Wild Times at Wild Goose Festival

Praying with the Psalmists, Travel 1

I’m writing this from a hotel room in Statesville, North Carolina, having left Wild Goose Festival for the day – because a crazy storm swept through. The Festival is at a campground, and most of the venues are big tents. I didn’t see any tent blow over, but many of the contents of tents went flying.

This gives me time to write up my experience of the festival. There’s still a half-day left tomorrow, but I’m going to talk about what I’ve experienced so far.

And I’ll start with the way the day ended. I was leading an “experience” in the Writer’s Workshop tent when the storm hit. About ten people had come (Yay! My first time, so I wasn’t sure anyone would come.), and I was taking them through writing their own psalms of lament.

We had just finished writing the fourth part, the Entreaty – where, after you’ve done your complaining, you ask God to act. Then the storm hit! So perhaps somebody prayed too hard? 😀

I’m very thankful that I got to do most of the session – the rest of the events for the afternoon got cancelled. However, I’m bummed that we didn’t get a chance for people to read the laments they’d written. If anyone who was at the session finds this post – I’d love for you to post your lament in the comments!

I did get some nice comments among the participants, but we were mostly fleeing at the end! (I felt guilty that I wasn’t a little more helpful in packing stuff up. I got kind of frantic in the storm and got to a place with a wooden roof.) I’d been looking forward to hearing more from them, but anyway, I’m glad I got to do it at all.

Now let’s back up to the rest of the conference. It’s been amazing. HOT, but amazing. (Another theory is that someone prayed a little too hard that it would cool down!)

I’ve met some authors whose books I love. Diana Butler Bass, Frank Schaeffer, Richard Beck (I’m in the middle of his new book), Kristen Du Mez (I’m in the middle of her first book and have preordered her new book), and Billie and Paul Hoard. I’ve been soaking up thoughts about being a person of faith in today’s world, surrounded by like-minded people. I’ve met beautiful people when eating, when in line, when riding on the shuttles. I attended a pre-conference on prayer from an indigenous practitioner’s perspective that opened my heart.

Today some authors I’d hoped to meet were among the sessions that got cancelled. But hey, that’s a lot right there.

There was one session, though, that rocked my world and is sending me back to reading the Gospel of John. I want to talk about that.

It was presented by Diana Butler Bass and Elizabeth Schrader Polczer, both in academia (though Libbie was simply a singer before she met Diana).

It started for Libbie when she was researching for a song about Mary Magdalene. She looked at the earliest manuscript of the gospel of John, which is the gospel that has the most to say about Mary Magdalene. The manuscript is from the Second Century CE. She saw in that manuscript that in John 11, someone had crossed out the end of the name Mary and inserted a theta, changing it to Martha.

Long story short, she did lots and lots more research, ultimately getting a PhD. She found much, much more evidence, both from manuscripts and from writings of the church fathers, that an earlier story of the raising of Lazarus has him with only one sister, Mary. And this Mary, in the book of John, is likely Mary Magdalene, the same one who was the first witness to Jesus’ resurrection.

Why would someone have added a sister? Mary and Martha are also mentioned in the book of Luke, but there is no mention that they have a brother, and they don’t live in Bethany. But “Martha” in John 11 makes a confession of faith, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.” In the other gospels, the only one to make a confession is Simon, who is given the name Peter, the Rock.

If it was really Mary Magdalene who made the confession, then Diana pointed out that in the book of John Mary does the five tasks of the church: She served Jesus, confessed Jesus, anointed Jesus, witnessed Jesus, and proclaimed Jesus.

And that brings me to another tidbit from Libbie’s research. It turns out, there was no village called Magdala in ancient times. The current site people visit had a different name and was associated with her centuries later to give pilgrims a place to visit. The most likely meaning of Mary Magdalene is Mary the Tower – kind of like Simon the Rock.

This rocked my world. I’m from a quirky background, and one of the quirks was that my parents paid me to memorize Scripture. The book of John was one of the first books I memorized, around the time I was in eighth grade. And John is interesting. Because Mary (and Martha) and Lazarus become super prominent figures in John 11 and 12 and then disappear. And Mary Magdalene is super important at the Crucifixion and then especially at the tomb when she is the first to see the risen Christ – but she kind of comes out of nowhere.

What if those Marys are the same person? Suddenly, John becomes a much more unified book. And a woman is a central figure.

And I’m going to be sitting with that.

Here’s an article about Libbie’s research.

Her website is elizabethschrader.com. Do check out her credentials. Her research is getting footnotes added to the Jewish Annotated New Testament as well as the authoritative edition of the Greek New Testament, published in Germany. (I forget the name; I’m not a seminary student.) I didn’t go over how her research had these things coming up over and over in early writings. This isn’t just some crackpot theory, but has solid evidence.

So that’s one of the things that will be haunting me in a good way from Wild Goose Festival. And there’s still a morning to come.

Edited to add: I talked with someone who’d been there after the storm. He said some tents did get blown away. That there was even a not-too-faraway tornado. I did see a fallen tree blocking a dirt road on the way off the property. However, as far as we know, no one was hurt.

Why I Still Love the Bible

Musings 2

Why I Still Love the Bible

or

My Unusual Journey toward Progressivism

Photo of Sondra Eklund with Monet's painting of daisies behind her.

I’m attending Wild Goose Festival next week. Wild Goose Festival is “a transformational community grounded in faith-inspired social justice.” The organizers say about it:

We are rooted in progressive christianity. For us this means moving beyond belief to center ourselves in justice and compassion, to walk toward those in need and to solidarity with the marginalized and the oppressed, acknowledging our own privilege and actively working to use our power to alleviate suffering and achieve wholeness, and striving to create a world that works for all.

