I’ll Cling to the Beauty
Suddenly we have three full days left in Paris and I’m beginning to feel the anxious tug between two places--home and here. I want to go home but also I feel such a deep connection to Paris and I wish I could stay longer, delve further into this complex place and culture... learn French! and actually form relationships with Parisians.
Maybe the grace to return will be extended to me, but until then, I’ll remember Paris and hold her within my heart... she’ll still be teaching me lessons, no doubt, long after I’m gone.
Something I’ve been grappling with while in Paris is the question of how to heal while still “doing life”, refusing to be stagnant in processing and brokenness but to keep on moving and living. This past academic year has been exceptionally difficult, and to be quite honest, I’m burnt out. But the world doesn’t stop for any one of us, even though it seems like it should as we chase it down and try to grasp it as it chugs away like one of the metro trains in Paris.
In this season of life, everything seems to move at breakneck speed and I find myself caught up in it, trying to keep pace, and freaking out in the midst of it all... Yet while in Paris I’ve seen Parisians hustle like they mean it along with rest and engage with others like they’ve got nowhere to be for the next several hours (and they don’t-- they are fully present and planted). This everyday observation makes we question-- what can I learn from Parisians? What “Parisian practices” can I observe and take back with me?
Perhaps my time in Paris isn’t only about seeing all the art and visiting all the museums, but about living a different way of life, one of observation and purpose, directness and intention, sensitivity and depth. Achievement has been my aim in life thus far if I’m being totally honest... but achievement of what? I cannot answer. The rat race never ends, and I am never satisfied. How does one give themselves permission to step away from the rat race? To negate the very human desire for more, more?
If anything, Paris has taught me to appreciate, rest, and be content with less. What do I really need? God. Love. A place to rest my head. Food to satisfy. Simple clothes. Not much.
And by miracles and sacrifices of others each day, these needs are mercifully met, day after day. All is gift, and my heart is thankful. Sitting by the beautiful Seine this afternoon, taking in the sights around me-- those quaint apartments, the mahogany doors, the uneven cobblestoned streets, that blue blue sky!-- this thankfulness grew and grew... this is what it means to appreciate. I am a student of appreciation. It is an art form in and of itself.
I can’t help but question--who am I, to be given this beauty of Paris?
I don’t deserve it, this beauty. Yet to refuse would be to neglect all Paris has to offer. So I accept and swear not to take it for granted, because in three short days I’ll be on a plane home.
The tender realization came to me early this morning: with my needs taken care of, with Paris’s beauty before me each day in a thousand ways-- I can only be content and joyful despite the departure soon to come. Perhaps this truth can extend to the other places attached to my being, the places even more so a part of me-- my home in Indiana, Holland, MI...
I’ll cling to beauty, hold it close and accept it as pure gift. I’ll treasure it and watch over it, guard the beauty when destruction comes, when the rat race threatens to pull me back in... As long as there is beauty, around and within, death and destruction cannot win.
Thankfulness precedes the miracle, as Ann Voskamp says, and the miracle involves both a certain brokenness and a restoration, but constant through it all? Beauty. Beauty that we may choose to see or ignore, in the midst of the swirling chaos that is all too often everyday life.
Beauty, thanksgiving, the brokenness, the miracle, beauty.
With three days left in Paris, I’ll cling to the beauty, I’ll open myself to the beauty. May it present itself in unique ways. May it enthrall and delight, encourage and challenge. Beauty in brokenness, beauty in place, beauty in the souls that wander around me, strangers and close friends.
And most of all, beauty in the One who gives, in the One who is Beauty itself, who bestows beauty and whispers “beautiful” in my ear-- God, my Father. He is the origin of beautiful, and the ultimate giver of beauty. Without my Father, I cannot see, and all the beauty is lost on me...
Three days left, and:
“You will be adorned with beauty and grace, and wisdom’s glory will wrap itself around you, making you victorious in the race.” (Prof. 4:9)
(Take that, you stupid rat race!)
