During
a month-long home exchange in Brittany, my husband Dan and I visited Combourg
Castle, a feudal fortress. Dark and spooky, it was once the home of François-René
Chateaubriand, one of France's most beloved, if gloomy, writers. Our guide
read from the young Chateaubriand's account of meeting the ghost of a pirate,
watching it fade until only its peg leg remained. She showed the shriveled
mummy of a cat found during restoration of a tower wall where it had been
buried alive a thousand years before to ward off evil spirits.
Afterward, the castle's moody ambiance haunted my dreams. The Frenchman's
depression had triggered my own. Chateaubriand and I had both been raised
in bleak homes. His fear of the guillotine reflected my family's ancestral
dread of the Nazis, the pogroms, and myriad oppressions throughout history.
All my life, I'd struggled to free myself from the effects of my extremely
dysfunctional familyó debilitating fear, lack of confidence, and a discouraging
sense that it was up to me to make everything right. By this time, I knew
I'd made progress but still felt hopeless about ever escaping their influence.
The stirred-up emotions played themselves out as I slept. Frustration,
dread... Inching my sister's car through a crowd who stubbornly refused
to move out of the way. In the shotgun seat, stubborn and oblivious, she
flirted recklessly.
And after a particularly bad night of almost no sleep, I dreamt of a
ghost playing a typically haunting classical piece on my piano. Then a
flashlight clattered down from the chimney into the fireplace, followed
by a pair of reaching, grasping mechanical hands. I awoke screaming.
We'd planned a visit to Monetís house in Normandy, and I was hoping a change
of scene would break the eerie spell. As I mapped the route, I noticed
a town called Sainte Suzanne along the way. Being a Suzanne myself, though
from a Jewish family in Philadelphia, I was intrigued. When we passed the
highway sign announcing the town a
Cité Mediéval,
I told Dan I wanted to stop there on our return trip.
Monet's cheerful home and studio, curved bridges, the riot of color and
fragrance in his manicured gardens, were enchanting. In the evening, we
drank homemade cider and fed baguette crumbs to black swans in the courtyard
pond at our farmhouse lodgings. Later, I had a richly woven dream: I
was flying home from France, then suddenly, as if by teleportation, I was
in a Manhattan apartment without luggage, purse or credit cards, panicking
about how to get back to California. An interior voice told me not to worry,
that I was whisked off the plane to shield me from something dangerous
about to happen.
Although I didn't realize it at the time, that was my first encounter with
the saint herself.
On the return drive to Brittany, Dan and I aimed for a picnic lunch in
Sainte Suzanne. On joining the autoroute, we stopped at a rest area. While
I used
les toilettes, Dan browsed the boutique. This is a guy who
can't tolerate more than five minutes in any store that doesn't sell hardware.
But the language difference turned it into an adventure in culture. We'd
whiled away almost an hour before he decided to buy himself a khaki fisherman's
vest with a dozen pockets.
Within minutes of merging onto the highway, we were stopped dead in a traffic
jam. The official autoroute radio station reported that only moments before,
a tiny Renault had swerved out of control and hit a tanker truck. Both
overturned and exploded. It was a hot Friday afternoon preceding the summer's
biggest holiday weekend and the road to Brittany's beaches was now closed
in both directions.
Sweltering and powerless, we read books, picnicked in the car instead of
at Sainte Suzanne, and tried to maintain a sense of humor. Hours later,
traffic began to crawl off the toll road at the nearest exit. Gendarmes,
the French police, directed traffic through small villages and over narrow
country roads to the next on-ramp. Every few miles, local samaritans offered
free liter bottles of cold mineral water.
It was after six when we reached Sainte Suzanne, glowing in the golden
light as though it was God's favorite place. Ancient buildings encircled
a hilltop with a river at its feet. The cobbled streets were deserted,
but the small tourist office was still open, as if they'd been waiting
for us. The friendly women inside were delighted to learn that I shared
the name of their town's patron saint. They showered me with photos and
pamphlets. The museum was probably closed by then, they said, but the walk
along the ramparts to the church was beautiful.
Like most French villages in summer, Sainte Suzanne was ablaze with flowers.
Two chateaux lorded over timeworn stone houses. Religious icons
peeked out of recesses in their walls. The surrounding countryside was
studded with ancient standing stones, small farms and forests.
The museum's studded plank door gaped open. Dan and I poked our heads inside.
It was shadowy and cool with thick dark beams propping up a low stone ceiling.
No one was in sight.
As we debated if we should go in, a raspy female voice with a Brooklyn
accent welcomed us. It was the curator, an expatriate American. She offered
a quick outline of the town's history. I asked about Suzanne's saintly
qualities. The director said something vague about her being the patron
of engaged couples and flipped through a book to check. I was waiting,
taking in the atmosphere, when I felt something brush my hair, my shoulder,
then heard the gentle plop of it hitting the floor.
At my feet, in this medieval room with not a flower in sight, was a morning
glory. I lifted the fragile blossom and tucked it behind my ear. My body
quivered as if an electric current was rushing through it. It occurred
to me that Sainte Suzanne was trying to get my attention, but I dismissed
the idea as ridiculous.
Soon the curator shooed us out, pointing us in the direction of the church
in the square at the top of the hill. The exterior of Sainte Suzanne's
sanctuary was weathered and gray, but within, pristine white stone soared
in the dim candlelight. In the alcove with Sainte Suzanne's statue, a prayer
"for those without one of their own," was posted above the votives. Loosely
translated, it said:
"Even though I don't
know what to say,
and I don't know how
to pray,
and I have so little
time to spend in prayer,
I light this candle
to leave part of myself with God,
who knows my joys
and sorrows
and holds me in tenderness."
