Blog #33, July 26th

Pilgrimage to Lourdes, the Foothills of the Pyrenees

Bernadette and the healing spring waters

 After my departure from Chartres, a cathedral dedicated to the Virgin Mary, I drove south through the Loire Valley to an area of volcanic mountains, and dramatic uplands in what is called the Central Massif.  I had reserved a small hotel in the town of Mauriac that was both very reasonably priced and had excellent reviews, 9.3!  I was searching for hotels in the Dordognes, in the limestone cave interlaced, Dordognes River Valley, hoping to visit the Lascaux cave paintings on my way south to Lourdes.  I ended up in a small mountain town near the headwaters of the Dordogne River, a long, 3 hour drive from the area of the caves.  

Psyche must have known I needed a rest after many intense days of traveling and sightseeing in Turkey, then flight to Paris, drive to Chartres, and total immersion there as well as a noisy hotel at night, resulting in loss of sleep.  So, I ended up with several low key days in a picturesque old French town in the mountain forests, a nice swimming lake nearby.  I struggled with some inner argument with my compulsive self as to whether or not  to drive 3 hour winding mountain roads and back in one day, in order to visit the tourist site rich area of Lascaux.  

The site that can be visited now is called Lascaux II, a reproduction of the original 35,000 year old wall paintings Lascaux Cave, which has been closed due to damage by tourists exhaled CO2 creating an acidic environment dissolving the fragile limestone surface beneath the pigments in the paintings. I would like to see it and also visit some of the wineries and the medieval city of Sarlat and castle at Bergerac, etc.  One of the guiding principles of pilgrimage that I seek to follow, is “pass by what you do not love”.  I have asked myself that question repeatedly throughout this journey, sometimes surprised at what I was willing to let go of.  Much of my previous traveling life has been an effort to see everything possible and “not miss anything”, which can be exhausting and like force feeding a goose to produce foix gras, over fed, with decreasing ability to fully enjoy and engage what I am hurrying to cram in:-)  All of this is to say that I decided not to fill my time with more driving and site seeing, knowing that I would soon have another long drive to reach my destination, Lourdes, far in the south of France.  I enjoyed my mellow stay in the town of Mauriac, and felt refreshed when I hit the road to Lourdes.

After 7-8 hours of driving, I arrived in Lourdes, a small town of 27,000 inhabitants, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, not far from the border with Spain.  Since 1846, Lourdes has become a major world pilgrimage site for sick, disabled, and broken people, in hope of miraculous healing.  The story of 14 year old Bernadette, an illiterate, 4′ 8″ tall, impoverished girl, with very poor health, who experienced apparitions of a radiant woman of light in a grotto beneath a large rock outside the town on 18 separate occasions, over several months, is filled with hope and the affirmation of faith.  As her experience of these visions and instructions from the radiant woman in white, with blue sash and yellow rose on her feet, progressed, hundreds, and then thousands of people came to see what was happening.  Many, especially the educated, the town prosecutor, mayor, and others attempted to prove she was mad or a liar, or being manipulated by someone.  Gradually, evidence of her credibility increased.  At the instructions of the radiant  woman who on the 14th appearance identified herself as the “immaculate conception”, Bernadette dug into the earth with her hands, and a gush of water welled forth in a spring.  Many unexplainable healings and cures were documented from drinking or bathing in the water.  Bernadette seemed also to have a gift for comforting and healing the sick and broken people who came to her.  

Despite intense criticism, harassment, and persecution of Bernadette by authorities, the Catholic church reluctantly investigated her and the reports of miracles, and the reports were consistently confirmed, and by the early 1900s, she was beatified, and declared Saint Bernadette.  She never learned to read, joined a convent, and died at age 32 of tuberculosis complicating her severe asthma.  As a nun, she was a gifted hospice worker, tried to avoid public exposure, and rejected demands, and pressure to heal people despite offers of money and other inducements.