This description is where I’d like to say I am. I’m presenting an “experience” there in the Writing tent, where I will lead participants in writing their own psalms of lament. I’ve got a book about writing your own psalms, which my agent is seeking a publisher for. And all this is steeped in Scripture.

So how does something so steeped in Scripture fit with progressive Christianity?

I think of myself as an exvangelical – but I still love the Bible deeply. Are those things compatible? I want to describe how it happened.

In fact, I believe wholeheartedly that it’s because of my love for the Bible that I have left evangelicalism. They planted the seeds of their own destruction, so to speak.

Because yes, what got me started loving the Bible was from very performative evangelical Christianity – memorizing Scripture.

My Mom got the idea from Bill Gothard’s seminars. First, she encouraged us kids to memorize Scripture, then she started paying us. Then it got systematized to ten cents per verse if we recited an entire chapter word perfect. But the real money was made in reviewing. If we waited a month, we could recite a chapter we’d done before for five cents per verse. This was hard the second and third times, but after a bit, it turns out that repeated memorization makes it stick in your mind for good. There was a summer when I wanted to earn money for a trip, and I didn’t actually earn enough, but I made sixty dollars from memorizing. And the Bible got into my heart.

Memorizing the Bible made me love it. To this day, I spend ten minutes per day most days memorizing Scripture. I’ve memorized the entire New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, and some other books. So I do feel like I know what the Bible says.

One of the first ways I remember that making me challenge what I was taught was from the story of the blind man in John 9. I think I was in eighth grade when I first memorized it. And even so young, I noticed that the Jewish leaders proved from Scripture – their interpretation of it, anyway – that Jesus was not from God. They said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”

But the blind man answered that he didn’t know anything about that. “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know: I was blind, but now I see.”

And so I learned to always take it with a grain of salt what people said they could prove from Scripture.

The next thing I remember challenging was politics. I went to a couple of churches that passed out scorecards from “The Christian Coalition” or “Focus on the Family” that claimed to rate congresspeople on how “biblical” their votes were. But wait a minute! How can they say it’s “Biblical” to vote against gun control (for example)? Isn’t “Thou shalt not kill” in the Bible? When Focus on the Family rated congresspeople lower for supporting the Family and Medical Leave Act (I think they said it was bad for small businesses.), I couldn’t take the hypocrisy anymore. My first votes as an eighteen-year-old were for Republicans, following my family. But that didn’t last long, and calling things “biblical” or “Christian” that Christians and Bible scholars had plenty of reason to disagree about – that drove me in the other direction. The thing is: I knew the Bible. And I knew that using the Bible to support political positions depends strongly on how you interpret it. Which drove me harder to thinking for myself, studying the issues for myself, and searching the Scriptures for myself.

Later, in the 1990s, reading sermons of George MacDonald, a 19-Century Scottish preacher who clearly loved the Lord and knew the Scriptures, it dawned on me that he believed that God will save everyone, that hell is not forever, that God’s punishment is always restorative. I wondered how he could believe that when he knew the Scripture so well. So I read through the New Testament, asking if it could be interpreted that way. Remember, these are passages I had memorized and knew well. I was surprised to realize that they could be interpreted that God will save everyone. In fact, with many passages, it seemed like the plain interpretation. Romans 5 – “As in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive.” Philippians 2 – “At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” I looked up places where the word “All” appears and found many more verses supporting this view.

And there’s much more to say about that. I’ve got a whole page of reviews of books on Universalism that I found later. The reason I bring it up here is this is the first significant way my beliefs changed from what I was taught growing up. And I came to believe it from reading the Bible for myself, with guidance from George MacDonald.

I thought I could quietly believe that all will be saved and continue attending evangelical churches. I didn’t want people to worry about my salvation, so I didn’t talk about it much. But I had accepted Jesus in my heart, so I knew I was still saved even by their definition. When I moved to Virginia after my husband left me, I joined a church and for full disclosure told the pastor my beliefs but that I wouldn’t stir up conflict.

Well, that was only the beginning of my free thinking. It turned out, George MacDonald also thought differently about the atoning work of Christ. That the idea that Jesus has to save us from God is monstrous. I did more reading and began to agree with him, and then found myself picking at the sermons my pastor preached, finding things I didn’t agree with. It’s about God’s love, more than about our sin. God is not angry with us! We’re the ones who need to be reconciled to God, not the other way around.

Over the years, I began to have some gay friends and coworkers, so I began to wonder about the view I’d always been taught that this is wrong, which did make sense to me from my knowledge of Scripture. To give them credit, it was when my pastor did a series of sermons on political issues that my views began to change. I cringed when I heard about the series, but when it happened, they really did present both sides of the issues and made it clear that on all of them, Christians could disagree. One week, they talked about same-sex marriage (this was before it was legal). Even though the pastor clearly didn’t agree with it, he told the case that people make to say that same-sex relationships are not inherently sinful. That was enough for me! By then I knew enough gay people that I could no longer believe they’d chosen to be gay. And I also didn’t believe a loving God would create them that way and expect them to be celibate their whole lives. Further reading helped me better understand that this, too, is a matter of interpretation.

When Caitlyn Jenner came out as transgender, I didn’t think it had anything to do with me, but I thought it through. Trust me, there is nothing in the Bible against transgender people. Yes, the Bible says God made us male and female, but isn’t that what transgender people are saying? And if physically intersex people exist, then isn’t it possible that gender in ones brain can also be different from the typical? But how can someone different from the person themselves possibly say that they know best what gender the person is?

And then my adult child came out as transgender. So it got very personal.

