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| Roman amphitheater, Orange, Provence, France |
(Again, writing on the 8th): We started the day on the 6th with petit déjeuner outside at Les Buisses. It’s out in the countryside with a little pond and swimming pool, and with outside seating at tables for breakfast — which consisted of croissants, baguettes, butter, jam, yoghurt, coffee, and orange juice.
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| Roman amphitheater, Orange, Provence, France |
From Piolenc, we drove the short distance to Orange, parked, and spent time walking around the old city, with its massive ruined Roman amphitheater. We also toured the Catholic cathedral, whose Romanesque construction dates from the start of the 12th century, though there was a church at the site from the 4th century forward.
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| Catholic cathedral, Orange, Provence, France |
Then back into the car for the drive to the Cévennes, which took us south and west from Provence into Languedoc-Roussillon. Along the way, the countryside shifts from vineyards to more mountainous, drier-seeming terrain, much of it heavily wooded, particularly in the Cévennes where W. and K.’s friend A. lives.
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| Saint-Jean-du-Pin, Languedoc-Roussillon, France |
We stopped for a picnic lunch at Saint-Jean-du-Pin, and found a place to sit around the bank of a fountain near the church or a church in the village. This part of France was the heart of the Huguenot exodus from Catholicism and many of the towns and villages have very old Reformed churches rather than Catholic ones. The picnic: a reprise of our picnic the evening before without wine.
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| Vignoles-Ludovic, Mialet, Languedoc-Roussillon, France |
After this, we stopped at Mialet, where W. and K. thought we might like to visit the Musée du Désert, which documents the Huguenot history of this part of France. The museum opened at 2 P.M. and we arrived at 1:30, so W. and K. suggested we might sit on the outside patio of a nearby restaurant, Vignoles-Ludovic, and have a cup of coffee. W. also suggested having ice cream.
After we sat, K. spoke disparagingly of the choice of ice cream, stating that crêpes are more typical and local, but I refused to allow myself to be discouraged from ordering ice cream, so after K. had ordered cappuccino and a crepe filled with puréed strawberries and Steve and W. cups of café au lait, I ordered pistachio ice cream, and when it arrived, I was very glad I’d done so. It was delicious. W. chose the cassis sorbet he had been longing for, and S. a raspberry sorbet that was also wonderful. K.’s cappuccino came topped with whipped cream that she didn’t want, so we spooned it on top of Steve’s cup of coffee and I enjoyed sipping some of his coffee through the whipped cream.
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| Musée du Désert, Languedoc-Roussillon, France |
Then to the museum, Steve and I. W. and K. have seen it before and chose to keep sitting at the restaurant while we toured it. It left me cold, honestly. I know full well that the Catholic hierarchy in France and those in league with them persecuted Protestants, but so much of the language of contention, strife, persecution seems to me overdone — as though the identity of a certain stream of Protestantism is now all bound up in depicting the Catholic church and the pope as monstrous, a theme of some tabloid-like printed piece displayed in the museum, which appears to have dated from the 1600s, showing how the pope of Rome is the antithesis of Jesus Christ.
Please. The big battle of Christianity today is to be relevant to anyone at all, to reform itself so that it can be credible to anyone at all — not the tired old internecine battle of Catholic with Protestant with Orthodox, etc. So all the proudly displayed bibles, the exalted pulpits, the paintings of Reformed martyrs: they did not move me. Christians of the Reformed stream inveigh against Catholics for believing, as Protestants maintain, that priests are indispensable mediators of God to the people of God.
But what does that exalted pulpit with the big, prominently displayed bible convey except the notion that the preacher — traditionally always male (and in some branches of the Reformed world today, the insistence on male clergy is even stronger): what do these symbols, the exalted male owning the bible and claiming unique prerogatives to read, interpret, and preach it to others, convey except the idea that the preacher mediates between God and the people of God?
I don’t say this to engage in counter-polemics, but to suggest that polemics are silly and meaningless, and have no justifiable place in the Christian world today. Time to get over them and face that challenge of meaningfulness that confronts all Christian churches at this point in history.
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| Farmhouse outside Saint-Jean-du-Gard, Languedoc-Roussillon, France |
After the museum, on to Saint-Jean-du-Gard. A. was a classmate of W.’s, perhaps in Strasbourg — that point is not clear to me — who was ordained as a Reformed minister, married, had children, then ended his marriage after coming out of the closet as gay. His partner X. was, if I’m not mistaken, a Catholic priest. They live in what was once a building to house goats and pigs on the old farm of A.’s family. The stone building in which they live was built in the 1700s.
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| Farm outside Saint-Jean-du-Gard, Languedoc-Roussillon, France |
After we arrived, to help us stretch our legs, A. took us on a walk around what was his family’s large farm. We crossed the road and also walked to the small river, which A. said is called the Gardon. He explained that small rivers with the name Gardon run through several villages in the area, each with the Gardon part of their name modified by the village name, so that the small river we were seeing is Gardon de St. Jean. These rivers eventually converge into a larger Gard that runs into the Rhône.
On our return to A.’s house, he put out a wonderful evening meal of gazpacho, followed by a salad made of slices of sausage, potatoes, tomatoes, and olive oil, with some sweet basil (dried, I think) to flavor it, which we ate with baguettes and a locally made rosé as we sat sitting outside looking at the tree-covered mountains across the road, with the sun setting on them. The next course was a cheese plate with Roquefort, Camembert, goat cheeses, and Tomme. When we’d finished that (again, with baguettes), A. served us a compote of cooked apples beaten together with fromage blanc with cinnamon sprinkled on top. I’ve never had Roquefort that tasted as good as this Roquefort did.
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