Today, this town of 27,000 people is visited by 6-8 million pilgrims each year.  70,000 crippled, wheelchair and stretcher bound seekers are accommodated by the massive infrastructure of the professional, clerical, and volunteer community, from all over the world.  My first night in town, I walked down the steep hill from my hotel to the the 60 hectares of land that contains the grotto, huge green spaces, paved parade grounds, and extensive basilicas, chapels, and multiple buildings that house and serve the hospitality process.  It is like a small city within the town.  Hoards of youth in yellow or blue shirts provide various helping services as do kids and adults with blue neckerchiefs.  Large numbers of nurses, doctors, and medical/nursing aids, all in white garb are everywhere, pushing wheelchairs, rolling stretchers, and caring for the needs of these profoundly disabled people.  Large numbers of clergy wander the area, making private pilgrimage to refresh their faith or accompany home town church groups.  And then there are the large number of people (like me?) who have come for their own purposes.  

A continuous file of carefully regulated pilgrims walks through the grotto, touching the rock, and praying, a few stopping to snap a picture, but moved along by the crowd handlers, if they hold up the line.  Prior to entering the grotto line, there is an area of small faucets, tapping the sacred spring water, for people to drink, wash briefly in, and fill containers to bring back to loved ones.  I filled several small containers of this holy spring water, drank, and splashed my face and neck, praying for healing of my neck and spine.  If not healing my body, then I pray for healing and strengthening of my soul and spirit, so that I can better harmonize with the divine flow in each moment.  After the grotto, there are kiosks with large stacks of candles of various sizes, from slim, 1/2 inch   diameter, by 8″ high white wax candles to stout fence-post candles, 4″ in diameter, 5′ tall, that burn for days.  There are several hundred feet cordoned off for dozens of covered metal kiosk candle stands, each for different size candles, and different languages of psalms and prayers.  Men and women of every size, shape, color, and race stand before their lit candles and pray in every language, for loved ones, deceased or living.

There are lovely pathways, lining the river Pave’, on both sides,  with its willow trees and religious art and sculpture.  Another walking path ascends a steep hill and circles through the stations of the cross, over 1 1/2 km.  Along another stretch of the river, occasional stone stations with spring water faucets, carry a scripture quotation about the spirituality of water.  The “living water”, river of life in Revelations, Jesus baptized by John in the Jordan River, Jesus meeting the woman at the well, Moses striking the rock as God instructed him, from which sprang water to save the Jews wandering in the desert after their exodus from Egypt, David discovering the spring at Ein Gedi, in a cave above the Dead Sea.  Each display had a brief, three or four lines of profound commentary upon the spirituality of the element of water.  I especially enjoyed and was moved by these reflections.  You may remember my earlier blogs on each of the elements, including water.

On that first night, at 9:00 PM, I joined a huge candlelight procession of the virgin Mary, a statue on a palanquin, was paraded in a circuit around the grounds, as prayers to Mary and reflections on the “joyous” or “sorrowful” mysteries of the virgin Mary, were chanted, sung, or orated, in multiple languages.  As this was continuing, and the sun set, thousands of pilgrims slowly processed into the square, following perhaps a thousand wheelchair and stretcher bound seekers, each with one or two attendants, pushing their conveyance and meeting their needs.  I was among the multitude who stood outside the roped off parade route to watch, with my candle in hand, inside its paper protector.  I was astounded as the crowd continued to increase and pack the acres of open space in front of the basilica, over the course of an hour ceremony, each and all with glowing lit candle.  I did not attend, but I understand that there is another such procession at 9:00 in the morning, several days a week, dedicated to procession of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, carried on palanquin. 

International masses are held every other morning.  There is a schedule of multiple other events that occur every day, for various ages and interests.  On one day, I followed the pilgrim trail around the town to Bernadette’s parish church, the home with water mill, on the river where she was born, and the miserable underground cell where she was raised after her family fell on hard times.  There is a museum of miracles that has photographic evidence, drawings, attestations, letters, lists, Vatican stamped documents, memorabilia, etc from Bernadette’s life and progression to sainthood. There is a small theater which shows a tableaux of Bernadette’s life while a narration tells the history and details of her life. I enjoyed this, and then went to see the Hollywood version, a relatively new movie about Bernadette in a small, nearly empty theater.