I was glad I’d already thought it through. If she says she is female, as far as I’m concerned, she is female.

But then my church built its own building – and decided to add a “Christian Living Statement” to its Constitution. Among other things, the “Christian Living Statement” says that LGBTQ people are sinning.

I tried to advocate against the change. I wrote a whole blog series, Transcending, about why I think churches should support transgender people. And notice that my reasons are steeped in Scripture. I can understand where they’re getting the case against gay marriage, but I do not agree there is any Scriptural basis for condemning transgender people.

But I felt like I was silenced. At the very least, my voice was minimized. The pastor did offer to let me meet with the elders, and that was when I realized that I was no longer comfortable with the church having a male-only elder board. (The church did not allow women to be pastors or elders.)

So that was when I switched to a United Methodist church. On my first day at the new church, I greeted the man who’d sat next to me. I said I’d left my former church because I have a transgender daughter, and he said, “I do, too!” Yes, I’d found the right place.

Not only does the new church have a choir – but it turns out their views on the atonement are much closer in alignment with mine. And I’m not considered a heretic for believing hell is not forever! It’s delightful to have stopped noticing things in every sermon that I disagree with.

So, yes, I still love Scripture. I’m very aware that you can interpret it different ways, but I like leaning toward the ways that emphasize God’s love.

And then, when the pandemic hit, I thought I’d use the time to write a book. It was coming off of my time on the Newbery committee, so I needed to work on something completely different from children’s books. So I wrote Praying with the Psalmists. Something that bothers me in evangelical teaching is when people act like you have to put on a happy face to come before God. From memorizing Psalms, I knew that’s simply not true. The goal of the book is to show you how to write your own psalms. And I tell my story as I go through the ten types of psalms, from Psalms of Trust that were helpful when my husband left me to Laments when I lost my job to Psalms of Thanksgiving when I survived a stroke.

It’s taken time since writing it to find a publisher. I now have an agent working on my behalf, so I’m hoping it will happen. But meanwhile, I started doing workshops taking people through the parts of a Lament to write their own laments. Next week at Wild Goose Festival!

I don’t think I’m the only one who loves the Psalms – and I hope that love will spread.

Worthy of Love

Praying with the Psalmists, Psalms of Praise 0

Not long ago, after I’d gotten home from vacation, a song came on Christian radio, and the host said, “That’s so true!” The line of the chorus said, “I’m not loved because I’m worthy; I’m loved because You’re good.”

And that made me burn to say:

NO! That is wrong! You are, you are, you are worthy of love!

The fact is, you and I and all humanity were made in God’s image.

I’m reminded of a saying from when I was in high school: “God don’t make no junk!”

As it happened, a string of four Sonderquotes I posted after I heard that song also affirmed that we’re worthy, we’re loved, we’re delighted in. The one above is from Maggie Smith.

Sharon Baker points out that God loves all humankind.

Gregory Boyle affirms often in his writings that God not only loves us, God delights in us.

And I think I like how Madeleine L’Engle puts it best. Because being worthy of love isn’t about what we do. So we can’t do something that makes us unworthy of love.

As Madeleine L’Engle puts it, “God loves us in our complex isness.”

I have a lot of thoughts on this, so let me try to put them into a psalm of praise:

Praise for God’s Unfailing Love

Give thanks to our Maker,
for God is good.
God’s love endures forever.

I’ve been taught that
You can’t look on sin,
but Bradley Jersak points out
that Jesus ate and drank with sinners.
And Jesus came to show us what God is like,
so God can delight in us
even if we aren’t perfect.

I’ve also been taught that
God can only love us because
when God looks at us, God sees Jesus.
But George MacDonald writes vehemently against that idea.

When You see us, God Who Sees,
You see us clearly,
and yet You love us.

Lorna Byrne says that when You create us,
You put a small spark of Yourself inside us,
and that spark is our soul.

I think that’s what theological types call
the Image of God.

She says that infants come into the world
as bundles of pure love.
Look at any newborn and say that isn’t so!

Now, I do believe that we hide Your image,
and we lock away our love.
But still, the spark is there.
And every one of us is worthy of love.

I also believe that You delight in our quirky uniqueness.
I choose to believe that my love for books and math and great blue herons
brings You joy.

Maker, You crafted each of us
as a unique expression of Your image
and being ourselves expresses Your creativity
each in a different way.

You love us as a parent loves a child,
even though the child is not perfect,
even though the child isn’t even always trying to do the right thing.
But Your faithful love delights in the child You’ve made,
the unique expression of Your image that we are.

Lord God, You love us because we’re worthy of love.
And You love us because You’re good.

Praise the Lord!

***

I’m still writing my own psalms as examples, hoping you will try it yourself. Check my website, prayingwiththepsalmists.com. You’ve got tips for what the different types of psalms include – and then links to my examples on this blog.

I’d love for you to try it and then post your own example in the comments!

What do you think? Do you dare to say, “I am worthy of love”? I believe with all my heart that you are!

***
Updated later that same night:

I’ve been reading through old Sonderquotes as part of #Sonderbooks25, my 25th anniversary of writing Sonderbooks. And this is what I had to learn when my husband left me – that I am still worthy of love.

This is summed up in the affirmation written by Steven Stosny that I posted on October 10, 2007. I think this affirmation may show up in all of his wonderful books.

I am worthy of respect, value, and compassion, whether or not I get them from others. If I don’t get them from others, it is necessary to feel more worthy, not less. It is necessary to affirm my own deep value as a unique person (a child of God). I respect and value myself. I have compassion for my hurt. I have compassion for the hurt of others. I trust myself to act in my best interests and in the best interests of loved ones.

