A German priest, two African nuns, and a Midwestern historian of the occult walk into a bar...
RARRGGHHHHHH. RARRRRGGHHHHH. I *knew* it!
Then I had to fight my way - and I am not kidding, I felt like I was on my own security team - up the stairs to the basilica, because they were crawling with a serious infestation of hippies. Then into the basilica, which is actually kind of creeping me out, because it is a VERY amped up place - it is chock full, night and day, of religious pilgrims who are really feeling the Sacred Heart. These are people who pray not with their head bowed, nor with their hands clasped loose or tight, but who pray with their heads thrown back, hands held up to the sky like scoops, in a bent-armed version of cruciform posture. There is also swaying. I really, seriously do not do well with religious ecstasy. I am a fan of religion in general as long as it's not forced on me or anyone else, and suspect rather strongly that I’d be better off with one and that I should probably get on that one of these days, so it’s not that religion gives me the creeps. I like nuns. Nuns are in general extremely sensible, nice people. Pilgrims, on the other hand, give me the howling fantods when they start swaying with their eyes shut and hands stretched up to heaven. If there’s anything more dangerous and creepifying than people in the middle of a religious fervor, I’m sure I don’t know what it is. Other than possibly a) nuclear missiles, b) rabid hyenas, and/or c) an asteroid hurtling toward earth.
Part of my creepifaction stems, I’m sure, from the fact that the folk who usually end up on the pointy end of the pitchfork when religious extremism gets well underway in a culture are those who are 1) educated, 2) those who know a lot about stuff that goes against the teaching of the dominant religious paradigm, and 3) people who have lots of money but aren’t of the dominant religious paradigm. If the religious right ever get hold in America I’m going to get burned probably twice. I’m saved from the third burning by my negative net worth. Student loans mean I will only be a twice-baked heretic!
Anyway, I watched people in religious trances for awhile and then went in for dinner. The dining room had a long table full of children, another long table full of their teachers, two African nuns, and a German priest. The priest asked if I was on my own and I said yes, and he said “Let’s band together then” and that is how I met Father Mathias, Sister Betty, and Sister Genevieve, who went on to be THE WORST INFLUENCES EVER. I had every intention of having dinner, then going to compline and mass. Where did I end up? PUB CRAWL. In Montmartre! With a priest! And nuns! All I can say for ourselves is that we totally talked mostly about theology and church politics (e.g., about the effects of shifts in church doctrine on diocesan ministry). Please note that my weird correlation of the word “church” with “Catholic church”, which I just noticed myself doing, is probably a pretty good sign that I’m just a really incredibly bad Catholic who is in a total state of denial. I’d much rather be protestant. The science-loving kind. Episcopalian, maybe. Or Quaker. Funny how things turn out. Anyway, at one point I did have the thought “Oh jeez, we’re totally going to get kicked out of the convent NOW.” and later, “I bet we won’t make it back to the basilica before it closes at 10:30.” Ha! Father Mathias and Sisters Betty and Genevieve were so awesome!
I suspect that the evening would have been exponentially less interesting if it hadn’t been for the fact that the elementary schoolteacher who was shepherding the French children was a raging bitch. I mean HELL FROSTED LAYERED BITCH CAKE GATEAU. She hissed at them, shushed them so harshly that it made all of US jump, and just generally turned the room toxic. Father Mathias got so aggravated with her that he started poking gentle fun of her savage mannerisms behind her back TO THE CHILDREN, which paradoxically made them quieter while laughing even *harder*. At one point after she had just screamed at them AGAIN, the priest and the nuns and I all balanced spoons on our noses and crossed our eyes to make them smile. They loved Father Mathias. At one point the teacher caught him parodying her WHILE she was being horrid, and what could she say? He’s a PRIEST. She was like “Heh heh c’est vous les faites rire.” Oh you’re the one making them laugh. And then she crept back to her place and sat down and STFU, which was awesome. Once she did, every once in awhile Father Matthias would still SHHHHHT! SHHHT! all over the top at Sister Betty or Sister Genevieve, who would then put on a big show of contrition. That horrid teacher had been just awful. And she kept sending children off to eat by themselves, even though they were all being perfectly reasonable for children their age, and not bratty or screamy at all.
