France Revisited:

A Month’s Sojourn in the Land of My Roots

                                                                   May, 2012

How all this madness got started~

 I still remember the day in the late 1980’s when I was in the barn on my Oregon farm and took note of an ancient 10-speed Motobecane bicycle that Lois had used during her student days at OSU. I was storing it for her in the barn after her graduation and she had gone on to better things.

I looked at the bike and wondered- ‘Could I possibly ride this thing without getting totally out of breath?’  There was only one way to find out: Get on it and give it a spin. Which I promptly did and much to my surprise the peddling went just fine.  I had all the wind needed to ride anywhere I was inclined to go; over hill and vale. No problem.

That tentative venture was the beginning of a career as a touring cyclist that lasted fifteen years and took me thousands of miles around the U.S. and Europe. I made seven bike tours in Western Europe during those years visiting countries from Sweden to Switzerland and Austria to the UK and all the places between. But my favorite place to tour was France, where I spent the majority of my time in the saddle and mixing with the natives.

And so I got hooked~

During those years I was a fruit grower in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Each year when the cherry season was over, by the end of June, I had a few weeks free to take vacation. It was great to park the tractor and my rickety pickup and heave a great sigh of relief that the cherries had finally made it from the trees over to the processing plant and I had a small stash of cash. Enough to get a ticket for me and my bike somewhere far from the stress of growing soft fruits: cherries, peaches, plums and the like.

Pour quoi la France?

There are a couple things that have drawn me towards France of all the other European countries I have visited. One is that as a high school sophomore I started studying French as a second language and I got on very well in those studies. Language arts were my forte as a student; language learning came easy.  My A’s in language classes helped offset the D’s and F’s in math. And we tend to capitalize in the areas where we excel- right?

After high school I did my two years of compulsory service (the draft) with MCC in Morocco. There the official language is French and with my high school studies in French, I was soon on my way to proficiency in French.

Visiting in another country and culture is hundreds of times better when you can talk with the locals in their language. So, number one- being able to talk to the people in France makes that country an obvious first choice for me.

Secondly, most of my cultural and genetic roots have a significant history in France. Spiritually and culturally I am more inclined to identify with my maternal heritage. Not that I am disinterested in my Dad’s family, just that who I am as a person is more akin to my Mom’s people. They were Anabaptist refugees from Switzerland who found a welcome in the Strasbourg Duchy of Northeast France in the 17 ^th century. As I travel the back roads of Alsace & Lorraine I catch images of what life must have been like for my peasant ancestors in the landscape. And in that process grow in my understanding of what makes me tick.

For my travels I have had two sources for connecting with the locals: Mennonite Your Way and SERVAS. MYW is the offspring of the Mennonite penchant for both ‘freundschaft’ and frugality. It provides connection with Mennonite families willing to receive guests.

SERVAS is a European organization formed in the agony of post-WWII Europe as an effort to restore fraternity and friendship amongst former enemies. It also is a listing of households open to receiving short-visit strangers who share interest in peace and intercultural understanding.

To Paris via Lome, Togo~

After my 2011 visit to the U.S., I decided it was time to skip the annual trip to the U.S. in 2012 and instead go north to Europe, specifically: France. It’s been seven years since my last visit there and I just had the feeling in my bones that it was time to refresh ties with France.

On April 19^th I left Catel in the little blue Peugeot and headed for Ziguinchor. There I turned to car over to Peter to bring back to Catel. I boarded the ferry for Dakar and arrived there the next morning at 6. From the ferry dock I went straight to the Dakar airport and right away got a flight to Lome, Togo some thousands of miles deeper into West Africa.

In Lome I met with about 60 pastors and missionaries interested in CHE (Christian Health Evangelism).  CHE is an educational network that equips missionaries to do holistic community development together with evangelism.  The participants represented a wide swath of  a dozen West African countries including Guinea Bissau down through Ghana and as far east as Nigeria.

For most of the participants the holistic gospel is a concept they are only now discovering but they are eager to learn more about it. I didn’t speak at the conference but the last day I was given the floor to offer some of my reflections.

Since my arrival in West Africa 12 years ago I have been troubled by the message of the Christian gospel that is being communicated in this part of the world. Either it is chiefly personal fire insurance or how God wants to make you rich and powerful or how Christianity can be syncretized with traditional beliefs. Little is said about the Kingdom of God here and now and how God is bringing together His people into communities that are signs of the transformed life He desires for everyone.