Yes. I absorbed this message from him back in those early days I was learning to live on my own – and I fully believe that’s what enabled me to go on to live a happy and fulfilled life, even on my own. And why I reacted so strongly to that song!

Yes, yes, yes! I am worthy of love.

Epic France Trip – Post-Trip Reflections

Travel 0

Such a lovely trip!

It’s always good to do a little summing up.

Lessons learned:

Above all, putting on sunscreen for a day in the sun is good – BUT DON’T FORGET TO PUT SUNSCREEN ON YOUR FEET IF YOU LATER TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES!

I’m on Day 8 of the third worst sunburn of my life. (Having grown up in southern California before high-SPF sunscreen was available.) It’s only on the tops of my feet, so a very small area. It didn’t come with heatstroke. But it did come with blisters, and is a second-degree sunburn. I can’t abide the thought of wearing sandals with straps right across the painful area, so on my trip I wore shoes and socks, and it wasn’t too terrible – the shoes helped my feet not to move too much. Today I’m taking a shoeless day before I go back to work – can’t believe it’s still so painful on Day 8.

Next lesson: Pay attention when the advertising stresses the physical difficulty of an activity.

While the High Tides Tour in the bay at Mont Saint-Michel would have made the whole trip worth it, even if I hadn’t done anything else – the “Traditional Crossing” – walking 14 kilometers there and back across the bay barefoot – was perhaps overly ambitious. It was an awesome experience, but I maybe overestimated my abilities. (Still, I did make it! And wasn’t even the last person.)

Another lesson: If you purchase neoprene booties to wear when walking in the bay, wear them! And not only for the two-hour High Tides Tour, but also for the six-hour Traditional Crossing. That was a Very Good Idea. If only you had done it both times.

Another lesson: If you purchase new shoes because your sneakers are getting a little worn, again, follow your instincts. Sure, break them in a little ahead of time, but if I’d brought them, I might have been spared blisters.

Another lesson: Don’t trust the weather forecast! Especially if you’ll be gone more than a week. And above all, don’t gloat to your friends about how cool the weather’s going to be! The forecast said highs in the high 70s and low 80s. The reality was four days of highs over 100 degrees.

A more positive lesson: Spontaneously changing your plans to go to a place from a brochure at your hotel can be a very good idea. I loved the day I spent at the Botanical Garden in Bretagne more than the planned time at Monet’s House and Garden – because the weather was cooler and it was less crowded, and lots of peaceful wandering around a garden.

And another positive lesson: Doing something that sounds awesomely cool – like the High Tides Tour at Mont Saint-Michel – is totally worth it and leads to an experience you will remember the rest of your life!

It was a wonderful trip, despite heat and sunburn. I’m thinking in the future, I may be done with rent-my-own-car-and-jaunt-around-Europe trips, because I don’t really have things left on my bucket list – I’m happy to go where a tour group thinks there are good things to see.

But I’m thinking of the symbolic destination of the trip as the stop at the Abbaye de Royaumont.

I had a retreat there just after my husband told me he was filing for divorce, and it represented Hope and a Good Future. It was there that I thought about becoming a librarian and a writer both – and that has worked out wonderfully well twenty years later.

In fact, today the sermon at my church was from verses that were super important to me at that time twenty years ago, Isaiah 43:18-19:

Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.

When I was so sad about losing the life I’d had and all my dreams for the future – God did a new thing. And it has been good.

It does make me wonder what the next new thing is? I’m hoping that it will be becoming a published author!

But I do love that the pain has gone out of the memory of the divorce, and what’s left is simple joy in all that God has given me over these past twenty years.

And I do love that I can drive around Europe and enjoy seeing beautiful things I’d always wanted to see! That was also symbolic – that I have a rich, full, and interesting life of my own – and it is a gift from God.

Here are the individual posts from the trip:

Day 1 РMus̩e des Impressionnismes

Day 2 – High Tides at Mont Saint-Michel

Day 3 – Mont Saint-Michel and the Scriptorial

Day 4 – Parc Botanique de Haut Bretagne

Day 5 – Traditional Crossing of the Bay at Mont Saint-Michel

Day 6 – Driving from Mont Saint-Michel back to Giverny

Day 7 – Monet’s House and Garden

Day 8 – Étretat

Day 9 – Abbaye de Royaumont

Day 10 РCh̢teau de Chantilly

Epic France Trip РCh̢teau de Chantilly РDay 10

Travel 2

It’s my last full day in France, and today’s adventure was the Château de Chantilly!

Why’d I plan to go to this particular castle? Because it’s close to the airport for my last day’s drive, but also because my address (the post office) is Chantilly, Virginia, and I work at Chantilly Library, and it just seems fun. What’s more, I read a recent children’s book set in Chantilly during World War II, The Lions’ Run, by Sara Pennypacker. Also, I purchased a ticket for a Spectacle Equestre – an equestrian show!

The Spectacle was at the Grand Stables.

The original show time was 2:30, but because of the 105-degree forecast, they moved the time to 11:00 am, so that made it easy to start my day by finding my way to the castle, then to the Grand Stables, then to the Spectacle.

I think I misunderstood how much ahead I needed to be there, so I was the third person in line and got one of the best seats in the house.

The show was amazing. Besides the well-trained horses and lavish medieval costumes, there were some skilled acrobats. One lady did amazing feats in midair from two long pieces of fabric suspended from the ceiling. Another man did similar feats on a suspended ring. And he also did multiple acrobatics on running horses. (No photos allowed, but it was incredible.)

It was based on a medieval book about the seasons, but I didn’t need to really understand what was going on – was just amazed by the things the people and horses were doing.

