…GUIDED…

Stage 9 / Tuesday 5 May / From Le Cheylard to Chambonnet / 15 km

 

When I went to bed last night, I was in a rather euphoric state, having made an emperor’s procession, pushed unceasingly forward by a mysterious flux in my image of the wave. And I had rememorized a classic excerpt from a famous anthology: “So then, forever pushed toward new shores like this, swept away into eternal night without return on the ocean of the ages -- can we never cast anchor for a single day?” (Lamartine –The Lake).

 

But today I’m more worried. My changes of mood, my feelings, are they not just slices of a continuous flux which tosses me like a wisp of straw between the waves. Where is the true me in all that? Actor or plaything of what some call fate!? This pilgrimage, did I really choose it on my own, or is it the result of mysterious forces which moved me to do it? There have been so many times in my life when I realized in retrospect that it only took a tiny detail to make me go in one direction rather than another, and that this change of direction was in fact crucial!

 

For example, my original application for the French “foreign Cooperation” service having been refused initially in 1970, I would never have gone to Africa if my friend Alain, whose parents were living in the Ivory Coast, hadn’t encouraged me to write directly to the Ivorian Ministry of Education. This initiative, inspired by friendship, succeeded: my application was accepted, I went, I met the woman who would become my lifelong companion. And it was she, in turn, who suggested my doing further studies in the US, which allowed me to be hired by Caterpillar!

 

Shouldn’t one believe there was a benevolent providence in all that? Some would see not an impersonal God, ocean of eternity, static and unmovable, but rather a God capable of uplifting and carrying where He wishes, flux of energy and all-knowing guide, uplifting Word and permanent source of inspiration.

 

Moreover, what is my personal contribution worth in the face of chance circumstances? On the one hand, I dare not imagine the quantity of misfortune barely avoided in 32 years of a career including millions of kilometers of travel. On the other, good fortune often came to me in the form of useful information just at a key moment: in mid-flight it changed my course; and I also know that if I had missed it, it would have been lost forever: destiny rarely has the good manners to pass the plates a second time!

 

Of course, there were also moments of bad luck, but all things considered, they only happened on a small scale compared to many other people whose destiny contains one disaster after another. On average, the wave that carried me was more often safeguarding than throwing me on reefs which are so plentiful!

 

These important encounters in my life, Alain, my wife Terry, Caterpillar, were these purely just chance? Or did they occur by the intervention of a third party which remains to be defined? With the passage of time, I can count more and more of “my?” choices, those which were (upon careful reflection) perhaps dominated by an invisible hand guiding me at the right moment!

 

Beyond my past and still today, these fortuitous encounters are crucial to what I am trying to achieve. These coincidences, which will prove useful and beneficial, are they truly resulting from chance alone, or are they the result of a subtle and attentive supernatural coaching?

 

I think of the Woody Allen film Match Point: the tennis ball hits the top of the net; on which side is it going to fall? To what extent does the hit of the racket really belong to me? I’d like to say 100% if the ball crosses the net, and 0% if it doesn’t. It takes only a tiny millimeter or less for the ball’s trajectory to be crowned with success or failure: I cannot resist wanting an invisible hand to hold the racket and determine the fate of the ball! Ah, how I would kiss this hand guiding my ball if it gives such an imperceptible lift enabling me to win the point!