The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [179]
Chapter Fourteen
The Contemplative in Action
Our Way of Proceeding
ONE OF MY FAVORITE moments in film is from a foreign movie, first released in 2006, called Paris, Je T’Aime, a series of twenty vignettes by a group of international directors. Each story takes place in Paris. One depicts a love affair; another a meeting between a father and daughter; another a violent and bloody murder. In one vignette, Alexander Payne, the director of the film Sideways, offers the story of Carol, a mail carrier from Denver, who has saved her money for a dream vacation to Paris. She’s even taken French language lessons for the past two years in preparation for her big trip.
Carol, played by Margo Martindale, seems a good soul, a middle-aged woman who lives with her two dogs, and who has traveled to Paris alone. Though she describes herself as happy and speaks about her friends, an element of loneliness suffuses her wanderings. Her tale, which takes the form of an oral report to her French class back home, is told in a voiceover. Carol’s thoughts are conveyed in very simple words—since those are the only ones she knows in French.
Toward the end of a long day of sightseeing and sampling local restaurants, Carol wanders into a sunlit park and sits on a wooden bench. During the morning, she was surprised to find herself so pensive—about her work, her friends, her two dogs, her lost love, and her mother, who has recently died from cancer. As she sits silently, Carol sees signs of life all around her: couples talking animatedly, children in a playground, a woman resting on the green grass. A breeze gently stirs her brown hair. Then something extraordinary happens.
In her halting French, translated for the viewer in the English subtitles, Carol says this:
Sitting there, alone in a foreign country, far from my job and everyone I know, a feeling came over me.
It was like remembering something I’d never known before or had always been waiting for, but I didn’t know what. Maybe it was something I had forgotten or something I’ve been missing all my life.
All I can say is that I felt, at the same time, joy and sadness. But not too much sadness.
Because I felt alive.
Yes, alive.
As she says this, a look of peace washes over her tired features.
I’m not sure if the filmmaker intended to portray a spiritual epiphany (though Alexander Payne went to a Jesuit high school). And I’m not sure if Carol, who is the star of, after all, a five-minute movie, was intended to be a spiritual person. But in simple words, she not only expresses what we spoke about in an earlier chapter as an “uncommon longing,” but opens a window onto one of the goals of the way of Ignatius: to be alive.
YES, ALIVE
In these pages we’ve traveled together along the way of Ignatius. Now you have a right to ask: Where does that way lead? What’s our destination?
In our first chapter, we talked about how five hypothetical Jesuits would define the way of Ignatius. Four answers were suggested: being a contemplative in action; finding God in all things; looking at the world in an incarnational way; and seeking freedom and detachment. These are all goals for the traveler along the way of Ignatius.
The first goal is illustrated by the fictional Carol, who feels, perhaps for the first time in her life, alive. She notices. She is aware. As she sits on that Parisian park bench, she discovers a connection. Significantly, the next words in her voiceover are: “That was the moment I fell in love with Paris. And I felt Paris fall in love with me.” Awareness moves her to love.
In real life, Carol would have a choice to make—beyond simply deciding whether to change her hotel reservations and stay a few more days in France. Or even beyond deciding that Paris is now her favorite city. She can accept her experiences as just “feelings,” or she can wonder if they might have another source.
The