The Thrill is Gone After Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride Through France

In 1987 I traveled throughout France, Monaco, Belgium and Amsterdam with a group of college art school students. I saw lots of art. Lots. Of. Art. The first couple of weeks was an inspirational ecstasy for my artistic soul. Starting in the south of France, we drove mostly northbound in a barely air-conditioned bus. Later, the drain of popping in and out of the bus, along with being crammed in there with oversexed, sweaty, whiny twenty-something-year-olds, left me dismayed and exhausted. With each cathedral or museum stop I was losing the glow of excitement. By the gazillionth stop just before Paris, I almost didn’t get off the bus. AS IF I had seen enough Van Goghs, Monets, Raphaels, Michelangos, DaVincis, (insert famous artist name here) and religious works of art in various cathedrals. Somewhere along the route I lost the connection to thrill and discovery. Color, balance, composition, Jesus, baby Jesus, Mother Mary, crucifixion, battles, saints…  Shouldn’t I have some sort of emotional reaction? Am I that travel weary?

I was overstimulated and blasé after seeing the insides of cathedrals, chapels, museums, the exteriors of ancient ruins and other sites. By the time we made it to Reims Cathedral on the way to Belgium, I had nearly had it up to my neck with religious art. Heck, I practically denounced Catholicism based on my own physical exhaustion. Believe me, I know I sound ungrateful and spoiled, but that’s exactly where I was at. Inside Reims Cathedral, I sat down in the transept area and thought,

“God, I am exhausted, I can not take any more of this running around, I just want to rest.”

Inexplicably and instantaneously, I heard this thunderously commanding voice say,

“What the hell are you complaining about? Do you know what I did? I sacrificed my only Son!”

Just like that, word for word. Yes, I heard the cussing. I was the only person sitting on the pew, with no other human within 100 feet of me. I sat there shaking. My heart was pounding crazy fast. I looked across at the stained-glass windows trying to gather my thoughts and make sense of what just occurred. I’m not going to tell you where that voice came from. I don’t actually know, though I have an idea.

It’s Euphoric

A hunched-over elderly gentleman shuffled down the aisle. As he passed me, he smiled. His smile felt like a warm light beam directed to my heart, and instantly I was filled with uncontainable love and forgiveness. It bounced around inside me and spewed outward. This after being a whiny jerk.

I hurried outside the cathedral toward the plaza, still infused with exalted euphoria. I found my friends (the only three art students on the trip who were over the age of 30), who were busy taking photos of the architecture and carved statues. “Are you okay,” they asked. “You look strange.” I tried to respond, but couldn’t form words for fear I’d start crying like one of those people you see on those religious shows where you just can’t believe how thankful they are they’ve been saved and then they give away all their money to the man with the funny hairdo. I just smiled and eked out a “yeah.”

Teeny Tiny Itsy Bitsy Thingy

I sat on a nearby bench, tears now streaming down my face. Words in my head didn’t make much sense, so I just looked around. It was then I saw a tiny plant in the cracks of the stone pavement. It was a flower! It was only about a quarter-inch high with bright orange petals and a brilliant green stem and leaves. Inside my head I heard:

“I am the flower. You are the flower.”

Why did this boom into my brain? I can only guess. After leaving the cathedral, I felt bigger, more expansive, less ego and more generous in spirit. In some ways I kinda felt like Dr. Doolittle only towards plants, not animals. Yes, I felt I could talk to the plants and they talked back to me! Only the plants didn’t use words, just feelings. “Hello tiny flower,” I thought. “I am love, you are love, we are each love,” was the sense I got back from the tiny flower. I know, I know, I was exhausted, but these strange thoughts popped into my brain with seemingly little effort.

If It’s Wednesday, It Must Be Bruges

The next day we arrived in Belgium on the Flemish side. Needing some alone time, I wandered the streets taking in the sights of the stone structures, the cobblestone roads, and the Belgium faces. From across the road a young nun, looking strikingly familiar to Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story, caught my eye. She stopped walking, looked directly at me, flashed me a huge smile, then gave me a knowing nod. Not exactly sure if I had something on my face or happened to be walking around with a visible glow about me, but I decided to nod in return. Just in case that’s what you’re suppose to do in Belgium.

My street map blew out of my hands thanks to an errant wind gust. I chased it down, and as I picked it up, I again noticed a tiny flower, exactly like the one in Reims, France. Strangely, there were no other flowers nearby, just the one growing between the cobblestones. It was odd, this one tiny flower, growing alone among the cobblestones.

Godly Things Were at Work

It made me happy, to see this same type of flower in Bruges, as if to greet me. And it warmed my heart that a Belgium nun stopped to throw a smile my way. Godly things were at work. Tiny flowers, smiling nuns, a sense of happiness. I got an idea – to look for God in all the teeny tiny spaces I hadn’t noticed earlier – like cracks in pavement, between boards, among the tiny areas where dirt accumulated , in dots of paint, in the veins of leaves, the bristles of paint brushes, in feathers, and bicycle spokes. I looked hard, sometimes just spacing out staring at chipped paint from a fire hydrant or street sign, a piece of rubber from a shoe on the sidewalk, a dried orange peel, some rubble in a drain…there were so many places to investigate. Now I was finding more than just teeny flowers. I saw tiny blades of brilliant bright green grass, a tiny seashell, a piece of what looked like crystal, a miniature bone button with two holes, three miniscule orange puffy balls (what were those things?), a tiny stick in the shape of a cross… Again and again I’d get this wave of euphoria, along with a knowing that essentially anywhere and everywhere, God existed. You’re probably going to ask me why I thought God existed in these teeny tiny places. Well, I’ll give you the answer I heard in my head – though I’m gonna have to do some translating. What I heard:

When I say, God is everywhere. I really mean it. God is literally everywhere, in every thing and at all times. Not ‘up there’ but here. Right here.

I did it. I found God in the tiniest of places. Like here, even between the letters of this type or Helvetica, heck even Comic Sans and between the pixels of an image. Yesterday I noticed God in the sand. The grains, light beige, dark brown, white, reddish grains. And the foam in the ocean that lasts but a few seconds. And when I look at my hand, even between in the space between my hand and my eyeballs.

Ice Pops are Good and Tasty

My old minty-green-colored Smith Corona has sticky keys. I love typing on it, the keys pounding hard to imprint pale letters. I saw bits of God in the darkness of the typewriter ribbon imprinted letters. Just for fun, I typed “be like six-week-old kittens” and “ice pops are good and tasty.” And there He was, inside the space between the letter x and dash. I was at first taken aback, and then I remembered something I had read years ago, but at the time did not understand, “We are all connected to the Source. The Source is God.” And it got me to thinking, that the space between the letter x and the dash, it’s a useful bit of something. It’s often referred to negative space, but it’s space just as well. It’s a necessary component to defining the x and defining the dash. It’s useful and meaningful. Just because a person thinks nothing’s there – except space – doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. What is there is space. And a tiny god giving meaning to the x and to the dash. Like Tiny Gods giving something intangible to the spaces between the cobblestones and to wayward art students. You just have to pay attention and be alert in your search for those tiny gods. They’re everywhere.