I dropped a few francs in the box, lit a candle and whispered the prayer,
in the French. The tingling resumed. Behind the altar, three stained glass
story-windows gleamed. Stepping closer to Sainte Suzanne's, I translated
each caption, reflecting on her adventures. One scene in particular took
my breath away. In it, Suzanne kneels at the feet of an angel, whose arm
stretches out to ward off a Roman soldier. Framed by petal shapes reminiscent
of a morning glory's, her image radiates faith.
I could use some of that, I thought. I focused my telephoto on just that
section, praying for enough light to capture it, and snapped the picture.
I was wandering around drinking it all in when Dan collected me for the
ride home.
No Combourg ghosts haunted me that night.
Over coffee and croissants at the village cafe the next morning, we struggled
to decipher a newspaper account about the collision on the autoroute, which
had been much more tragic and dangerous than we knew. The car's occupants
had died instantly as their vehicle burst into flames. The trucker was
killed while he struggled in vain to prevent the fire from igniting his
cargo of gasoline. Until the ensuing inferno had cooled sufficiently, fire
crews could work only on keeping it away from a nearby natural gas storage
facility.
I felt fortunate that we'd been far enough behind for safety. My next thought
was that luck had nothing to do with it-- that Sainte Suzanne's spirit
had safeguarded us even before we'd consciously made her acquaintance.
That the mere intention of contacting her initiated a relationship, and
my dream of being whisked off the endangered airplane was a metaphoric
message, a preview of how she would keep us dawdling at the roadside boutique
to protect us from the catastrophe. Another delicious vibration snaked
through me, as if the metaphorical Uroboros serpent was climbing my spine,
partnering with Sainte Suzanne to energize each chakra and set the very
molecules of my body dancing.
On the next market day in Rennes, the nearest big city, we had the film
from our Normandy excursion developed. Every photo I'd shot in the church
was too dim to make out, except Sainte Suzanne and the angel. It was perfectly
balanced, brilliant and crystalline. I propped it against my bedside lamp,
asking for her help with the castle's disturbing apparitions.
The next dream I could remember was long and complicated. Meeting a
childhood friend at a conference, telling her about France and Sainte Suzanne.
Then driving in San Francisco, up a potholed, gravely street so steep pedestrians
had to crawl and claw their way up. I turned a corner and found myself
in a doctor's office trying to help a man find insulin for his dying daughter.
Then a bomb threat, ambulances, an explosion... searching frantically for
the medicine. While things fell apart, Sainte Suzanne was turning me
away from the struggle, guiding me to healing.
Before leaving France, we spent a few days in Paris, where I dreamt of
finding
money, jewelry and chocolates, then driving a car precariously balanced
atop a narrow wall. Next thing I knew, I was breastfeeding a baby I'd just
borne, who was growing so fast I could see it. I felt like I'd been given
a miracle. When I awoke, I considered trusting my intuition of a connection
with Sainte Suzanne.
Back in the US, I searched for an "official" version of Sainte Suzanne's
story. In my local library, I found Sainte Suzanne's entry in John Delaney's
Dictionary of Saints. It said the Roman Emperor Diocletian wanted Suzanne
to marry Maximianus Herculeus, his son-in-law and co-ruler. Her uncles,
both Diocletian's courtiers, were dispatched to bring Suzanne to Rome for
the marriage, but she refused to forsake her devotion to her vision of
the sacred. Her faith was so compelling that her uncles abandoned their
mission and converted to Christianity. Enraged, Diocletian ordered Suzanne
and her entire family killed.
I wasn't crazy about the ending, but the part about sticking to your guns
for what you feel is true inspired me. I was sitting on a stool in the
aisle that housed the religion books, contemplating the parallels in my
own life, and recalled that early in my relationship with Dan, a friend
had told me of an Old Testament story called "Daniel and the Trial of Susanna."
Close by were several Bibles, so I decided to look that one up too.
The story was actually from the Apocrypha, considered more mythical than
the Bible. Susanna was a fabled beauty whose rich, wise husband was so
esteemed by the Jews of Babylon that his spacious residence doubled as
the courthouse. During court business, Susanna would retreat to her garden.
Two of the judges, obsessed with Susanna's charm, liked to spy on her.
One day, they launched a blackmail plan. They said unless she had sex with
them, they'd testify to seeing her in the garden fornicating shamelessly
with a handsome young man, an offense punishable with death by stoning.
Susanna told them she preferred to trust God with her fate rather than
appease their hypocrisy. She was brought to trial and found guilty, but
a relative unknown named Daniel unexpectedly intervened. Although unacquainted
with Susanna, he was moved by spirit to come to her defense. His argument
for further investigation so impressed the officials that they authorized
it. Daniel questioned each accuser separately and exposed contradictions
in their testimony that destroyed their credibility. Susanna was freed.
The charlatans themselves were executed for bearing false witness, and
Daniel became the wise and holy prophet in the lion's den.
Susanna, Suzanne. Same name, same theme. I envisioned an ongoing archetype
based on a series of women throughout time who risked their lives and sometimes
lost them for what they believed, and who, for me, are symbolized in Sainte
Suzanne. Though physical, she experienced Spirit directly. My encounter
with her enabled me to sense her beside me, inside me, lending support,
nurturance and purity of spirit. Like a beacon lighting the way to peace,
her presence enlivens my faith in my own personal, conscious connection
with the Eternal.
© 2002 |