At that conference I began to understand better why the message is deficient and aberrant:  There are some significant gaps in the biblical foundations of who Jesus is; his message and his call for his disciples to become God’s new community; how the community comes together and the mission of God’s people in the world.

I shared these thoughts with the group and they were well received. The response was- ‘Ok, when are you going to come to teach us? .... We’re working on it.

Paris to Alsace~

The flight from Lome to Paris was only 5 hours, thankfully. The economy class in Airbus jets mistakes human passengers for sardines. Except for the speed, I could have almost been in a Bissau bush taxi. Nevertheless, we had a good flight and I rushed from the plane, arrogantly skipping the baggage claim (I am the unchallenged world’s lightest traveler) to the railway station all within the Charles De Gaul airport.  I made it just in time to board the 7:49 am high speed train to Strasbourg.

From there it was another half hour train ride south to the city of Colmar.  I had plans to call my host family, Jean & Rachel Peterschmitt upon arrival at the Colmar station but I decided to hop onto a city bus out to their hamlet, Muntzenheim. After inquiring from a couple locals I was soon knocking at the Peterschmitt gate. Rachel leaned out of the upstairs window, somewhat annoyed at seeing an unknown man at the gate. I said, “Bonjour, Rachel. I’m Forrester”

“Oh, excuse me,” she said hurrying downstairs to welcome me. She was incredulous that I had found their house on my own. But such things are par for the course for a pioneer missionary.  John & Rachel were wonderful hosts. I had been at this house once before when his parents lived there. Now they are gone and it is home to Jean & Rachel and their 3 children.

 They have an apartment attached to their rambling 18^th century farmhouse. Back in those days the villagers kept their cattle and farm machinery at a house-barn combination in the village and went out from there to work their land. The apartment was two rooms carved out of the ancient barn. So I had all the conveniences right there including a well-stocked fridge. Sometimes I ate with the family, sometimes they left me to my own devices.

Eating with them was a real treat with the Alsatian cooking. Well, one exception. The very first evening Rachel served (you’re not going to believe this) rice and fish!  Trust me; I never said a mumblin’ word.

My days with the Peterschmitts gave me the opportunity to revisit the Unter den Linden museum in Colmar. The museum is housed in a 14^th century monastery. The monks are long gone, replaced by displays of mediaeval art and artifacts the most notable being the 14^th century Issenheim altar pieces.  The altar pieces show the birth, suffering, death and resurrection of Christ.  (Whatever happened to his teachings & example?)   And, as always, the deification of Mary. 

I am fascinated by seeing works of art, architecture and household artifacts from centuries ago; it helps put together in my mind what life must have been like for people just like us, some of them my own ancestors. Museums help us understand what life was like hundreds of years ago and how our predecessors found their way through our same world.

The week I was with the Peterschmitts also gave me the opportunity to participate in the first of two meetings I was able to attend of French Mennonite leaders. On May 1^st I went with Jean to a meeting of about 60 pastors, deacons and elders who came from all over northeastern France, where most of the Mennonite congregations are found. The subject of the meeting was to address the need for intergenerational fellowship in the congregations.  Inter-generationally friendly congregations will be healthy because we need to bring the wisdom, historical perspective and stabilizing gifts of the mature generations together with the energy, openness and vision of the more youthful.

As the group processed this issue it was encouraging to see the faithfulness of people of our own family of faith living in a profoundly secular, post-Christian culture. They are a vibrant group with some wonderful leaders living out Kingdom values in a society that for the most part has concluded that God doesn’t even exist.

I have interacted with these people for nearly 25 years now, giving me some perspective on how they have transitioned into the next generation of Christian community and witness in their context. I am encouraged by what I see.

North to Wissembourg

Two days later I took a train north about 75 miles to visit the Hege family in the area of Wissembourg. I met the Hege family through Mennonite Your Way in 1990. I have visited them several times since on my bike tours through France. Moreover, one of the sisters, Erika Shirk, is part of my home congregation in New Holland, Pa.

My hosts were Theo and Suzie Hege. Theo has long held positions in the French Mennonite church and he was a pioneer in the nearby Monte des Oiseau home just outside Wissembourg. It started out as a children’s home after World War II but gradually evolved into a home for seriously handicapped persons of all ages. It is one of a series of handicap care centers or ‘foyers’ the Mennonites operate in France.

During my three days in Wissembourg I was able to spend one day with Theo’s brother, Rene. He lives on the Hege family farm, ‘Schaffbusch’, in the community of Geisberg just out of Wissembourg. Rene and his wife, Liddi, in their early 80’s share the large, not quite a chateau, farmhouse with two more generations of the Hege family. John Mark, Rene’s son is the main operator of the farm. He raises baby chicks from hatch till just before they begin laying. Currently the long chicken houses hold 750,000 (!) birds.

