's library 1-2 days each week.  His French is so utterly clear (as is his preaching) and he graciously understands our English if we speak equally clearly.  Over a very leisurely breakfast and coffee Thursday morning, he explained some aspects of French religious life that were not known to us.

I had not realized that 1905 marked an important turning point for the church in France.  After the incredible throes of the French Revolution in the late 1780s-early 90s, monasteries were depopulated and their lands expropriated, the amazing powers of the Catholic church were stripped away, and there was a serious attempt to separate church from state.  But the revival of the monarchy returned some of the former holdings and limited powers to certain church organizations.  Various Républiques had varying notions of the roles the church might be allowed to play in society.  After some confusion, questions were settled by law in 1905.  France has innumerable associations, official organizations for all sorts of activities, including sports, cultural endeavours and the like.   In 1905, the Catholic Churches essentially became parallel to those secular associations, being required to have a president, vice-president, etc.  This was a particularly difficult pill to swallow, but the centuries of wrongs perpetuated by the church in France had finally came home to roost and people were no longer terrified of hell.  As I understand it, the various levels of government/state essentially own the ecclesiastical monuments, such as Notre Dame, looking after their physical upkeep, and the church associations are permitted to use them for worship.  Protestants, by contrast, essentially have no great monumental buildings of historic importance, and I believe they look after their own more modest churches, which are often called temples.  Of course, Protestants are but a minority within a very secular French society in which Christianity itself is but a very small minority.

In the afternoon, I took a few pictures of Yves while he was entering data into the electronic library catalogue.

This is Janice, sufficiently awake to start looking at sections of the collection which may need some rethinking and recataloguing. 

Our shared kitchen is more than adequate, inspite of it being quite small (my wide-angle lens makes it appear larger than it is).  We always bring our little portable FM-shortwave radio for the kitchen.  We can get some good classical FM stations and, if we want our English fix, the BBC.

I always enjoy the stairways in Parisian homes of this age, with their winding wooden steps, elegant in their simplicity.  Poor Neal and Janie must climb hundreds of steps daily.  They have no need for the sort of artificial Stairclimbers one uses in gyms.