Eglise Saint-Sulpice « cookiecrumbstoliveby

“The life of the body is the soul;
the life of the soul is God.”
St. Anthony of Padua

(Saint-Sulpice, Paris, France / Julie Cook / 2018)

I don’t cry…often.

Well, there are some commercials that can get me to shed a tear or two.

The Toyota commercial that ran during Christmas with the mom
going off the bring her husband home while the son was busy enlisting the
help of all his friends in the neighborhood to make a row
of snowmen, lining the road up to their house, all saluting his returning veteran dad…

The camera pans to the dad who sees the saluting snowmen.
The mom pulls into the driveway where the snowmen are saluting alongside a saluting son.
The dad gets out of the car, stops to salute his son before engulfing him in his arms…

See…
tears as I type.

That is the kind of commercial that “gets me”

Other than that, I’m pretty stoic.

I cry usually when I am totally and utterly exasperated or when I’m really really sick.

Let us recall my little predicament from last week.

Last week I had a root canal that went awry….not away but awry.

Over the weekend, the endodontist called in a different antibiotic after the
original prescription appeared not to be working.

Clindamycin.

I took the first pill Saturday.
That evening after showering, I noticed I was itching on my abdomen and noticed a
red blotchiness.
Hummmm.

I took the next dose right before bed.

By morning’s first light, I looked like a freshly boiled lobster being pulled hot from the pot.

From head to toe, front to back… I was a giant red itchy rash.
And my root canal tooth…well it was throbbing so badly that I started scouring
the house for a pair of pliers.

We went to breakfast with our son and daughter-n-law and the Mayor.
I didn’t feel much like eating but I’ll never miss being with the Mayor.
My face was red as a beet but given our location, my daughter-n-law slyly noted
folks will just think you’ve had a facial peel.

Calls to the endodontist, the clindamycin was quickly discontinued.
Up the Motrin, use the pain meds, and get some Benadryl to counter the drug reaction.

I don’t usually take Benadryl but I took one and then dozed off during the
poor play calling against the Saints.

Which from what I hear was best.

I tried writing my post for the following day but it was as if I had been drugged…
I couldn’t type out one word without it being a mishmash of letters.

I dozed some more.

My daughter-n-law text asking how I felt.
I sent back a scathing text of woe…but somehow I sent it to the endodontist instead of my
daughter-n-law…

Oooops

Profuse apologies followed but at least he understood, in no uncertain terms,
that I was in a bad way.

I dozed again.

The Saints lost, the Patriots won, I was red, itching and had a throbbing head.
Sunday was tough.

So back to the notion of crying.

This morning I felt so bad, I had had so many meds that were meant to help…
feeling so so bad such that I almost passed out, twice.

I fell onto the bed and broke down in tears.
Tears of frustration and hurting, tears of feeling bad and tears of knowing
how busy our lives are soon to be while thinking that I need to be 100%.

Typical mom thinking.

My husband is not used to this.

I am the little rock.
I am the chief caregiver.
I am the take charge and ‘it’s time to get rolling’ member of the family.

And so…he did what most husbands do when given such a predicament, he panicked.

“We’re going to the ER” he exclaimed.

Yet his better option appeared to simply pace the floor back and forth in front of me—
which in turn was making me a nervous wreck.

Crying and husbands, a true difficulty.

I told him I’d just call the doctor when the office opened.

I called both my doctor and then the endodontist.

My doctor could see me at 10:45
The other at 2 PM

When the nurse called me back, with one look, she said what we always say down here
in the South when things are bad…
“Bless your heart”

The doctor walked in…”Oh my gosh!! Bless your heart!!! You ARE a red mess!”

I could only muster a feeble “help me…”

She countered with a resounding “You need a good slug of steroids.”

She proceeded with two shots–steroids and B-12— as my B-12 levels were way low
according to last week’s labs.
Then there was a prescription for oral steroids.

Next, it was off to the endodontist’s office.

He proceeded to do a redo root canal.
Working basically backward…undoing what he did then
redoing it all over again.

As I type, the novocaine is still lingering.
The throbbing remains at bay.
The steroids have kicked in.
The red is slowly dissipating as the itching is lessening.
There is indeed a small ray of sunshine…

No, literally the sun is shining… we haven’t seen it in a while.
So that’s a good thing.