Every single one of those kids gave us big bon soirs and au revoirs at the end of the meal, and I think Father Mathias was feeling his victory oats, because he announced that this would be a very nice time to go out and get a beer. The subject of this desired beer - which has been a bete noir for Father Mathias ever since he and Sister Betty and Sister Genevieve arrived last night at 9 and were sent to bed with nothing to eat or drink (the lack of French on their part played more of a part in this than anything else). Father Mathias, believing himself locked in for the night, recounted the full gamut of emotional experience that he had looking out from his window, across the walled courtyard and down into the street below, where a busy brasserie served nonstop, sloshing trays of giant cold, foamy, refreshingly bitter, hoppy, rich, malty, filling beer to hot, thirsty tourists and Parisians. It was an epic, epic monologue - you have to bear in mind that he is German, and really did experience the close/far of that beer as something right next door to Promethean agony. He had even contemplated jumping and running for it, he said, describing exactly how he had planned to get in and out by hopping along window sills and walls like a mountain goat, but then he noticed the German Shepherds. They are not kidding around, the German Shepherds. They are, in fact, trained attack dogs that will totally do for anyone not in a habit.I am totally serious. It has been made clear in word and in observables.
Father Mathias has been trying for a beer ever since, and was clearly keen to have it in the pub that he had to look out at from his window in the night of his torment. Sister Betty and Sister Genevieve rolled their eyes. They give Father Mathias (who, incidentally, is about 40 and cute as a button, not that I noticed or anything) a hard time in general, and he ribs them back, and it’s all very cute and funny. Sister Betty was like “Oh, we are going to get beer?” and he’s like “Why do you say it like this? Do I say “Oh, are we going to get more shiny gold religious medallion?” (Sister Betty evidently has a real weakness for these and has been buying one at every church she goes in, which Father Mathias thinks is really silly.) She rolls her eyes at Sister Genevieve, who belly laughs. And I can tell that we are all going out for a beer. And Father Mathias is all “YES. Also, I think I want a cookie.” And then they start in on some routine involving cookies that was utterly gut-bustingly funny, involving who had eaten which cookie out of the bag of cookies purchased earlier in the day, but it wouldn’t make a bit of sense in the explaining. As the only one who spoke any French, it was up to me to establish our curfew with the nun on duty, who told me that 10:30 was the total latest, because that’s when the doors are locked after last mass. It was 8:00. We all went off to get coats (it sure did get cold here overnight considering it was a blazing inferno on Monday) and I came back in my black jacket, Father Mathias in his, and Sisters Betty and Genevieve were well-wrapped in lengths of brightly colored African cloth that they’d swaddled around their waists and necks, their pristine white veils and demure grey dresses under the bright batiks an exercise in contrast. And off we went. We sat where Father Mathias could see his window. I think he had been REALLY kind of traumatized by that long hungry, thirsty night within sight of a loud, happy pub! We toasted each other. He also toasted the window.
We didn’t drink much at all, other than I had a VERY unladylike 50 cl of beer instead of the 25 cl, and Father Mathias had two which count it - makes one full LITER of beer, and as far as I could tell wasn’t even tipsy at the end. After much discussion and dealing with an Indian barman who was clearly SUPER uncomfortable with the whole nuns and priest in the bar thing, we decided that the sisters would have kir - they did not wish to have beer or liquor, and since there was no cider this was it. They liked the kir! We had a fun time. I introduced the sisters to that great medieval theological past-time: INSOLUBILIA! Oh, they just *howled* laughing. It was like doing magic tricks for an appreciative audience. It was at this point that I noticed that we had an audience, and figured that the schoolteacher was about to have her revenge: no less than four of the windows of the guest house had sprouted five or six tiny heads apiece - our schoolchildren! There were easily 20 of them hanging halfway out of the windows. I thought “Oh boy, now we’re going to get it” (the nuns here are kind of strict, though nice - they are not exactly like the Wijngaard nuns at all). Father Mathias saw the children and waved at them. They all waved back in unison. Yep. We were DEFINITELY what they were looking at. I said “Oh boy, now we’re going to get it.” And they were all like DOSH, drinking is not a sin, no problems here. Still - I think the kids will keep it quiet, or at least unbelievable. And I think the sisters would totally have a problem with it, in the sense of little kids seeing “two nuns and a priest and some chick” drankin’ just outside the convent. And just IMAGINE if they knew that it would be more accurate to say “seeing nuns and a priest and a historian of the occult” getting their drank on together in a bar within spittin’ distance of the monastery. I do tend to emphasize the history of theology part of being a historian of medieval learned magic when I’m in, uh, monasteries. And convents. As a guest. Just out of respect. And so they don’t check my bags for illicit goats.