Then I went through the Museum of the Living Horse, also located at the Grand Stables. I saw fascinating stuff, but was disappointed that the restaurant there was closed today.

I made my way toward the castle, and stopped in at an exhibit of paintings from a sister of Napoleon who was a ruler of Naples – but had to leave her paintings behind. And the exhibit rooms were air-conditioned! Which made me more than happy to browse.

Then came a lovely but hot walk through the castle grounds to the Château de Chantilly.

And it turned out the castle itself was a grand exhibit hall. I learned from a video that Ch̢teau de Chantilly has the second-largest art collection in France Рsecond only to the Louvre. (Who knew?) And those were air-conditioned, too! So I did plenty of wandering.

But alas! The restaurant at the castle was *also* closed for the day. By now, I was pretty sure I should eat. I was told there was another restaurant if I walked across the park. So I set out, and did some exploring while I was at it, staying mostly in the shade.

But after extensive walking in the heat, I realized I’d gone the wrong way, and I’d kind of had enough. Before heading back to my car, I went around to the front of the castle to take some pictures.

Then I stopped at a food stand I’d seen near the parking lot. After I ate a “Pizza wrap,” and drank a cold coke, I also got myself an ice cream cone, which I had to eat extra quickly because it was melting extra quickly – but that wasn’t really a hardship.

And then I headed back to my guesthouse and took off my shoes. Day 5 of my sunburn, and my feet are still in very bad shape. My left foot finally sprouted blisters – or rather, one big mega-blister. But it’s the better, clear-fluid kind that comes before it’s ready to heal, not the nasty bubbling flesh yellow-fluid kind that my right foot has, but is starting to subside. (I’m afraid I have experience with second-degree sunburns, but this one turned out to be much worse than I thought at first. And SUCH a rookie mistake to not put the sunscreen on after I took off my shoes! I still can’t believe I was so foolish!)

Anyway, I did go in the guesthouse pool after I got back, but I was really afraid of more sunburn. So I did lather on sunscreen, but just got myself submerged and then stayed in a somewhat sheltered corner of the pool for a few minutes, and then got out and went back to my room – but it was super effective at cooling me off.

And that was a wrap on my France adventure!

A funny thing hit me while I was driving around yesterday. I think I might be done with rent-a-car-and-jaunt-around-Europe vacations. I have pretty much now checked off the things I especially wanted to see and do – and I might be ready to sightsee with someone else setting the itinerary.

Of course, the beauty of it is that I can decide either way, the next time I’m ready to take a trip.

This one had two major drawbacks: A severe second-degree sunburn on my feet, and a heat dome hitting France that I wasn’t prepared for. But you know what? I had a lovely time anyway, and I’m glad I did the trip.

But I will also be glad to come home tomorrow to my own Chantilly.

Epic France Trip – Abbaye de Royaumont – Day 9

Travel 2

My Epic France Trip is winding down, but today turned out to be special.

It was a travel day. But then when I was looking at details, I realized that my two hotels were only an hour and a half apart, and the second hotel had a check-in time of 5:00 pm. What would I do all day?

And then I noticed that the Abbaye de Royaumont was right on the route between the two hotels!

Why was I excited about that? Well, that’s a story.

In 1998, I was living in Germany with my family, and I got to attend a retreat held by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators at the Abbaye de Royaumont, outside Paris. I wrote about how important that retreat was in a Project 52 post. I made lifelong writing buddies and dear friends at that retreat. We formed an email critique group and corresponded regularly ever since.

In 2005, SCBWI was holding another conference there. And we got the group together! In fact, the four of us Sisters of Royaumont spent time in Paris together before and after the conference. But even more significant was that this Paris trip happened the week after my husband told me he wanted a divorce. And the morning after that happened, I decided I would pursue my Master’s in Library Science and become a librarian. (As well as still hoping to write.)

So that second trip to Abbaye de Royaumont happened at a terrible time in my life – but ended up full of hope and joy. My friends fattened me up, listened to my woes, made me laugh, and above all filled me with hope.

Last night I was working on the #Sonderbooks25 post about 2005, so I read all the Project 52 posts about 2005, including the one about Royaumont. Honestly, I’d nearly forgotten how utterly heartbroken and bewildered I was feeling at that time. But I hadn’t forgotten how much the Sisters of Royaumont sustained me!

I hadn’t forgotten my determination to become a librarian and to become a writer.

So it felt good to come back to Royaumont and say aloud to my past self, “Yeah, Sondy, that worked out!”

Becoming a librarian turned into being on the Newbery Committee, winning the Allie Beth Martin Award from the Public Library Association, serving on several more award committees, and above all getting a job I love as Youth Materials Selector for my public library system.

And writing? At this very moment, I have an agent, and she has sent my book proposal to one editor at a major publishing company and my full manuscript to another! (Not to mention 25 years of writing Sonderbooks!)

So it felt good to roam the Abbaye and just mark this full circle moment.

It was, however, much nicer weather when I was there in April and November! Today was HOT – high of 104 degrees.

It was pretty cool in the abbey, so I lingered maybe longer than I would have otherwise. And tried to stay in the shade.

I did load up in the gift shop, and couldn’t resist a puzzle of the cloister garden, even though it will mean I have to expand my suitcase. (But that sort of thing is precisely why I brought an expandable suitcase.) Unfortunately, the Tea Salon was booked with a group, so I settled for a Kind bar and water in the car. And soon after made a stop in a small town for an ice cream and a coke.

Next, I’d planned to do some hiking in a forest nearby. That didn’t sound fun on such a hot day, so I found a Creperie in the same area. But alas! When I put it into GPS, the machine consistently tried to make me go down a dirt road that led into a forest. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to turn around – it looked like a bridle trail. So I decided to go ahead and go to my next hotel early. It was actually a B&B, and they did let me in early.

