Part Ten - Chores Continued

When the other two joined us, we all followed the Helper through the dining room and into a hall filled with cupboards. On we went toward the big common room, known as the lounge. But before we got there, she opened up a secret to us: an old elevator in a little nook outside the only bathroom on this floor. She opened the heavy metal door and stepped into the crowded darkness. Out came brooms, dust pans, buckets, gloves, and spray-bottles with homemade labels. No longer used for transportation, the elevator now operated as a cleaning closet.

The ongoing washing, wiping, disinfecting and scrubbing, which kept this place presentable to the constant flow of persons, were clearly spelled out in a red three-ring binder. It lay open before us as our Helper doled out work. My task was the lounge:

dust it,
move what furniture you can and
fold up the rugs before you sweep and mop,
wash the windows,
clean up the little sink area where lounging students leave dirty tea cups and such,
tidy the piles
and the doilies.

Hardy, potted plants lined the edges of the room where they could soak up sunshine.

Antique furniture, too heavy to move, stood as monuments here and there. 



The piano in the corner was sprinkled with Bach and Jewel. 

 

The tall, mismatched bookshelves holding hymnals and Douglas Coupland, Anna Karenina and Rick Steve's Europe through the Back Door aroused my imagination.

What kind of place was this?

What might the next 10 weeks hold?

I reached for a rag.

...

Part Nine - Chores

Extra hungry for breakfast, I awoke to my alarm a little more easily the next day. A small plank on brackets, mounted to the wall near my head held my little travel clock, journal, bible, and a few ponytail holders. I wasn't much for makeup, so my toiletries were minimal. Although jetlag mixed with fasting is a tiresome combination, the light wooden frame of my top bunk was not a strong enough cage to hold me. The poofy pleasantries of my duvet were thrown off, and I climbed down. The expanse of mountains and trees and a new day coming through the window flooded my body with delight as I dressed and headed to breakfast- my third day at L'Abri.

In the hall that joined the foyer to the dining room, our communal schedule was daily pinned to a large corkboard. The clock beside helped to remind:

Breakfast at 8 am in the Bellevue dining room

9:30-1:00 Study Time or Work Crew

Lunch at 1 pm at various Chalets

3:00-6:30 Study Time or Work Crew

Dinner at 6:30 pm in Bellevue dining room

Evenings Free

Below this basic structure, specific work crews were listed with names assigned to each. There was, apparently, laundry to be done, meals to be prepared, chalets to be cleaned, tablecloths to be ironed, snow to be shoveled, incoming books to be organized. If your name did not appear on one of the scheduled crews, you had a study block.

On this, my first Tuesday, I was to be Cleaning Bellevue with 3 other people for the morning. I recognized one of the names as a girl who had arrived right around the same time as I. We met together with one of the Workers, named John, the day before. He asked us to describe why we had come and what we would like to study. I tripped and trampled on the words I meant to say, and said other boring things that weren't the real reason I had come. But he was gracious and only wrote a few sentences down. What he would do with that information I knew not. 

I waited on the corner bench in the foyer for further instructions. A tall girl stomped down the stairs towards me. (So many of the girls here were Amazon-sized, that even at 5'9" I felt medium.) With bulky socks pulled to full stretch and scrunching around the hem of her pajama pants at the ankle, she seemed very comfortable here. Her short, dark hair curled slightly in several directions. 

From the looks of it, she was a Helper.

I introduced myself, although she said we had met on my first night. Her squinted eyes looked suspiciously at my eager-beaver bright morning face. 

...

Part Eight - Hungry

I spent the day wandering around the little village, Huemoz.

"Who-ee-mozz."

I was pretty sure that's how you said it.

Devouring the view, I trained my thoughts away from the rumble in my stomach. I did not know much about L'Abri. But I knew that it felt like a safe outpost for the Inquisitor. There was something extraordinary in the welcome offered here, and that alone stirred in me a desire to sacrifice for it.

So I offered up an empty stomach, and asked that L'Abri be filled.

...

Part Seven - the Fast

As the sun began to spread out its joy upon us, we curled up on the many couches in the lounge. I tried to tear my eyes off of the shadowed and sharp peaks of the mountains, in order to acknowledge the leader of our prayer meeting. He sat in an old, upholstered chair and spoke out a welcome to any newcomers. 

He was none other than the one who saved me from the bus stop and deposited me here. The lines on his face were deep ravines carved out of years of thought and conversation. He introduced himself as Jim, one of the Workers. He spoke of L'Abri's 47-year history of Monday prayer. It was a day especially focused on talking with our God, thanking him for the often surprising and generous care that had sustained this work for so long, and reminding him of our needs:

Donations.

