Peace and Love and Wheelchairs!

Each year for a few days my life seems to be put on hold. I ditch my boots and heels. I leave behind my dresses and bags. I even leave my little Mac and head to the South of France. I am not referring to St Tropez or Cap d’Antibes and I am certainly not referring to Cannes. No, the place I frequent is unglamorous, the food is appalling and the rooms are dingy. In many ways Lourdes is an upside down land where the sick are the important, the disabled are the pampered and a wheelchair is as valuable as an “All Access” pass at any rock concert. The place I am referring to is the closest we can get to peace and love, it is the real Woodstock. In many ways Lourdes is a Utopia.

 Lourdes is a little town in the Pyrenees where the Virgin Mary appeared to a young and very poor girl named Bernadette on several occasions at the end of the 19th century. One of the messages the “beautiful lady” communicated was to dig a hole into the stony ground. Eventually the muddy puddle gave way to a stream of mountain water around which a grotto was constructed. This grotto became the crib of Lourdes as we know it today, around which chapels, churches and statues have been built. Since then millions of people flock to Lourdes to visit the grotto and to bath in the holy water running through the grotto in abundance.

 I have been coming to Lourdes for quite a few years now. Under the flag of the Order of Malta, an order of knights that dates back to the 11th century, I devote one week each year to assist a group of sick who are desperate to visit the Virgin Mary and bath in the holy water. Many come in hope of being healing. There have been a few officially accepted miracles and dozens of stories of wondrous healing that have occurred in Lourdes but these are not necessarily what make Lourdes so remarkable. Rather there is something incredibly moving about being surrounded by so much hope and faith. Actively being part of a pilgrimage and accompanying the sick and elderly to Lourdes is an experience almost impossible to describe.

 The first time I came to Lourdes was years ago with the German Order of Malta’s childrens’ train. This meant embarking on a 26 hour train ride from Ulm in Germany all the way to Lourdes. The train was filled with children with severe physical and mental disabilities and a bunch of eager “helpers” (many from the German nobility). The pilgrimage was by far the toughest thing I have ever done. Days began at five in the morning and went all the way into the night. Being confronted by these disabilities, jointly participating in processions, prayers, sing-alongs and church services, even though difficult, made us form strong bonds with each other and the children. Soon the very handicapped children were mere children. Whenever I thought it couldn’t get anymore exhausting another marathon broke loose, lugging our trusted sick into heavy blue wheel carts and pulling them up, down and along the holy area and in and out of churches. Each “helper” was allocated one child. We were responsible for everything from washing and dressing, to feeding and playing. In my first year my child was blind, nor could she speak or comprehend what I was saying. She had to be cared for from the moment she opened her eyes right up until I had safely tucked her into bed and barred the bed so she couldn’t fall out. Sporadically she was tormented by severe fits of epilepsy, which is an extremely gruelling experience for the poor sufferer but also for the bystanders. In short, it was a very challenging week.

 So why did I bother going again the following year, and the one after that, and the next one, until today? What brought me back was the sheer strength I gained from this experience. The strength I draw from Lourdes grows progressively each year. Although I feel physically destroyed after the pilgrimage, I feel spiritually recharged. The serenity and inner peace I gain from putting myself and my personal needs second and from serving someone helpless and fragile are plenty fold. There is something incredibly liberating about looking beyond myself and giving everything I have to someone else. It might sound crazy but being decked out in nurse outfits, black capes with white crosses, and united in a joint mission to care and cater for our entrusted “malades” makes this week more revitalising than any spa I have ever been to.

 Hearing the repetitive warm humming of the Ave Maria when visiting the candle lit grotto by night, or being bathed in the freezing water by a few of the many honorary hands who keep the thriving site so perfectly organised, can be a life changing experience. Each year I meet at least a couple of extraordinary people. People who despite their often gruelling challenges, are filled with an immense amount of joy, humour and gratitude and make my personal challenges fade in colour. My experiences in Lourdes always seem extremely vivid and full of contradictions. Similar to hiking in the altitudes of the Himalaya, my exhaustion feels close to comatose yet my energy is almost explosive. My joy feels hysterical and my pain excruciating.

 Lourdes is all that and so much more. I can easily say that this pilgrimage is the most wholesome and loving experience of my year.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 11:05 am and is filed under Princess Diaries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.