A CALL…

Stage 22 / Monday 18 May / From Figeac to Lacapelle-Marival / 21 km

 

I compose a little rhyme as I set off at dawn on the GR6 path [chemin de grande randonnée No. 6 – in France there are such marked footpaths all over the country] which will lead me by Lacapelle-Marival toward my new destination, Rocamadour: “My map said Cahors I must head for; but for a plight or greater chore, my feet turned right, out the door: it’s Lacapelle which I will tour on my way to … Rocamadour!” [Au prime abord ce fut Cahors où j’aurais dû m’être rendu ; ah mais voilà ! pour qui ? pourquoi ? j’ai viré de bord par le tribord ; étrange appel : par Lacapelle, je m’en vais pour … Rocamadour ! ]

 

I reflect on this call which came to me to change direction. I didn’t want to flip a coin to make my decision: I already had in my subconscious the vague idea that if chance had then indicated continuing straight toward Cahors, I would have submitted with regret. So was there really an external call on my will to guide me in this new direction? And if I instinctively feel that I would have been disappointed not to have made this choice, does that mean that it was already inscribed in me as something missing, a curiosity that was like a thirst that must be quenched, a question that I had to answer?

 

Why this desire, why this thirst? Why this appetite for a possible inner joy that I would miss if I hadn’t tried to satisfy it? It’s as if I were feeling a need for my being to be reconnected to a source following a primordial distancing that left a dried-up place within me. Strange desire to want to recover the fullness of a divided me that got quartered, torn apart! What a bizarre call, this appeal to recover an original unity from which some little thing had been subtracted? Small detour, what then do you hold for me?

 

Who then in all time, even before the “Big-Bang”, would have constructed this original unity capable of leaving the impact of a “void to be filled”, a gap in my subconscious? “Mind the gap!” That’s the safety warning they keep repeating in the London tube about the space between the platform and the carriage … Here I am again “envisaging” the idea of a god to whom I owe myself submission if I want to avoid this void. This “face” of a god, would I be able to better “stare at it” by my detour? Is it because the answer to this interrogation exists that I want to search for it? Or is it because I search for it that it exists?

 

I am forced to say that if this god is the God of the Scriptures, I resent his showing himself clearly to some who wanted to see him, and much less to me who would so desire to sculpt his face with more certainty … Am I searching for the key of my frustration under a streetlamp that blinds me, when it isn’t under this lamp that I should search for this key? This makes me think of the sun to which I owe the light to which my eye is drawn. And yet, I cannot discern it face to face without risking blindness! There is what no doubt explains the great respect the ancient Egyptians had for the solar deity Ra, and perhaps the revelation which made Moses fall to his knees before the burning bush.

 

But if my call only makes me want to re-establish a dispersed primordial unity, that means “I” am still part of this separated unity. Therefore, this “I”, this “me” has no logical means to stare, for sculpting purpose, at this statue of which it is part … Dilemma!

 

Would it be instead, this God of the Bible, He whose word we can hear? Moses and other prophets would have heard it clearly when they reported his words in the scriptures. But for me, let’s be frank, the sound of his word: I don’t hear it, zilch! His voice, inaudible! His presence, supposedly everywhere, nothing of the kind! No hint of Him that shows up thundering like a storm lighting the Mount Sinai and with lightning sculpting stone tablets! With me, God is more discreet than a myosotis, more humble than the little flower which whispers “Forget me not.” If my brain knows so well how to invent incitements to believe what I hope, mustn’t I mistrust beliefs founded on desire? The stones in the desert that one would have me take for bread? Come on! That’s not for me!

 

But desire is also the sap of life; it’s what makes me want tomorrow more than today. Quite alone on the way to Lacapelle, I tell myself that tomorrow, Rocamadour, will not be a vain call! I wonder what this stage will have in store for me!