…FROM A BENEVOLENT GOD?

Stage 28 / Sunday 24 May / Lauzerte

 

It’s pouring with rain this Sunday: I’m so glad I resolved to stop one day out of seven ! I see other pilgrims, more avid for results, putting on their anoraks before leaving the hostel, grumbling that their stage will not be much fun. As for me, I stroll all dry under the lovely arcades that surround the upper square of Lauzerte, Cornières Plaza. These covered sidewalks really come at the right time: should I see here a sign of goodness from a benevolent God?

 

Arriving in Lauzerte, I’ve changed departments again: after the Lot, here I am in Tarn-et-Garonne. I calculate based on my notes: I’ve done 160 km since Figeac, and 600 km from Morestel. And I reread my train of thoughts during my last week:

“A call from a presence, to beauty, to love, to happiness, to rebirth, from a benevolent God ?” 

 

I was trying to unload the weight of the past, but am I now locking myself up again, seeing benevolence where perhaps it’s only the appearance of benevolence? Yes, am I again falling under a spell which doesn’t really exist in the absolute?

 

This trait of benevolence that I attribute to a God, does it really exist, or am I just pleasing myself in imagining it? Is it another machination on the part of the authors of Scripture? They would have known how to invent the idea of a God who would have created us in His image. And they would have invented him … “benevolent” … for the sole purpose of pleasing “Him” and thus feel safer being subjugated to Him.

 

For the rose itself is not beautiful in the absolute. It is only so relative to the consciousness of the one who appreciates it: ask a gardener who trims the flower beds and scratches his forearms! His opinion of the beauty and charm of the flower will undoubtedly differ from that of the pretty girl to whom you offer one of these roses on Valentine’s Day!

 

This being said, the curved shape of the petals, their lovely color, the scent they emit, their softness to the touch and their vulnerability to a brusque gesture, do allow the rose to be compared to feminine beauty and to become a quasi universal symbol of the love that a man can bring to his fair lady.

 

And I, whose life was delicately preserved earlier this week, when my hiking pole suddenly broke, can I attribute to myself alone the reflex to have fallen back onto the path rather than forward into the ravine? Like the tennis ball hitting the net in Match Point, it hung on the tiniest thing that I might be a loser rather than winning. Was it little benevolent help at the right moment? A delicate gift, given by whom then, and if so from whom, great God?

 

Can it be that the beauty of the rose is also magnified by a benevolent glow, analogous to the one that just made me realize what a fine line it is that ties me to life? Beauty and survival which would therefore be due to an exterior phenomenon, come from beyond rather than being intrinsic, springing from within. An Upside coming down rather than a Downside trying to go up?

 

It is quite difficult to decide yes or no if the reality of this exterior benevolence exists, when one observes the number of times when it is not manifested: look at the causes of despair that many encounter, hunger in the world, calamities beating down, epidemics and other atrocities. If I have been spared up to now, for reasons which are not clear, should I conclude that there is a selective bountifulness?

 

Here I am navigating between optimism and pessimism: have I the profile of such a good client, and why then should this reservoir of grace be limited? If it is, by what good fortune have I succeeded in opening the faucet at the right moment?

 

I really don’t remember at all having consciously merited my survival when my pole broke, but I remember well that in Figeac I felt quite “called” to make a detour-stage toward Rocamadour. Now if I nearly died near Rocamadour, would one of my closest friends or relatives have attributed my misfortune to a blind destiny, or would they have accused, more precisely, my decision to stray from the most direct route from Figeac to Cahors? “But why on earth did he have to go to Rocamadour?”

 

So, I resume … I feel called to make a detour; in making it I miraculously avoid an accident; I perceive this as a gratuitous gift from a benevolent God looking after me. And that is a good reason to continue accepting every call that I feel and which might well come from Him. Him? A person? A personal God? Here is a new visage that the tiny miracle-recipient that I am would do best to examine with greater attention during his next stages!

 

Itinerary from Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole to Figeac (3rd week) and from Figeac to Lauzerte (4th week)

 

The decapitation of Sainte Catherine (Lisbon museum of Antique Arts),
who was martyrized for having preferred heavenly love to that of the emperor.