But this tale is really just a tale of distraction.
A distraction from the pressing matters that need addressing.

Issues like some young boys from a Catholic school who have become the
latest fodder for all things social media and wrongful reporting.

Issues like the obvious hypnotizing from the new Marxist left of the general populace.

Issues like showing any support for the current sitting president equating to hate.

Issues like a fetus being considered not a human being.

Issues like the billboard that I recently caught while buzzing down the interstate at warp speed
that read:
“IN THE BEGINNING, GOD CREATED.
(Call xxx-xxx-xxxx for more information)

But that’s it right?
That’s the bottom line.

God Created.

End of sentence.

And so now the question remains, what shall we do with the stewardship we have been
given over that creating?

That is the real question and the real issue…

So as soon as things clear up on this end, we’ll get back to what’s really the issue at hand.

God Created.

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.
1 Colossians 1:16

(a pigeon rests on a statue placed above the ridge of the Assumption chapel at the corner
of Garancière street and Palatine street, behind the Saint-Sulpice church. / Julie Cook / 2018)

Back in the summer, back when the beach was consuming so many of our minds,
I offered a post featuring some shots I’d taken of some pelicans I’d seen while enjoying
our summer trip to the panhandle of Florida.

Nothing says beach and ocean like seeing a brown pelican sitting on an old weathered pier or that
of a formation of these gangly birds gliding effortlessly just above the surf…

Days such as today…days that are damp, windy, overcast and grey quickly push our thoughts
to warmer sunnier days. This as we are just entering into our darker colder days of the year.

I noted in that previous post how much, for reasons unknown, that I love pelicans…
They are my favorite birds oddly enough.

Birds that eat whole fish and hold them in their gullets for later…
my husband calls them nasty birds while I call them resourceful.

My previous post touched on the seemingly odd relationship pelicans have had in Christian lore
and tradition.

I did a little research and offered a bit of teaching from the information that I had gleaned…
The premise was that during times of famine, mother pelicans have been known to pluck their own
breasts until they bled in order to offer their own blood to their hungry babies…
offering life-giving sustenance.

A direct reference to Christ who offers His own blood for our spiritual hunger and
our own salvation.

So recently when visiting Paris, we were staying at a small hotel just outside of
the Luxembourg Gardens.

(just a tiny area of the Luxembourg Gardens with a shot of the Senate building behind/
Julie Cook / Paris, France / 2018)

This boutique hotel sits in the shadow of the second largest church in Paris,
Eglise Saint-Sulpice.

(Eglise Saint-Sulpice / Julie Cook / Paris, France / 2018)

I happen to really love this church as it is not Notre Dame.

(Notre Dame / Julie Cook / Paris, France / 2018)

It is not consumed by crowds and tourists.

It was the anchor to the neighborhood my aunt and I called home for a couple of
days about 8 years ago and the same anchor to the same neighborhood my husband and I called
home more recently….the Germain-des-Prés, Odéon of the 6th arrondissement.

Entering this historic building is definitly otherworldly.

It’s like walking into an ancient, silent and dark crevasse…as well as
stepping back into a far removed time…think pre-Revolution and pre-Bonaparte.
Yet the Revolution did hinder the finishing of the facade.

The original church was constructed in the 13th century but the building we see
today dates to the early 1600’s—finally being completed in the late 18th century.
Yet it suffered, as did so many in Paris, during the Revolution.

There are some famous paintings by Eugene Delacroix…

Along with some masterful statues and some simple but lovely stain glass…

Along with the scars from living through the days of a revolution down to
simple neglect and decay…

Add of course the massive and impressive organ

And yet there is reverence…
There is a deep and mystical yearning by many who come here…
those who come curious or those who come seeking.

They come to sit,
to pray,
to sleep,
to hide,
to rest,
to wander,
to wonder…

And so it was when I was actually outside on a side street…
walking alongside the perimeter of this massive hulking building that I looked up
and actually saw it…
the mother pelican sitting atop a spire of a side chapel.

The same imagery that came to mind back in July…and here it was again in September.
Found not at the beach and not in some warm tropical locale but rather in the midst
of a massively large city whose people are often too busy to glance upward albeit toward
their rather famous tower…

And yet here it was…as always, a powerful reminder of sacrifice.
Life, death, redemption, and salvation…

(all photos by Julie Cook / Paris, France / 2018)