Crepes, Taize and thoughts on Love: day 6

Ok, I'm really almost done with my Paris posts, but there are still 1.5 days to go. I was happy that there wasn't really anything planned for day 6, at least not until later in the evening. I spent the morning reading, and not doing much else. Delphine suggested we have crepes for dinner and Raphael thought it was a good idea so off he went to the kitchen. I can't really generalize but I think most French people enjoy cooking. I'm not sure, but I do know that French cuisine is famous world wide and that this family loves to cook. They enjoy cooking together and love to sit around the table to eat and talk, laugh and drink. I think it's one of the reasons they are such a close family. Delphine was busy with school-work so Raphael made the crepes. I was supposed to help but I was more interested in observing and taking pictures. I love crepes. My favourite kind are spinach with cheese crepes. Lekker! There is a very nice restaurant in Paris where you can get a whole menu for 8 euros. You get a dinner crepe, a dessert crepe and a jug of apple cider. Anyway.. here are some pictures I took.

He made two kinds of crepes. Salty crepes for dinner, and sweet dessert crepes. Each type is made with a different kind of flour.

This texture looks so playful and innocent. Oh, if dreams were but only made of things as these. I find it fasinating to see how things transform.

This was my only contrubution... apart from eating of course.

He didn't actually mix the ingredients but put them in the blender. Might be a guy thing though.

Oops, maybe he did mix after all. I think I was too busy taking pictures that I can't remember why he first blended and then mixed... never mind.

It was put in the fridge for a few hours. A few hours because we left to go to a Taize prayer meeting before dinner.

In the evening we all (except Delphine) went to a church where they were having a Taize meeting. A Taize prayer meeting is basically a meeting where people come together to sing songs from Taize, and silent prayer. I went to Taize some years ago, and found it all very interesting. There were a lot of young people and I liked the music. The songs are a line or two taken from Scripture and they are sung in different languages. After singing they have a quiet time when you can pray. The first time I was there the prayer time was a bit difficult, because it seemed like a very long time and it wasn't easy for me to sit so quietly, but by the end of my stay there (5 days) I realized that I could actually pray about a lot of things during this time and it didn't seem that long anymore. I was enjoying the quiet time to just talk with God. There weren't a lot of people at the church, but there were both Catholics and Protestants there. We all sat down and sang a few of the songs. Some people read Bible verses and some prayed out loud. I had been feeling quite well. My trip to France really was a great blessing and I was very thankful for it all and these were my thoughts that evening. Then we had the prayer. I started my usual prayer... "Thank you Lord for this day... bless so and so, and so and so, thank you for this and that..." and then all of a sudden I felt like I was being stopped. I had my eyes closed but in my mind I was remembering acts of love... I was remembering times when people had been kind to me. There was one person sticking out in particular; he was sitting right behind me, playing the flute and clarinet that evening. I could see his hands helping me when I needed help, or a shoulder I could cry on if I was sad, or encouraging words to lift me up, and it was as if I was hearing the Lord say, "Why do you push me? Don't you know all good things come from me? I can't describe it but I was crying like a silent baby. See... how many times does this happen? Sometimes I take love for granted, or feel indifferent about it because I'm too busy with my own thoughts and my own life. When somebody cares for you and wants to give you a hand to help you or comfort you in Christ, isn't rejecting it or not being thankful for it, like pushing Christ away? I was really sad because in my heart I was saying... "No, I wouldn't push You away, I do love You." But, if we love God, we are also to love our brothers and sisters in Christ as well. Being with Him is an intimate relationship, but... even though some of us see and intimate relationship as being a "just the two of us" kind of relationship... as soon as you are getting all comfortable God says... "be right back" and in come a hundred people, because God loves His people and we are to love them too, and rejecting them, or pushing them away is like pushing Him as well... I don't know if this makes sense, and I didn't really understand all that was going on inside me that night, but it did make me realize that we are here to build each other up in Christ, and this means that we must do so even when those people are not present. We are always to speak words of kindness about them, and not joke about them in any way that is meant to make me look good, or strong, or put them down or so. It's about standing up for each other like a close family would. It's about seeing them just as Christ sees them, in His light. It really is about loving them. Anyway, the prayer time didn't last very long, or maybe all this was happening too fast, but I know my heart was touched that night. At the house we had the crepes, and later on when all was quiet I was able to ponder all this in my heart.