St. Genis-Pouilly; Pay Gex

The second of these meetings with French Mennonite leaders transitioned me to my next host family, Eric and Bridgett Muller who live near Geneva, Switzerland but still in France. I was friends with Eric’s parents many years ago. I wasn’t long into my visit with Eric and Bridgett until I learned of the death of his brother, Didier, in 2010, another dear friend of mine who hosted me on several of my bike tours in Europe back in the 1990’s.

The few days I was with Eric and Bridgett provided the opportunity to reconnect with Guy Zbinden who was a trainee with us back in the late 1980’s.  Now in his 40’s, Guy and Natalie are the parents of 3 children ages 11- 15. They both have jobs in Geneva, he is a research coordinator for a major drug firm and she is in human resources at a small enterprise.

Guy’s parents, Eric and Pierette visited us in Oregon while Guy was with us. I have visited them most times when I travel in Europe. As usual, Eric took me to their high Jura cattle pasture hundreds of meters above Geneva where he boards horses and cows over the summer months. There were still patches of receding snow banks up there. As the snow banks melt, tiny snow-drift flowers spring up into bloom the very next day.

I was in that community over Sunday and attended the service at the Mennonite congregation in St. Genie-Pouilly. The congregation uses an abandoned Reformed meetinghouse which they are negotiating to purchase so they can build a larger meetinghouse. We heard a great message on God’s love and justice.

That Sunday was the second round of ‘le Presidentiel’ with Socialist party, Mr. Hollande the winner much to the disappointment of most of my host families.

After four days with the Mullers it was time to say good-bye and Eric took me to meet an early morning train in Bellegarde, heading south and east into ‘la France Profond’.

Going British in the south of France

After traveling most of the day I arrived in Toulouse where I took a bus to the village of Guitalens to spend several days with my friends, Chris and Viviene Lawton. Chris and Viviene have joined thousands of British retirees who have purchased a second home in southern France where they exchange the chilly, windy and wet British Isles for sunny Mediterranean climes. Not at all a bad idea.

I spent ten days with them and for most of that time we were joined by another couple, Micah and Chris, also British and serving as trustees to the mission of my friends, Roger and Rachel Sambou. Roger and Rachel live in Bourofaye near Ziguinchor. I cooperate with their mission and it is they who gave land where I have built my house in Bourofaye.

The five of us had a great time feasting on a schmeck combination of English-French cuisine, swapping Africa stories and enjoying the ambient French countryside. The Lawtons live in a rustic 1729 farmhouse that has been tastefully modernized yet carefully preserves the sturdy feel of the heavy post and beam construction of the era.

An even greater blessing is how the Lawtons have dedicated their home for ministry to missionaries just needing a comfortable refuge from the trials and tribulations of the mission field. Their friendship, generosity and hospitality were definitely a balm to my soul.

I  had time for biking and hiking around the hills and vales of rural Tarn, quiet time for writing, reflection and vision building, fellowship with other disciples of Jesus, unlimited access to wifi and gourmet food. What more is there?

Chris and I spent a day in Toulouse visiting sites of historic and cultural interest. He has lived in the area several years now, has a broad interest in topics of history, Christian faith and culture. His educational background is a PhD in Swedish literature and he is well versed in most any topic you want to talk about. He makes a great tour guide.

One of my favorite tourist things is to visit ancient places of Christian worship. In Toulouse there are three major cathedrals, all flowering during the medieval period but having their foundations even centuries before that. It is awesome to be at a geographical spot that has been a place of Christian worship for sixteen centuries. I’m not very pietistic but still within the cavernous stone edifices there is that awe of the ongoing church-temporal.

As I walk silently around inside these ancient ‘piles’ in awe at the mammoth pillars soaring up fifty feet holding aloft thousands of tons of rib vaulted roof, I wonder about the faith of Christians of centuries past who walked and worshiped over these very stone pavers. How did they perceive of God, where did they think He was, what was their relationship with Him like, in what ways did they understand His presence?  What did they know about Jesus?  Did he make any difference in their lives, was he in some way a model for them or was he just a mechanistic someone preparing them for a life beyond this one?

At the cathedral of St. Sernin we went down into the ‘crypt’. The crypt is a vast cavern under the main altar (the apse) at the east end of the church.  Around the altar area there is a circular hallway known as an ambulatory. Off the ambulatory are numerous chapels, each dedicated to a particular saint or famous person. Pilgrims can make a circuit to the chapels asking the saints to intercede on their behalf in the particular area of the saint’s specialty.

