It all started with this question addressed to Jesus by two disciples of John: ” Where do you live ? » A key question that was answered by a call to follow him: “Come and see. » A surprising answer, knowing that Jesus would confide later in his public life that he did not “where to lay your head” that he is without nest or den.
An essential question, however, because where we remain, there we dig our roots deep, there we rise to all our greatness, there we bear the fruit of life. It is the places where we make our home that are the soil of our fertility.
The hustle and bustle of our world
However, our world, which is changing at full speed, is a very strange place! A house that creaks and cries from all sides, plagued by chaos and the pains of childbirth. To walk its paths is to walk barefoot on sea urchin spines. Like these sea hedgehogs, he curls up and arches his back to us, full of anger.
Genesis has a beautiful expression to designate this time of (re)beginning that we are living through: it is the hustle and bustle, “the desert and the void”! The obligatory passage through an initial confusion (that which reigns at birth) and which follows the primordial fusion (that of gestation in the maternal womb).
Let the light shine
To get out of the confusion of this hustle and bustle, it is up to us to create together the shapes and contours of this new world that is coming and, for this, to rub our senses against it, to turn the ears of our heart towards it, to lend him our intelligence.
Celtic Christianity, which inherited from the depths of time the art of embracing the breath of the open sea, says that to renew the field of possibilities and (re)create a world, one must open up space, give oneself the time and let the light shine. It is the light that makes all new things possible, that allows them to be accomplished in reality.
If salvation comes from light, summer is the most beautiful season to take a good bath and fill it up! Yes, stock up on that glow that pours in from the bright blue sky and the starry night sky!
Isn’t this splendor that comes to us from the sun and the other stars the only and true dwelling place of Christ, this Son of Light? Isn’t He the holy door that allows us to enter the light and make our home there? To respond to his call, to come and see, we can always bare our skin and take, like herbs and wild flowers, sun and night baths.
The weaving of life
Following the trees, those alchemists who transform the light coming from the sky into the breath of life for all terrestrial creatures, I turn into a leaf every summer. Descended from lines of weavers, I don’t just expose my bare skin to the sun and the stars: I also take out my linen sheets, passed from hand to hand, so that they too take on the radiance of the universe. The sheets in which we sleep are indeed real chasubles! They are the ones who give us to dream, who allow us to come to the light each night by awakening our senses, our heart and our sleeping intelligence.
We need this awakening so much… Because, if the light has a salutary power, the work of our time is to learn to remain there! However, everything is connected on earth and in the universe. We are not alone, but surrounded by plants, animals and minerals which are also bathed in starlight.
Life never ceases to bring us all together, lovingly crossing and recrossing its sons of glory, and wrapping us in this veil of alliance thus created. So let’s keep our word and join her in this beautiful loom! From this hustle and bustle can arise a luminous world, because everything is always possible for those who dwell in the light.
Charlotte Jousseaume is a writer. She leads writing workshops and has published Silence is my joy (Albin Michel), mystical quartet (Stag), And the mirror burned (Deer) and I walked on the foam of the sky (Salvator).
Charlotte Jousseaume: “It is light that makes all new things possible”