Out and Down in Paris

It was a very interesting experience finding a place to sleep in Paris. Eventually after a lot of walking, to be told the options I had been provided were full, I was back where I began (thinking I would just have to head north and try my luck there). Just as my energy was on low I reappeared at the Parish Office next to Saint Severin Eglise, but then the Priest was back and he said I could sleep next to a radiator with bedding. I had to return at 7:30pm - apres messe - when I could have dinner with those provided for by the church - which is very powerful in France and is positive as it treats all in need as well as it is possible. So many homeless people in Paris. London feels a pale reflection of this terrible modern scar. This is not a depressed time and not one person should be forced by circumstance - because of addiction, mental health, financial destitution or fleeing tyranny - to beg. Such a lot of France's bounty is provided for those bleeding Bourgeoisie. Reading "Down and Out in Paris and London" the times have moved on, but I fear money has come back into society as the only thing by which a man is to be measured.

It took me only an hour to walk from Saint Severin Church to Gare du Nord - which is straight ahead from the right bank of the Seine.

Looking back on the last week, or so, there are so many positives, which outweigh the negatives 10 to 1. But The One was hard to overcome even with my fortitude and partial courage. In winter everything is ferme or tres expensif when the benefice runs out. But I will return in the season of pilgrimage (if I can wear blinkers through Dover and Calais). Twice on the floor is very tiring - how homeless people do this?

Mostly the families who are sleeping outside are on mattresses in doorways. But if you had to leave the Middle East for this what have we become? Give peace to receive it, and to learn peace aka love aka Christ (which is really inside all of us somewhat hidden by our grasping Ego). We never gave peace a chance did we? What does might need to prove and at what price? I believe the utter destruction of paradise, aka Earth aka the Universe - as we understand it - is a process of a terrible mutation of an angry thought.

... Excuse me while I give what little our system gives me to get me back where I should be ...

But I must have some company too. Sharing this experience is what it is for. It is my purpose. It is why I was provided warmth - in hospitality and bedding - next to Rue St Jacques. We chatted long into the night and morning about the contradiction of our times - with memorials everywhere to the bloody war, which I feel was encouraged by all the elite as a means of showing the lower classes who was mightiest and who could physically and mentally destroy everyone in every walk of life below them! How many princes, kings, ministers, clergy were devoured by this class struggle? Too few to rate next the Enfants.

In the post war (1914-1945) period all had to change as no more slaughter could occur in the West. Except where governments were and still are, controlled by vengeful military structures and the force of wrong pointed East. Now it is firmly fixed on the absolute destruction of the Middle East while testing systems of control - drones, stealth and depleted uranium! They have no faults in the Middle East except being pinned against the ground by the rain of tyranny we have brought there. Bloody Versailles!

I am off to catch the train. How do I get to Wisques today when the routing system in France seems to provide the most comfortable trains first (they must be paid for over those whose debt has long been forgotten)?

But if this is all utterly an illusion - time and space are perceptions only - is what I think and write necessary at all. Last night I returned to chapter 29 of the Course and practice presence so I could forget the Ego to remember the Truth better. Then I slept, happily, beneath this theatre: Paris.