The crypt is a series of chapels each containing relics of a particular saint: a bit of hair, a bone or their ashes in an enameled or gold plated lunch box looking container called a reliquary. Depending on one’s problem or needs you stop before the reliquary of the saint you think has power to intercede for you. One chapel will likely have a reliquary with a splinter from the Real Cross.

Back in the real world…One of my days with the Lawtons they took me too visit Jeanne Hergott, the widow of Jacques Hergott, my old friends from St. Livrade whom I have visited nearly every time I have been in France. Jacques died in 2009 and Jeanne has moved into town off their farm. It was sad to see her without Jacques, her companion of 60 years; they were such a great couple. She went through the long story of his demise including how she held him in her arms as he took his last breath.

My ten days with the Lawton’s ended the Monday morning Chris took me to Toulouse to catch the early train headed for Basel, Switzerland and a week with the Mennonite World Conference general council session.

Switzerland and Mennonite World Conference

You know you’ve left France for Switzerland simply by walking through the Basel train station. Basel sits on the border between France and Switzerland and when you get off the train and walk into the station you are still in France. As you walk through the Gare (station) for the first 50’ the floors are dirty, paint is peeling off the walls and the lighting is hazy.

But turn the corner into the next corridor and suddenly the place is alive with color, activity, brilliantly lit boutiques, spotlessly tiled floors and people chattering German as they walk quickly to catch the next connecting train. What happened? Well, you just departed from France and arrived in Switzerland.

The Swiss, especially the Swiss-Germans are obsessed with making life flawlessly perfect: the click of the precision fit door latches; trains that start moving at the precise second they are scheduled to leave the station; moisture/odor sensitive exhaust fans that start and stop without your intervention; conveniently located recycle centers; no plastic bags unless you ask for one and on and on. Life is a constant, well-ordered, sanitized, correct, quality controlled way of doing things. Don’t ask questions; just follow the way things are planned and all turns out perfect!

I came to Switzerland to participate in the delegate sessions of Mennonite World Conference, a meeting that happens mid-way between the every 6 years, every- body’s-invited-confab. I’m not a delegate, but provision was made for those of us who wanted to be only observers.

I came because it is just so neat to be with people who believe more or less the way I do, coming from 60 countries on 5 continents. It’s a real treat to come from the north, the south, the east and the west and sit down together around the Lord’s Table.  I came especially rub shoulders with the brothers & sisters from Africa.

The Africans delegates, coming from Mennonite congregations in some 20 African countries, are an especially joyful, high energy crowd. If it can be assumed their delegates are a cross section of their leadership, they are a with-it, brilliant lot. As I was with them I caught a vision for the near future when the brothers and sisters of the Gambia-Guinea Bissau fellowships will be fitting right in with these folks.

Sometime in the next months the Mennos from Gambia, Senegal & Guinea Bissau, as a circle of Anabaptist churches, will apply to become official participants in Mennonite World Conference.

For the week in Switzerland I had lodging on the Bienenberg Bible School campus. Bienenberg is a theological training center- Bible school operated by the European Mennonite community. The first time I visited Bienenberg was 54 years ago when they were just getting started and I was a Paxboy on my way to a two year assignment in North Africa.

The campus was the site of a grand old resort overlooking the town of Liestal. It has been developed into a high quality, (as you would expect from the Swiss) Anabaptist oriented training center. Unfortunately, enrollment has fallen off and they are experiencing hard times. They are currently staying afloat by maintaining the campus as a hotel and convention facility along with the small student body.  The room price was clearly out of my budget but nevertheless, I made my small contribution, helping them in their straightened circumstances.

Saturday, May 26^th with the conference behind me, I walked back over to France in the Basel bahnhof, happy to exchange regimented, prim and too cute Switzerland for the pedestrian liberty, equality and fraternity of France.

Les Vosages Mountains; Lorraine

Less than one hour train travel, about 75 miles west of Basel took me to my last hosts of this great vacation: Philippe and Christine Thomas. I got in touch with the Thomas’s thru the MYW directory. Heading west out of Strasbourg the tracks begin to climb up out of the agriculturally rich Rhine valley to the forested hillsides of the Vosages.  The Thomas’s live in the photogenic village of Lutzelbourg, deep in the mountains and forests of Lorraine. Lutzelbourg sits on the banks of a canal running from Strasbourg to Metz, close to where the canal crests at the top of the Vosages. Thru the mountains about every ¼ mile there are locks to lift the boats up and over.

