Beginnings...

Well, beginnings seem important.  Here we are in Paris!  We have now been up for over 34 hours straight, and have just returned to our room to crash after having been at Notre Dame cathedral for one of their Ash Wednesday services .  Our biggest challenge next to the language?  Keeping awake!  

Our flights were all fine.  The only hitch is that for the fourth trip in a row, now, we have lost luggage to deal with.  Mine came through but Karen's did not.  Is there some lesson here that we're not paying attention to?   We were told it would be here by now but no sign it's even left Amsterdam yet.   Oh, well.  

We wandered around Paris a bit once we made it into the city, and discovered early spring!  The trees are showing buds, and some trees and plants are flowering -- some quite enthusiastically!   The baggage person said this was Europe's coldest winter in 50 years but spring looks to be bringing the place back to life.   That's a good start!  

We also wandered into Notre Dame and there is a big baptismal font (we think) at the entrance to the church with the inscription (is my foggy memory getting it right?) "I am the way that seeks for wayfarers."The way" is, in Spanish, the camino.    The bishop in his sermon (I think I got the gist of it) was inviting us to join Jesus in his lenten fast -- to fast from some things that give us pleasure to remind us that ultimately, we are hungry and thirsty most of all for God.  But again, he kept referring to Lent as a "walk."  

There are some things we'll be giving up this Lent in order to walk the camino.  I hope Karen's pack is not one of them!  But for me, this journey is not so much one of holding back but of entering in.  Still, I hope not to be distracted on the way from the main purpose of this walk -- and of life -- which is to experience the grace and presence of God, and to live into that fully.  

Buen camino -- but first sleep.