The Salt Sea and the Spiritual

We rose this morning to a blue sky scudding with sculpted clouds over a restless sea, tide rising just beyond the walled ramparts behind our hotel, the France and Chateaubriand. Manuel took a coastal road that wound through villages and fields, keeping the vision of the Mount ahead, first tiny in the distance, then rising mile after mile to a towering height above us.








This wonder of architecture and legend held more for us today than can be recounted, from the divine to the elven. The trek took a few years off the life of us elders, who were pushing astronomical with pulse rate and sucking air, clinging to walls, and generally whining about never taking another step, which we proceeded to take.




The Mount began as a small chapel built by the Bishop of Avranches, Aubert, on Mont Tombe, a rocky outcropping off the salt meadows of the Normandy-Brittany coast where the river divides those ancient provinces. There is a rapid tide, second highest in the world, that makes this a dangerous place, known for its deadly quicksand. Subsequent building followed over the centuries, and with the increasing number of pilgrims came a village to support their visit.



The main walkway up the Mount climbs steeply up an incline then up stairs uncounted. The breathtaking views and marvel of stone structure tower above. At the top, the reward is powerful. Here the cloister marries the flowing stone arches and sculptures with the blooming garden's fragrance and the wind whistling in off the sea. We made our way through the hall of esquestrian knights and the various monastic vaulted chapels.



We were literally dwarfed by this monumental structure. Here some of the students stand inside the hearth, whose chimney rises to the heavens up a long shaft. We stood at the crenelated ramparts and speculated on the distance to the sea sand below, admiring the herds of salt meadow sheep that grazed there at low tide, sheep known for their special flavor due to the salt of the grass fed by tide waters.




















It was in the refractory that these schemers put their heads together to choose a song that would test the legendary acoustics of this dining hall in which silent brothers listened to a Scripture reader who had no need to raise his voice. They agreed finally on Amazing Grace. Their true voices gained strength as they heard how lovely was the sound filled the room. When they finished, there was a burst of applause from appreciative listeners. A woman timidly approached the quartet and bowed solemnly as she thanked them.

Stunned, the children nodded and smiled. Imagine their surprise when she came back a moment later to ask them to sing the same song again! They did, with beautiful rich harmony, and she thanked them again, then asked what state they were from. I told her Indiana and politely asked where in Japan she lived. When she answered Hiroshima, I could not keep my face from showing my shock. Her eyes and mine exchanged an understanding that needed no words and I simply embraced her as the French do, air kisses to each cheek. She nodded and looked at each child before turning to go. I stopped the students halfway across the room and asked them to come back to take this photo. She had one taken with her camera, too, and touched each of us as we left. Stunned is not enough to express the utter bewildered joy and grief we felt. What are the chances that the tourist who requested Amazing Grace would be from Hiroshima? That we would have chosen that song? The children continued to sing their way down through the Mount, giving me and those nearby a rendition of a choir song about waking from a dream in simply divine harmony in the tiny Magdalene Chapel, a moment I will not soon forget. We had the Mass at Notre Dame, sung in French, the good sisters singing at Montmartre in the Sacré-Coeur, the Koreans chanting the rosary in St. Pierre's chapel on the way up the Mount, and our own angel choir in the cathedral known as La Merveille. May we always be greeted and greet with such a song!


On our way down the Mount, we comparison shopped each boutique selling medieval arms, settling on two daggers of lovely engraved blades in leather sheaths. We oohed and aahhed at the Legolas double blades and the Aragorn and Arwen swords. I felt quite satisfied to have escaped with only short daggers as there was a real move to arm ourselves to the teeth. Lucky for these young knights, I have an inexplicable soft spot for such trinkets, probably a genetic remnant of my elvishness.






We stopped for lunch at Fougères, a small Breton town whose market was just closing up Saturday noon. We arrived in time to get hot galettes, frites, and a crêpe for a picnic on the steps of the war memorial. On closer examination we discovered that the usual town marker had a back side that was unusual: a child writing, "Here my elders who fought for me," a poignant reminder of the echoes of history in our own time.





















On the facing wall of the square we read this marker, honoring the birthplace of the Marquis Armand Tuffin, companion of Lafayette and friend of George Washington, reminding us of the bond forged even before America had won its freedom between our citizens and the French.













We met after lunch at a park beside the bus, where the children played and adults sat to chat, enjoying the sun, the garden, the stone buildings and sweet moment of repose. The girls looked at what we saw as lawn and saw gym. I caught Hannah here in the utter abandon of the light of heart, a pretty fair symbol of our attitude today!





Our bus driver, Manuel enjoyed this break from the road, negotiating unspeakably narrow lanes never intended for more than two horses in our lumbering coach. He is recovering from his dismay at the ignoble 4-1 loss by the French national team last night against the Dutch.

Tonight he wedged the coach into the tiny Place de General de Gaulle in Chinon to deposit us at the Hotel de France, with an A+ from the driving teacher.






With the several hours until dinner, we climbed up from our hotel in the city center toward the Chateau de Chinon, site of Joan of Arc's first meeting with Charles VII, then the uncrowned Dauphin of a divided France. This place where she convinced the skeptical court and from which she led the French army to victory at Orleans is steeped in a living history. In the tower we saw these artifacts of her time, a chain mail coat and a short dagger, found in archeological digs here. We marveled at the stone, again, and climbed the tower that still houses the bell, cast in 1399, that rings the half hours. To hear the pealing song of this instrument and know that she too had her day measured by its tones made us a part of her story. It was a fleeting visit but well worth the half hour as our introduction to Loire Valley castles, which will take full flight tomorrow.