By then I was pretty tired of narrow 30 kph roads – I’m not so proficient with stick shift that those don’t stress me out a little. But I decided that since going out to eat in France is always a good idea, I’d go to a different Creperie in the town of Chantilly recommended by the B&B. I had a delicious salad with smoked salmon and apples, followed by crepes with bananas, chocolate syrup, and ice cream. Delicious!

The B&B is not air-conditioned, alas, but it’s a downstairs room, and it is cooler than outside, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to sleep.

Oh, and the sunburn on my feet is still viciously bad, but the pain subsided somewhere in the middle of the day. I don’t think it’s actually turned the corner yet, and it’s still blistered, but walking around didn’t hurt as much as first getting out of bed in the morning had done.

Epic France Trip – Étretat – Day 8

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I didn’t wake up too optimistic today. The third day after they got severely sunburned, my feet hurt like the fires of hell. Monet’s House and Garden the day before had been hot and crowded – and today was supposed to be even hotter! Forecast: 103 degrees Fahrenheit.

But what I’d tentatively planned for the day was a road trip to Étretat. I decided to go anyway because:

Yes, it’s a four-hour round trip, but my rental car is air-conditioned. (The one I rented in Germany two years ago was not, so I don’t take this for granted.) And it’s kind of fun to drive in France. A little stressful, but lovely to see the French countryside.

Yes, it would be hot and I’d be outdoors, but the forecast for Étretat was only 95! And since it’s on the coast, maybe there would be ocean breezes. [And yes! That was true!]

Besides, what was the alternative? Sitting in my hotel room? The other good part was that I didn’t have any set schedule, so I could turn back when I got tired and hot. Besides, the day before driving and walking hadn’t been too bad, once I got through the pain of putting on socks and shoes. (The shoes helped my feet not bend as much with each step.) I do have sandals with me, but I really didn’t want to risk the sun hitting my feet in any way, and besides, those sandals hurt the blisters on the bottoms of my feet (which were mostly but not completely better by then).

So I set out. And yes, the drive was nice and only a little stressful. I have decided that I kind of hate the car beeping at me every time my speed tips over the speed limit. Especially going through villages where it changes every kilometer or so. Even worse is that at times, the steering would go a little wonky, it would beep much more loudly, and the dashboard would flash KEEP CONTROL!

How was I supposed to keep control? Hold onto the steering wheel more tightly? Eventually I decided the best option was to slow down when that went off, but it honestly kind of terrified me. Why was it doing that? How was I supposed to keep control other than steering it where I want to go? What was up with that?

[Ha! I just googled it for that car, and it’s about the “Active Driver Assist” and the “Lane Centering Function.” No wonder it especially happened on curves. Maybe I veered a little out of center, and it was taking over?] Anyway, it never came on too long at a time, and definitely kept me awake.

Once I got to Étretat, I missed a turn, but by a roundabout way found the parking lot where I’d planned to park – and got the last spot. Three of us were having trouble paying for parking, but then a French person walked up and showed us how it was done. I walked from there to the town square – and there was a little train taking people to the Jardins du Étretat! That sounded much much better than climbing the mountain.

On top, I didn’t see the entrance to the gardens. But there were paths along the cliffs, and I had a splendid time, walking along them, taking pictures of the English channel and the amazing cliffs that Monet used to paint. There was a strong wind blowing, and I actually felt cool, despite the sun beating down.

Oh, that was the one fly in the ointment today. Before I left, I put on copious amounts of sunscreen – and got it a little too close to my right eye. Once I started sweating in the car, that eye started stinging and watering. And that’s super persistent sunscreen, because it continued all day long! I finally used facewash on it when I got back to the hotel. So all day I was blinking, and trying to wipe water away from my eyes (hoping it would get the sunscreen) and blowing my nose.

After I circled back down on the cliff path and was ready to walk back to the train stop, I found the entrance to the gardens. So I paid the entrance money and started wandering inside. The very first thing I did was find a booth that sold water and drank it down.

But then, as I was wandering around, I noticed that I’d started overheating. The gardens were sheltered from that sustaining ocean breeze, and it was now early afternoon. I made the executive decision to call it a day – and I’m proud of myself for that. I’d gotten the idea of the gardens, and I really didn’t want to end up with heat stroke.

So I climbed back up to the train stop and took the train back down into town. There was a pharmacy across from the town square, so I asked for something for sunburn – and a few hours later, the spray they gave me seems to be working pretty well.

Then it was walk back to the car, then a two-hour drive back to the hotel. There was one place where it took me three tries to figure out where the GPS actually wanted me to go. It had said “Follow the road,” but the road forked 3 ways! I guess I had to try all three. But anyway, I made it back.

And the hotel has a restaurant open all hours! I didn’t have to wait for 7 or 7:30 like the other hotel restaurants. So I got the Plat du Jour – fish of the day with vegetables. It was delicious. Then I grabbed some ice cream (melon and banana! Yum!) which I took to my room – where first thing, I took off my shoes and socks and sprayed them with the medicine from the Pharmacy.

And I still have some time to relax in the cool room.

So today restored my faith in my vacation, made me no longer tempted to try to get an earlier flight. Even if the next place is horrible, I’ve really only got two days left – then the day I fly home.

Oh, I have tickets to an Equestrian Show on Thursday. I’d been hoping it’s air-conditioned. Well, I just received an email that they’re changing the time from 1:00 pm to 11:00 am because of the heat. So I guess not. But hopefully, in the morning, it won’t be too bad. Anyway, only a couple more days….