Until the railroads came through a century ago the canals were the main means of overland transportation. Today most of the canals of France have been preserved and they form a network for pleasure craft waterways along with paved bike paths alongside where men, horses or small engines used to tow freight.

Philippe and Christine’s red sandstone house is on the canal banks of the carefully controlled waterway as it meanders thru Lutzelbourg. Vacationers glide smoothly and leisurely past the front porch powered by a barely audible onboard motor.

Highlights of my five days in Lutzelbourg included- morning fresh croissants from the patisserie on the other side of the canal; hiking up the mountain east of town to ramble among the ruins of an 11^th century castle; riding up the canal to watch the incline lifting boats over the last 200 feet of elevation at the mountain crest; going the other direction along the canal towpath to the medieval town of Saverne; attending church at Sarrebourg and meeting one of my Reschley shirttail cousins; having a tourist apartment to myself and finally: listening to Christine’s nonstop, melodic French chatter. Lutzelbourg: what a sweet way to end a great vacation!

Thursday, the last day of May, found me at the Lutzelbourg gare ready to board the 7:21 am train for Charles DeGaulle airport to catch the evening flight to Dakar.

Reflections on my travels

Things that went right>

I was able to visit with many of my old friends.

I got acquainted with numerous n neat folks.
The food was incredibly good. The hospitality was always gracious.
Train & plane travel came off without a hitch.
I got bunches of really great photos that soon I hope to post on facebook.
I was able to be in regular phone or email contact with the people at EMM, Guinea Bissau, plus family and friends.
I found time for reading, reflection, planning & writing.
Got in touch with several helpful resources for the work ahead in Africa.

Faux pas that didn’t happen<   (But there were some close calls)

Spill jam on my shirt.

Trip over anyone’s dog
Leave my camera or shaver behind
Get on the wrong train
Run out of money
Freeze to death

I will close out by reviewing a book one of my hosts recommended written by the Anglican theologian N A Wright, the title- Simply Jesus, why Christianity makes sense. The fact that I review it here means that I am highly recommending it to everyone as next on your reading list.

The author focuses on Jesus as God’s Messiah, how he became Messiah, his vocation as Messiah and why and how all that is important to us his followers. The central reference for the study is ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’ His key concept is that Jesus inaugurated God’s kingdom on earth and his followers join him in the unfolding of kingdom realities. God’s kingdom is prefigured in the Exodus experience as the people of God are brought together under the new Moses; they are called to be servants of God living out the in-breaking of the kingdom under the Lordship of Messiah Jesus, the new living Temple.

The author’s premise is that neither heaven nor salvation are something far away and removed from us for some future time, but they are the here and now, the substance of what it means to be Christian. “Israel’s God established a new community, a people in whom the Old Testament promises would be fulfilled, in whom the living God would come to dwell as in the Temple, revealing His glory to the world.”

This book is important in helping us put together a cogent, Bible based Christology, it helps us to realize the important part we play as agents of the here and now Kingdom of God and it helps in formulating mission. The book may step on some toes but it will go far in bringing sanity to the real meaning of what it is to be a follower of Jesus. It seems to me there is a good bit of confusion among believers where and what the Kingdom of God is esp. in the U.S. where we are all tangled up in attempting to package conservative politics together in a box with God’s Kingdom. This book can bring some welcomed correction to that question (heresy).

Some quotes from the book:

“Jesus leads the way to a new vocation. Instead of the frantic pressure to defend the identity of people, land and Temple (the way Jews do, and some Christians, likewise,) Jesus followers are, through the renewal of hearts and lives, [and community] to recover the initial vision of being a royal priesthood for the whole world, which is the Messiah’s inheritance and now will become theirs as well.”

“The presence of Israel’s God is no longer in the pillar of fire, no longer in a wilderness tabernacle or in an ornate stone and timber Temple, but in and as a Man, The Man, the Image bearer, Jesus himself. This is where the glory of God is revealed so that all flesh may see it together.”

“Creator God had finally come in person to break the tyrant’s weapon (death) and inaugurate the new world in which the original purpose of creation would be fulfilled after all. That is what the early Christians believed was going on when they met Jesus, very much alive again and appearing to be equally at home in ‘heaven’ where they couldn’t see him and on ‘earth’ where they could. God’s kingdom is now launched, and launched in power and glory, on earth as in heaven.”

Beryl Forrester

June 1, 2012