Speaking of which, on our way out of the monastery some totally random person stops Father Mathias on account of he is in his full priest outfit, and asks him to bless a censer that she just bought in the gift shop. For a friend, she says. A friend who really wants it blessed. Sure, says Father Mathias. But you will let me make it in my own language? Of course, she says. At which point Father Mathias pulls this big shiny thing out of the bag and gives it a real serious talking to about the names of saints, Amen. Then hands it back to her. I totally could not have made any sort of eye contact with him after that because seriously: though it is trite and cheesy, I am right there with everyone else who is female on the subject of cute priests, and listening to one knock out a blessing in German just about did me in. German is just about the most manly language on the planet.
Then we were running really late getting back, and we confused the security guard by being two African nuns, a German priest, and a curly-haired American who is the only one who can speak the French to him that will make the door get opened eventually, and once we were in, we planned to have breakfast together (I am *really* sad that they are all leaving tomorrow afternoon to return to Germany) and I hit my room to start writing it all down. And I’ve left out so much. Like how Father Matthias wears friendship bracelets, including one that an Israeli made for him out of the black leather strap of his prayer box thing that you wear on your arm - which he cut off and braided. Father Matthias also confessed when I asked about the bracelets that before he was a priest he wore rings and had an ear cuff. Father Matthias was totally a punkrock geek, you guys. I can feel it. My internal dowsing rod says: ONE OF US GABBA GABBA HEY. And how Sister Genevieve and Sister Betty have these incredible smiles - it’s like they’re incredibly amused by everything but you can’t quite figure out why. It’s how cats would smile if they had bendier mouths.
Midnight here. I either have to a) take a shower and go to bed or b) go participate in the relay of the adoration of the Sacred Heart because seriously: I have not participated in the religious life of the community thus far and it’s kind of part of the deal. I think I’ll go pray/wish really hard for a little while - I feel like making a serious wish for the sisters at Wijngaard to get more young postulants and nuns. I really do wish they had that. I feel a certain amount of sadness that they are all so old, and I fear for the convent’s continuation in the absence of more vocations.
I put in some time in the relay of the night adoration and seriously: that stuff is not for amateurs. In the darkness of the cathedral, all lit by candles and the enormous mosaic of Jesus looming off the dome at you and the sound of quiet prayerful breathing all around you, things get all mystical around the edges, even for a doubting Thomas like me. I was saved from religious conversion by the fact that Sacre Coeur is absolutely crammed to the gills with things that have been plated in gold and silver colored chrome. CHROME. There is a giant chrome Jesus on one side of the basilica. It’s all just a little too unironically, and wincingly shiny.
Pictures to follow!This post brought to you by a late-night yoink of unsecured wireless from across the street!
Then I had to fight my way - and I am not kidding, I felt like I was on my own security team - up the stairs to the basilica, because they were crawling with a serious infestation of hippies. Then into the basilica, which is actually kind of creeping me out, because it is a VERY amped up place - it is chock full, night and day, of religious pilgrims who are really feeling the Sacred Heart. These are people who pray not with their head bowed, nor with their hands clasped loose or tight, but who pray with their heads thrown back, hands held up to the sky like scoops, in a bent-armed version of cruciform posture. There is also swaying. I really, seriously do not do well with religious ecstasy. I am a fan of religion in general as long as it's not forced on me or anyone else, and suspect rather strongly that I’d be better off with one and that I should probably get on that one of these days, so it’s not that religion gives me the creeps. I like nuns. Nuns are in general extremely sensible, nice people. Pilgrims, on the other hand, give me the howling fantods when they start swaying with their eyes shut and hands stretched up to heaven. If there’s anything more dangerous and creepifying than people in the middle of a religious fervor, I’m sure I don’t know what it is. Other than possibly a) nuclear missiles, b) rabid hyenas, and/or c) an asteroid hurtling toward earth.
Part of my creepifaction stems, I’m sure, from the fact that the folk who usually end up on the pointy end of the pitchfork when religious extremism gets well underway in a culture are those who are 1) educated, 2) those who know a lot about stuff that goes against the teaching of the dominant religious paradigm, and 3) people who have lots of money but aren’t of the dominant religious paradigm. If the religious right ever get hold in America I’m going to get burned probably twice. I’m saved from the third burning by my negative net worth. Student loans mean I will only be a twice-baked heretic!