Students.

Workers.

Jim mentioned this month-by-month reliance, begun as an essential part of demonstrating God's existence, as not without struggle and...lack. Not a total, debilitating lack - the work kept right on "working" - but a real lack, nonetheless. Salaries were often cut. In fact, the lack was so tangible this month, he asked that any who might consider fasting, join with the Workers as they abstained from food for the day. A simple broth would be made available for dinner.

I was surprised. From what I knew, many people studying at L'Abri were not professing Christians, or, if they were, they had, at the least, stepped out of orthodox Christian practices (church-going, prayer, Scripture-reading, communion) to have a look at it all afresh. 

I scanned my fellow snuggled-down, middle-class, (mostly) North Americans. The weight of the situation was obvious.

But fasting? Was he serious?

The cynical, scrunched-up noses all around me, avoiding eye contact with this vulnerable leader, seemed less than keen to go hungry over the next 24 hours...for any cause.

...

Part 6 - Monday Morning Song

The very next morning, I managed to get downstairs to the big dining room by 8 am. Sitting around a large, oval, central table or the four booths around the edge of the room, we feasted monastery-style:
white bread, simple cereals, and milk that wasn't quite cold enough. We poured out coffee from blue IKEA carafes into our little clear glass mugs - all 35 of us. There were two married couples; the rest were single 20 and 30 somethings. I was not married, but certainly not single, and I was one of the youngest students, being only 19.

A beautiful, artsy-seeming German woman stood up and made an announcement from the head of the table. She rested her knee on her chair, as if to avoid seeming too in charge. Her thick accent made it all seem so romantic...like I had joined some international hippie commune.

"The prayer meeting starts in 15 minutes, in the lounge."

Hurried, final
spoonfuls slurped;
the clink and clatter
of collected dishes;
padded,
socked
feet
slid
and stepped:

this the Monday morning song of Bellevue.

...

Part Five - Enter La Bourdonette

There didn't seem to be much structure to this place.

I saw loitering groups of people out in the hall talking about mission trips, a few more sitting on the counters in the big kitchen with bright blue cabinets, a little CD player lulling their conversation along.

Somehow I made my way to the place named the "lounge." Ten or so young people sat about: a handful circling a board game; someone at the piano. It was Sunday. Though my trans-Atlantic-travel-daze had me aching to go to bed, I was told that we were all about to walk to something called "High Tea."

Coats back on. Boots laced up.

Laughter and introductions led me down the opposite side of the driveway's hill. The same wall of bushes shushed the passing traffic. At the bottom of the hill, a gathering ensued. Though I had only just learned this lesson, apparently they were all familiar with the mountain road's lack of respect for pedestrians. We waited for the darkness that signaled it was safe, and all together glided across, like an octopus over the ocean floor. Downhill a few more yards and another beautiful chalet opened up to us.

I ate beside a man with shoulder-length, tightly-curled brown hair. He had a pointed nose and spoke in gentle tones. Next, the Worker (bee), in whose home we ate, read to us from a collection of Flannery O'Connor's short stories. He chuckled to himself at the funny parts and I barely stayed awake. Desperate to seem educated and aware of the weight of Flannery O'Connor (though in reality, barely recognizing her name), I fought and fought the tell-tale head-bobbing of the weary.

...

These pictures are slightly cheating, as they were of course taken years later. But in the first one, you can see the path curving off to the right and down the hill. The second picture is that very path towards the road.

Part Four - or - Tattoos

I stood on the edge of the lower bunk and, leaning over the top bunk's rail, I picked up a photo-copied piece of paper from the pillow. The two little rectangular chocolates slid off onto a poofy duvet.

"Welcome to Chalet Bellevue!"

My second male guide, who titled himself "Helper," (as if this place named everyone after the designated roles of a beehive), and whose name was Michael, had led me to my wooden room- one of many on this hallway. From outside, I could have sworn there were at least 6 floors. But Michael and I had alighted only two short, dark flights of stairs, with a small landing (where piles of snowy, muddy boots had indeed landed). At the top, the hall had been dimly lit; the dark of the all-wood walls and ceiling broken up only by original works of art, hung pell-mell. Nothing framed, just canvases thick with acrylics and oils. I had heard that L'Abri served as a haven for artists, and the decor confirmed and delighted.

My room was on the left with two bunk beds, two dressers, two closets and a door that led out on to a balcony (that I could not wait to see). All three of the other beds seemed to be occupied - with sheets crumpled and messy piles of books and bits already at home there. 

