It seems only fitting to begin numbering as the Europeans number the floors, and if the metaphor holds then this week will lead to higher learning and understanding of the inklings, the medieval world, and of oxford’s role in apologetics generally. It is two days until the first itinerary meet-up, so I am calling these “day -x” the proverbial basement entries. Indeed, this trip began well before the class started, in that dad and I went to Paris, France first. This was meaningful for me in a few ways, first that dad would take me on what he calls his “last trip” overseas, that mom would defer to me for that companionship, that I was able to finally return to Paris after seventeen years, and that I was finally able to see the Louvre, a personal high to visit with dad, since it was closed and they were on strike in June of 1999 when I was there the first time and I recorded in those journals eating in the café and shopping at the gift shop then going back to wash socks in the hotel sink.
(Note: These images are from my 1999 France journal - I was twenty three.)
(Note: These images are from my 1999 France journal - I was twenty three.)
Yet, there is a subdued sadness to this (part of the) trip for me so far. I have seen over the last four days a level of fear and paranoia in the French that has seemingly pushed aside the pride and excitement about their country I remember from my first trips and also recorded in those 1999 journals that “…you would think that the French invented Christianity, or at least that they seem to think they do!” – yet this time there was much that was fenced off, shut down, and generally under guard by highly armed and militarized police men and army, I suppose due to the Paris attacks that happened this year around the city. There is a national identity that has shifted away from Catholicism and history and pride in being French, and instead a population shift and an internationalization of Paris (at least?) That I can feel. Four days was enough in the “basement’ of Paris. I’m sad for France.
(Author’s Note: the attacks I referred to here were the coordinated November terror attacks on Paris, but it was actually different things that had caused the long-term three-month security watch Dad and I caught the tail end of. It’s worth noting that our first day in France we learned of the police shootings in Dallas, and after leaving Paris the van driver terror attack occurred in nice, and the Baton Rouge shootings came to light literally while we flew home. I’m sad for the world. How badly we nations need Christ!)
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