Anyway, I watched people in religious trances for awhile and then went in for dinner. The dining room had a long table full of children, another long table full of their teachers, two African nuns, and a German priest. The priest asked if I was on my own and I said yes, and he said “Let’s band together then” and that is how I met Father Mathias, Sister Betty, and Sister Genevieve, who went on to be THE WORST INFLUENCES EVER. I had every intention of having dinner, then going to compline and mass. Where did I end up? PUB CRAWL. In Montmartre! With a priest! And nuns! All I can say for ourselves is that we totally talked mostly about theology and church politics (e.g., about the effects of shifts in church doctrine on diocesan ministry). Please note that my weird correlation of the word “church” with “Catholic church”, which I just noticed myself doing, is probably a pretty good sign that I’m just a really incredibly bad Catholic who is in a total state of denial. I’d much rather be protestant. The science-loving kind. Episcopalian, maybe. Or Quaker. Funny how things turn out. Anyway, at one point I did have the thought “Oh jeez, we’re totally going to get kicked out of the convent NOW.” and later, “I bet we won’t make it back to the basilica before it closes at 10:30.” Ha! Father Mathias and Sisters Betty and Genevieve were so awesome!
I suspect that the evening would have been exponentially less interesting if it hadn’t been for the fact that the elementary schoolteacher who was shepherding the French children was a raging bitch. I mean HELL FROSTED LAYERED BITCH CAKE GATEAU. She hissed at them, shushed them so harshly that it made all of US jump, and just generally turned the room toxic. Father Mathias got so aggravated with her that he started poking gentle fun of her savage mannerisms behind her back TO THE CHILDREN, which paradoxically made them quieter while laughing even *harder*. At one point after she had just screamed at them AGAIN, the priest and the nuns and I all balanced spoons on our noses and crossed our eyes to make them smile. They loved Father Mathias. At one point the teacher caught him parodying her WHILE she was being horrid, and what could she say? He’s a PRIEST. She was like “Heh heh c’est vous les faites rire.” Oh you’re the one making them laugh. And then she crept back to her place and sat down and STFU, which was awesome. Once she did, every once in awhile Father Matthias would still SHHHHHT! SHHHT! all over the top at Sister Betty or Sister Genevieve, who would then put on a big show of contrition. That horrid teacher had been just awful. And she kept sending children off to eat by themselves, even though they were all being perfectly reasonable for children their age, and not bratty or screamy at all.
Every single one of those kids gave us big bon soirs and au revoirs at the end of the meal, and I think Father Mathias was feeling his victory oats, because he announced that this would be a very nice time to go out and get a beer. The subject of this desired beer - which has been a bete noir for Father Mathias ever since he and Sister Betty and Sister Genevieve arrived last night at 9 and were sent to bed with nothing to eat or drink (the lack of French on their part played more of a part in this than anything else). Father Mathias, believing himself locked in for the night, recounted the full gamut of emotional experience that he had looking out from his window, across the walled courtyard and down into the street below, where a busy brasserie served nonstop, sloshing trays of giant cold, foamy, refreshingly bitter, hoppy, rich, malty, filling beer to hot, thirsty tourists and Parisians. It was an epic, epic monologue - you have to bear in mind that he is German, and really did experience the close/far of that beer as something right next door to Promethean agony. He had even contemplated jumping and running for it, he said, describing exactly how he had planned to get in and out by hopping along window sills and walls like a mountain goat, but then he noticed the German Shepherds. They are not kidding around, the German Shepherds. They are, in fact, trained attack dogs that will totally do for anyone not in a habit.I am totally serious. It has been made clear in word and in observables.
Father Mathias has been trying for a beer ever since, and was clearly keen to have it in the pub that he had to look out at from his window in the night of his torment. Sister Betty and Sister Genevieve rolled their eyes. They give Father Mathias (who, incidentally, is about 40 and cute as a button, not that I noticed or anything) a hard time in general, and he ribs them back, and it’s all very cute and funny. Sister Betty was like “Oh, we are going to get beer?” and he’s like “Why do you say it like this? Do I say “Oh, are we going to get more shiny gold religious medallion?” (Sister Betty evidently has a real weakness for these and has been buying one at every church she goes in, which Father Mathias thinks is really silly.) She rolls her eyes at Sister Genevieve, who belly laughs. And I can tell that we are all going out for a beer. And Father Mathias is all “YES. Also, I think I want a cookie.” And then they start in on some routine involving cookies that was utterly gut-bustingly funny, involving who had eaten which cookie out of the bag of cookies purchased earlier in the day, but it wouldn’t make a bit of sense in the explaining. As the only one who spoke any French, it was up to me to establish our curfew with the nun on duty, who told me that 10:30 was the total latest, because that’s when the doors are locked after last mass. It was 8:00. We all went off to get coats (it sure did get cold here overnight considering it was a blazing inferno on Monday) and I came back in my black jacket, Father Mathias in his, and Sisters Betty and Genevieve were well-wrapped in lengths of brightly colored African cloth that they’d swaddled around their waists and necks, their pristine white veils and demure grey dresses under the bright batiks an exercise in contrast. And off we went. We sat where Father Mathias could see his window. I think he had been REALLY kind of traumatized by that long hungry, thirsty night within sight of a loud, happy pub! We toasted each other. He also toasted the window.