Leaning up and over had exposed the smallest crack of my lower back, freshly stamped with Hebrew characters at a parlour in Georgia. My instinct to quickly pull my shirt back to its rightful place faded. No one would guffaw at a tattoo here, surely. At that very moment, a long-haired, make-up-less, bra-less girl appeared. All of her clothes hung loosely, as did her words. 

"Nice ink."

No hello. No introduction. 

"Now I don't feel alone." She lifted her shirt to the side to reveal the simple lines of a lovely picture painted under her skin: A lonely girl under the branches of a tree, stretching from her rib cage around to her shoulder blade. Scattered leaves from the tree showed up on other parts of her body-canvas: one behind her ear, one even blew all the way down her arm and landed on the inside of her wrist.

Her manner was unaffected and...almost kind. 

But after our shared rebel status was appreciated by both, she left me.

Part of the dresser closest to my bunk was empty and so I began to unzip all the way around the edges of my suitcase. My guitar leaned nicely against the skinny radiator nearby. Before much time had passed, I heard the creaking of people walking down the hall. Hiding in my unpacking task was silly, so I emerged and started shaking hands.

...

This was taken a few weeks later than this story, but here I am, in that very bunk!

Part the Third

First a small, dark room - a boot room with glass paneled sides, low shelves appropriate for the European tradition of shoe removal, and a place for umbrellas.

Then, an ancient door opened before me due to my guide's heavy hand on the hammered-iron handle.

Light.

Noise.

Conversations.

Bodies moving.

My substantial bag suddenly at my side, but its escort disappeared; the sound of the solid door closing behind me - kerchunk - was all that was left of him. I was aware of the gaping darkness of a staircase to my right, both ascending and descending. But before I could move from my obvious-newcomer-surrounded-by-too-much-luggage stance, a friendly face walked toward me. It was attached to a young man with only a blonde wisp of hair remaining on his head.

An outstretched hand. I exhaled, and palm to palm, we spoke our niceties. Clearly, he loved the sheltering happenings here, and seemed eager to include me.

Part Two

I lifted my eyes up.
Where did my help come from?

A white-haired man, from somewhere up in the heavens, called down to me.

God?

(No, it was Jim Ingram.)

He stood on the third-story balcony of a fairy-tale-esque Swiss chalet.

My tired ears remembered to strain again towards the indecipherable vowels of the French language, but then I realized he had said something to me in English!

A moment's silence.

Then again, there it was -

"Are you looking for L'Abri?"

"Yes!" I shouted through the haze of a sudden fog spilling upon the mountain. It was nearly dusk, and I was still on the bus stop platform. Squinting, I saw the man push back from his leaning on the carved balcony's banister, and disappear into what I guessed to be his home. Sensing his resolve to rescue me, I made myself ready. I looked to my right, whispered a prayer to my left, clutched my rebellious suitcase, my familiar guitar, and ran!

Finding a normal-looking cadence to your jog while carrying heavy objects is impossible for other people, too, right? Whenever one object seems to catch the rhythm of your run from your hip socket - and threatens to whack you in the face - the other awkward object will commit to the rhythm of your opposing calf and behave like an unruly third leg.

Thankfully no one witnessed this little agility exercise. No cars came. I made it safely to the other side and simultaneously heard the crunch of footsteps on snow and gravel headed in my direction. Up an ascending driveway, with fence-like bushes on my left, hiding the perils of that mountain road, and a slightly landscaped hill on my right, my hero appeared. His smile filled his whole face. His wool pullover said, "I've lived here a long time," and his proper hiking boots promised that my belongings would make it safely to their destination.

But he said nothing.

The cursed handle of my old suitcase exerted its will on this stranger. He smacked it, too, but wound up submitting and picked up the whole darn thing. No sense trying to roll it up ice anyways, I thought. I chattered and apologized, nervous but thrilled. I had made it!

With only my guitar swinging at my side now, I followed him, still ceaselessly talking. My crocheted sweater hung well below my knees. I felt like Fräulein Maria! I wanted to sing: "I have confidence in sunshine!"

Though I felt like clicking my heels, I (sort of) contained my wild excitement, and walked on like a normal person, behind this silent savior. We approached the side entrance of a monstrous wooden chalet. My bell-bottoms swooshed against each other with the last few steps. A warming, yellow light welcomed me into the foyer.
                                                                                     

...

This is the second part of a story I began with the post titled "11 Years Ago." It is the re-telling of my first moments at L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland back in 2003. Being part of my Lent commitments  this year, I plan to keep telling the story of that transformative wilderness season of my life.