From La Roche d’Or park

Yesterday, in the latter part of the afternoon, beneath the clear skies and mild climate, I considered how lucky we are to be able to live out this state of national “confinement” in the springtime surroundings of almost eight hectares....for us alone...

The only vehicles that travel over the paths here on a daily basis are the nurses' transport, the postman and a food delivery truck.

Opposite, the once busy road of Voie de Mercureaux now shows off its pavement and asphalt, occasionally there’s a little wave or traffic, where seven of the ten vehicles are trucks.

However, this invisible enemy is lurking in the air, which only comes out in the evening, in the daily bulletins from hospitals all around the world where victims are increasing exponentially...

Commercial contacts are also invisible, reduced to communicating via email... Cultura, Boulanger, Top Office etc. send us the news that their stores are now closed until further notice, but each offers us their own specific list of items we can continue to order and have delivered to our homes to get through this crisis with their support.

Everyone is doing everything they can to ensure everything works as well as it can in the best of all possible worlds... But what “world” is this?...

In the middle of all this ‘dust’, terrible dramas are going on at hospitals, some of them are beyond capacity, like Italy, and have to ‘choose’ who is going to be cared for at the expense of those who will die ”isolated” from those they love... These are awful detachments where the feeling of abandon on both sides (the sick person and their loved ones) is both cruel and uncomplying.

Knowing that someone we love has died alone, in the battle to contain the contamination which will save so many other human lives...

This is one of the consequences of this invisible enemy, that kills by definition. Confinement-isolation-abandon.

Here we are in the centre of a clean war: there are no shots fired, no blood, no disembowelled houses, no landscapes ruined... Everything is perfect!

Homicide, that jealous enemy strikes a great blow to dis-creation, but it can only rage before the one place where it has no access, it cannot even see or understand it as it has no ammunition there, this place in our hearts where Jesus lives on where he breathes his spirit into all of us. He has “vanquished” and opened the path for us to follow.

It is only from this place that we can come out for the counter-attack, to light up the counter-fire.

To do this we must remain ‘confined’ to the cave, the cave dwellings of Nazareth.

“What good can come out from Nazareth?”

- The best: The only one who saves us from all deaths! 

It is true we live, in the centre of a beautiful park, but within me, I can feel the contrast of this boat being rocked by contrary winds which blow through the meadows and woods. 

This is why we need to maintain these paths and woods, this is my way of setting a counter fire, so we are ready when people next come on retreats to their ‘garden’...which is so important for connecting with the “Word” that is spoken throughout the day. 

I am so happy that there are several of us in the community who can be engaged in something concrete in these unusual times... 

I will keep each one you in my heart, wherever you are...

Jean-Luc Koeppel

French to English translation by Debbie Garrick and Cécile Simon