We didn’t drink much at all, other than I had a VERY unladylike 50 cl of beer instead of the 25 cl, and Father Mathias had two which count it - makes one full LITER of beer, and as far as I could tell wasn’t even tipsy at the end. After much discussion and dealing with an Indian barman who was clearly SUPER uncomfortable with the whole nuns and priest in the bar thing, we decided that the sisters would have kir - they did not wish to have beer or liquor, and since there was no cider this was it. They liked the kir! We had a fun time. I introduced the sisters to that great medieval theological past-time: INSOLUBILIA! Oh, they just *howled* laughing. It was like doing magic tricks for an appreciative audience. It was at this point that I noticed that we had an audience, and figured that the schoolteacher was about to have her revenge: no less than four of the windows of the guest house had sprouted five or six tiny heads apiece - our schoolchildren! There were easily 20 of them hanging halfway out of the windows. I thought “Oh boy, now we’re going to get it” (the nuns here are kind of strict, though nice - they are not exactly like the Wijngaard nuns at all). Father Mathias saw the children and waved at them. They all waved back in unison. Yep. We were DEFINITELY what they were looking at. I said “Oh boy, now we’re going to get it.” And they were all like DOSH, drinking is not a sin, no problems here. Still - I think the kids will keep it quiet, or at least unbelievable. And I think the sisters would totally have a problem with it, in the sense of little kids seeing “two nuns and a priest and some chick” drankin’ just outside the convent. And just IMAGINE if they knew that it would be more accurate to say “seeing nuns and a priest and a historian of the occult” getting their drank on together in a bar within spittin’ distance of the monastery. I do tend to emphasize the history of theology part of being a historian of medieval learned magic when I’m in, uh, monasteries. And convents. As a guest. Just out of respect. And so they don’t check my bags for illicit goats.
Speaking of which, on our way out of the monastery some totally random person stops Father Mathias on account of he is in his full priest outfit, and asks him to bless a censer that she just bought in the gift shop. For a friend, she says. A friend who really wants it blessed. Sure, says Father Mathias. But you will let me make it in my own language? Of course, she says. At which point Father Mathias pulls this big shiny thing out of the bag and gives it a real serious talking to about the names of saints, Amen. Then hands it back to her. I totally could not have made any sort of eye contact with him after that because seriously: though it is trite and cheesy, I am right there with everyone else who is female on the subject of cute priests, and listening to one knock out a blessing in German just about did me in. German is just about the most manly language on the planet.
Then we were running really late getting back, and we confused the security guard by being two African nuns, a German priest, and a curly-haired American who is the only one who can speak the French to him that will make the door get opened eventually, and once we were in, we planned to have breakfast together (I am *really* sad that they are all leaving tomorrow afternoon to return to Germany) and I hit my room to start writing it all down. And I’ve left out so much. Like how Father Matthias wears friendship bracelets, including one that an Israeli made for him out of the black leather strap of his prayer box thing that you wear on your arm - which he cut off and braided. Father Matthias also confessed when I asked about the bracelets that before he was a priest he wore rings and had an ear cuff. Father Matthias was totally a punkrock geek, you guys. I can feel it. My internal dowsing rod says: ONE OF US GABBA GABBA HEY. And how Sister Genevieve and Sister Betty have these incredible smiles - it’s like they’re incredibly amused by everything but you can’t quite figure out why. It’s how cats would smile if they had bendier mouths.
Midnight here. I either have to a) take a shower and go to bed or b) go participate in the relay of the adoration of the Sacred Heart because seriously: I have not participated in the religious life of the community thus far and it’s kind of part of the deal. I think I’ll go pray/wish really hard for a little while - I feel like making a serious wish for the sisters at Wijngaard to get more young postulants and nuns. I really do wish they had that. I feel a certain amount of sadness that they are all so old, and I fear for the convent’s continuation in the absence of more vocations.
I put in some time in the relay of the night adoration and seriously: that stuff is not for amateurs. In the darkness of the cathedral, all lit by candles and the enormous mosaic of Jesus looming off the dome at you and the sound of quiet prayerful breathing all around you, things get all mystical around the edges, even for a doubting Thomas like me. I was saved from religious conversion by the fact that Sacre Coeur is absolutely crammed to the gills with things that have been plated in gold and silver colored chrome. CHROME. There is a giant chrome Jesus on one side of the basilica. It’s all just a little too unironically, and wincingly shiny.
Pictures to follow!This post brought to you by a late-night yoink of unsecured wireless from across the street!