Some final thoughts on Paris [Bryan]

I hope nobody is sick of hearing about Paris. If so, I'm sure to be back blogging about politics soon, so don't worry. I do have a few final thoughts and impressions from our trip that I haven't written about yet.

(1) Visiting so many vast, ancient cathedrals gave me a different sort of religious experience. I come from a religious tradition that is focused on bringing religion into daily life. In Mormon church buildings, there are kitchens, stages, and basketball courts. The place I would rain jump shots on my friends during the week was also the place that I worshiped on Sunday. The church building was a place of ordinary community life; thus, religion itself was linked to, and infused with, ordinary living. Mormon temples are a bit different, to be sure, but even there, in Mormonism's most sacred ceremonies, the feeling is one of coming home to family. The interior of temples is, for example, similar to a finely-worked living room and the rituals there (to me at least) seem designed to invoke and expand notions of family and kin.

The religious feeling of an ancient Gothic cathedral is very different. The idea is not to create feelings of familiarity and coming home. The intent is not to infuse religion into everyday experience. Rather, with its vast interiors, high ceilings, distant echoes, and stained glass windows, the idea is to invoke a feeling of awe, grandeur, and other-worldliness. The metaphor for religion is not coming home to family and familiarity, but of entering a different world -- a world vastly greater and more encompassing than our imagination.

I don't know which experience is a better religious experience. Each architectural space hits on something important about how I experience religion. Each rings true in some sense. The religious tradition than manages to somehow combine both the feeling of coming home and of being in a different world will be something to behold.

Saint Etienne du Mont

Sainte-Chapelle: interior

(2) One of the strangest things I saw on the trip occurred in our first night in Paris. We were tired after our long flight and our day of sight-seeing. We were emerging from the Pompideu Center, which is a museum of modern art. Outside of the museum were hordes of teenagers, maybe 15 or 16 years old. I was not all that surprised to see this. The Pompideu sits near a busy shopping district (Les Halles) and I didn't think it shocking to see young people hanging out "at the mall." It would have been the same in Ohio. As we passed the groups of teenagers, though, I was shocked to see what they were doing. They were sitting in a big circle and passing around two or three canvases. On those canvases, they were busily slapping on paint and constructing works of abstract expressionism. Some kids were painting, while the others were watching, cheering, or criticizing. I couldn't believe my eyes and I wondered if I was dreaming. Granted, those kids were probably unique and not representative of all French youth. But still, it was way cool. Viva la France!

Hall of big French paintings, Louvre

Louvre, outside

(3) The trip was humbling. Paris is a city that is not content with things that are just "good enough." There is little toleration of mediocrity. As I walked the streets of Paris, the halls of the Louvre, and the domed monuments, my own accomplishments felt insignificant and small. Surely, nothing I have done will be admired by people centuries from now. Nothing I have done has been tempered by the discipline and critical taste necessary for great achievements. I live in the world of the "good enough," the world that is on constant display on American television and the rusty streets of Ohio. It was a shock to be immersed in something different. It inspired me to try to do something worth calling a masterpiece......Maybe after I get tenure.

View from Arc de Triomphe

French countryside from a high speed train

Ellie on top of the Eiffle Tower