High on a rocky hill outcropping above the middle of town stands a Medieval castle, in which is displayed a Museum of the Pyrenees, including cultural dress, furniture, tools, cooking equipment, festival outfits, art, and models of the castle and the houses of the region over time.  On the day that I visited the castle, I was able to time it right so that I could visit the vividly decorated basilicas, during the dinner hour when they were not overrun with people.  The modern, curved, soaring wings and central facade are covered with recent mosaics, paintings, sculpture, statues, and religious icons which are extremely ornate. A giant, 20′ diameter, golden crown sits atop the second level basilica, which houses the crypt and more chapels and icons, above that of the Virgin Mary.  

Each day, in order to enter the grotto area, I had to walk through a gauntlet, past rows of religious icon shops, jammed with every imaginable kind of relics, icons, rosaries, statues, Lourdes water bottles, and paraphernalia.  The Lonely Planet guide book, on-line describes Lourdes as a Catholic Disney Land, except for the seriousness and professionalism of the army of hospitality workers and their guests.  It is a remarkable mix of kitsch merchandizing, contemplative eclecticism, multiethnic Catholicism, medical, nursing, and clerical work clustered around the the visitation site.

I did not experience any difference in my somatic pain, but I did receive some benefit of inner “participation mystique” that was a spiritual high point, in the midst of the madding crowd.  In fact, I will always remember being a part of this crowd of the broken and the faithful, especially witnessing those who approached the spring water sites, and those who lit candles and prayed, each in their own suffering, hope, and despair.  

It also took me back to my childhood, raised as a Catholic, going to Catholic school with the nuns and priests.  It was an age of awe and innocence, of incense, bells, and Latin chants, priest in colorful robes and stoles, genuflecting and raising the host, holy water and the sign of the cross, first communion, and confession.  The nuns told us that if we just said our three Hail Marys every night before bed, that no matter what our sins, Mary would sneak us in the back door of heaven.  I have never ceased to appreciate this “Plan B”, knowing that I could never be good enough to merit heaven, in my child’s view of my own good and evil.

In Lourdes, I was close to the Pyrenees, and the place where the pilgrimage route to San Juan of Campostela begins, but that journey will have to wait for another time:-)

She Who Reconciles          Rilke

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads

of her life, and weaves them gratefully

into a single cloth

it’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall

and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.

In the softness of evening

it’s you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,

the unspeaking center of her monologues.

With each disclosure you encompass more

and she stretches beyond what limits her,

to hold you.

The Annunciation   John O’Donahue

Cast from afar before the stones were born

And rain had rinsed the darkness for colour.

The words have waited for the hunger in her

To become the silence where they could form.

The day’s last light frames her by the window,

A young woman with distance in her gaze,

She could never imagine the surprise

That is hovering over her life now.

The sentence awakens like a raven,

Fluttering and dark, opening her heart

To nest the voice that first whispered the earth

From death into wind, stone, sky, and ocean.

She offers to mother the shadow’s child;

Her untouched life becoming wild inside.

the Visitation    John O’Donahue

In the morning it takes the mind a while

To find the world again, lost after dream

Has taken the heart to the underworld

To play with the shades of lives not chosen.

She awakens a stranger in her own life,

Her breath loud in the room full of listening.

Taken without touch, her flesh feels the grief

Of belonging to what cannot be seen.

Soon she can no longer bear to be alone.

At dusk she takes the road into the hills.

An anxious moon doubles her among the stone.

A door opens, the older one’s eyes fill.

Two women locked in a story of birth.

Each mirrors the secret the other heard.

I Live My Life in Widening Circles,    Rilke

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

I’ve been circling for thousands of years

and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?