Epic France Trip – Monet’s House and Garden – Day 7

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Well, the first half of my France trip was epic.

These were my favorite flowers in our yard when we lived in Germany. I was happy to see them in Giverny.

[Note: This post was written the evening of the day described, but I’m adding the pictures later. I don’t say a whole lot about Monet’s House in the text because it was really, really hot. But it was beautiful, so I will insert pictures throughout the text.]

I’m glad that I dropped into Giverny on my first day in France to orient myself and enjoy the gardens. I was glad I slowly browsed the Impressionists’ Museum and learned about Monet’s time in Giverny. And I’m glad I spent the previous Friday at a lovely cool garden in Brittany. Because today was HOT. Monet’s garden was lovely, but crowded and hot. Monet’s house, no surprise, did not have air conditioning, though they’d set up fans in most rooms. And it was very crowded. And I was dripping sweat. And my feet hurt. A lot.

But I did enjoy the gardens and seeing the water lilies blooming in real life.

I did enjoy seeing Monet’s house, which is much larger than I’d realized. Both the yellow room and the blue room reminded me of kitchens in two homes my mother had decorated. (The colors felt like an exact match, not the decorations.)

So I am glad I went, but I did the outing, got the idea, then spent some time in the air-conditioned gift shop, then stopped for a sandwich, then drove back to the hotel with the air conditioner blaring, then bought ice cream at the hotel, then went back to my room, took off my shoes, and took a nap. And declared today’s afternoon and evening as a Rest Day.

Let me explain a little bit. About a week before I left, I checked the forecast, and it showed all the way through my trip as never getting hotter than 83 degrees Fahrenheit, and mostly upper 70s. Perfect! And that matched what happened two years ago when I visited Germany. And that matched my ten years experience of living in Germany. I think I checked right up to the day before my trip, and the forecast still said the same thing. So I brought jeans and knit tops, but nothing for especially hot weather except the shorts for the Mont Saint-Michel adventures in the bay.

Well, the forecast changed. High of 100 degrees today. 103 tomorrow. 105 Wednesday – when I leave this air-conditioned hotel. 105 Thursday. Finally down to 95 on Friday, the day I leave.

In my ten years living in Germany, there was only ONE heat wave where it got hotter than 100 degrees. The thing is, there’s not much air conditioning – because they don’t normally need it. So this is going to be challenging.

And then there’s my feet. I do still have blisters on the bottoms, the worst one being my right big toe where the blister broke and the skin on the bottom of the toe tore off. The rest is mostly better, at least in comparison to the sunburn on the tops. Today, there were blisters on my right foot. So it’s indeed a second-degree sunburn. I’ve had a lot of experience with those – Hey, I’m fair-skinned and grew up in Southern California before the super strong sunscreens were invented – and this felt that bad. I’m only glad it didn’t come with heat stroke like most of my second-degree sunburns did – probably because it’s really a small area.

But it really does hurt. It feels like the skin on the tops of my feet has been drawn tight. And then any movement of my feet – like taking a step – feels like it will tear the skin apart. I really hope it will turn the corner soon. I don’t like that it seemed worse today on the second day after the burn.

Wearing shoes helps the skin not stretch as much when I take a step, so I was okay in Giverny. But it was pretty painful to put on the shoes and socks, so once I took them off, I’m not putting them on again today. Instead, I’m sitting around with my feet up, periodically reapplying cortisone cream.

Tomorrow I will probably brave going to Étretat. The clincher is that the temperature there is “only” supposed to be 95. And I can always look around a little and then duck back into my air-conditioned car.

Epic France Trip – Driving from Mont Saint-Michel back to Giverny – Day 6

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Okay, Sunday June 21, 2026, was probably the least exciting day of the trip. But this was just as well, because my feet were trashed.

See yesterday’s epic outing across the bay of Mont Saint-Michel. I’d ended up with burst blisters on the bottoms of my feet and severe sunburn on the tops. I’d brought some cortisone cream on the trip expecting bugs might find me (so far not yet), so I tried slathering it on the sunburn and then painfully putting on socks and shoes and absolutely not taking them off until I was done for the day.

It was a hot day – high of 97. My little attic room at Manoir de la Roche Torin wasn’t too hot since I’d figured out to leave the window open at night with the Rolladen cracked like a screen. But still carrying two trips of luggage down two flights of stairs is hot work, and I was ready for an air-conditioned drive.

It was three and a half hours to my next hotel, and check-in time wasn’t until 4:00. I did take my time getting ready to leave and left around 10:30. So my plan had been to stop for lunch at Deauville, with a Promenade along the beach. It was only a little out of the way and was raved about in the guidebook.

Well, I needed to use the restroom before I got to Deauville, so I stopped at one of the rest areas off the Autoroute. And honestly, I’m not quite sure why European visitors for the World Cup have been so impressed with American rest stops, because the ones in France that I’ve stopped at have been every bit as good as the big rest stops in Virginia. Several kinds of food, lots of touristy knickknacks to buy, and even free restrooms. I had a Mozzarella and Tomato wrap for lunch while I was there, and it was absolutely delicious.

It wasn’t far from there to Deauville. But it turned out that going to the beach in France on a very hot, sunshiny Sunday is a really popular idea. I missed a turn into a big public parking lot early on (because GPS was taking me to the beach), but it was at least a mile or two from the beach. I did drive into town – full of traffic, full of people – close to the beach. I got the idea of what a quaint place it is, but didn’t find any place to park at all, and decided I didn’t really want to walk along a promenade anyway, my feet being as sore as they were.

By the time I’d decided that, I’d spent enough time to better hit check-in time at my next hotel. I made a stop at another rest area for gas, and then headed to my next hotel, the Logis Hotel La Ruche in Rolleboise, near Giverny. For three nights!

And it has air conditioning! Huzzah!

So although yes, I got overheated bringing my luggage up the stairs (an elevator would have been too much to ask for!), I could then sit in the air-conditioned room and cool off.

This is important because I jinxed myself by gloating about how perfect the weather was going to be on my trip – after I looked at a forecast that showed highs in the 70s and low 80s. Well, they have drastically adjusted that forecast. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 99, and the rest of my time in France will have highs over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. For context, in my ten years living in Germany, we only had ONE heat wave where it got over 100 degrees. (My next hotel has no air conditioning, but it does have a pool. So I may spend some time in it.)

And my room has a view of the Seine!

And there are multiple restaurants – so I can get food at any time and don’t have to wait for 7 or 7:30 pm when the hotel restaurant opens. I went down soon after arrival and had a salad for dinner. (Wasn’t very hungry because I’d gotten ice cream at the rest stop.)

So I may do some more adjusting of plans. Tomorrow I have an 11 am ticket for Monet’s House and Garden, but when I’m done with that, I think it might be nice to hang out right here. Let the Personal Retreat part of my trip begin!

Epic France Trip – Traditional Crossing of the Bay at Mont Saint-Michel – Day 5

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This was it! The big day I was going to fulfill the dream! And walk across the bay of Mont Saint-Michel to the island – and back!

Here we go:

[Note: This was written that evening in my hotel room. I’m adding in pictures after I got back. I’ll distribute pictures through the text.]

I probably should have taken note of how often the tour company emphasized the distance – 7 kilometers – one way! And I should have considered that I already had blisters on the bottoms of my feet. And I definitely should have put sunscreen on my feet after I took off the shoes and socks I wore to drive to the meeting place!

I’ll be honest – I could not keep up. The mud felt better on my feet than hard sand waves – but in a lot of places, there were rocks under six inches of squooshy mud, which did hurt those blisters. And it was a lot more work to scrunch through knee-high mud than even to wade through rivers that went up to my thighs. Bottom line, the guide walked fast.

Selfishly, I was glad that there were three stragglers – a group with a little dog – who were as far behind me as I was behind the main group – so I didn’t feel quite as bad about not keeping up. At one point, the guide did go back for the lady having trouble in the mud and gave her a hand. But it wasn’t like you could get lost in the bay. I did worry about if I fell over in the mud or in a river, if I’d get help on time. Though it would have been nice to walk with friends who’d give you a hand in tough spots, I was kind of glad that I hadn’t dragged anyone else on an adventure that ended up being a strenuous workout.

There was a nice family – a husband and wife and daughter – who kindly summarized in English what the guide said at the stops. For all the French CDs I listened to, my French fled when I got here – but French people invariably speak much better English than my French, and have been very kind.

We walked very close to the island of Tombelaine in the middle of the bay.

By this time, I realized the tops of my feet were getting sunburned. (It’s a bad thing if I notice that while still in the sun!) So I tried to stand with my feet in the shade of my legs when we stopped for the guide to talk. But I still didn’t think to pull out the sunscreen in my bag and apply it!

It did feel amazing to be there in the middle of the bay.

I am glad I did the whole crossing of the bay. I didn’t know it without doing both, but the High Tides Tour would have been enough.

If anybody reading this ever visits Mont Saint-Michel, do one of the tours that takes you into the bay. They’re totally worth it!

But let me compare the two tours I did in case you only have time for one:

The High Tides tour is not only shorter than the Traditional Crossing (2 hours instead of 6 hours) – it also goes at a more leisurely pace. It’s more of a Wonder-filled Stroll, whereas the Traditional Crossing is more of a Goal-oriented Workout (get to the other side!). We also stopped more frequently on the High Tides tour.

Both tours played in quicksand (so VERY cool – nothing like the quicksand that terrified me on Gilligan’s Island!), but experiencing the tide come sweeping in on the High Tides tour is just incredible.

As of a week ago, I’m 62 years old. So my stamina may not be what it once was, and I may be in denial about that. I also have short legs and had blistered feet, so besides taking 296 pictures, that’s my excuse for not keeping up. I did make it the whole way there and back.

We had a bit more than a half-hour break at Mont Saint-Michel to rest and eat a snack.

Even though looking back, I realize it would have been much more prudent to settle for the High Tides Tour – especially once I realized I had blisters on my feet – I still can’t help but be glad I did it! The High Tides Tour was a thing of wonder and joy. The Traditional Crossing was a really hard thing across really interesting sand and rivers and rocks and mud – and I’m proud to have done it!

This is how far the stragglers were behind me. But I was that far behind the main group:

I’m pretty sure the water was deeper on the way back.

Now, on the High Tides Tour, I wore neoprene footies to protect my feet. But it got me wondering what the mud would actually feel like. I wanted a more visceral experience. Yeah, I probably should have reversed that and gone barefoot on the short walk. My blisters did burst, and I lost a big flap of skin on my right big toe. But what turned out to be even worse was that I put on sunscreen back at the hotel before I left – when I was wearing shoes. The tops of my feet got a vicious sunburn. Makes me really really glad I put on sunscreen everywhere else!

But – it is really hard to walk! I may be doing more modifications of my plans for the rest of the trip.

Added later: That was a bad sunburn. Second-degree, complete with blisters, was very painful on my trip and took three weeks to heal – but still – it was totally worth it!

I wrote the above that night when I was exhausted and had sore feet. A month later, when inserting the pictures, I think of it as an awesome experience that I will remember the rest of my life.