Connecting the dots: meeting my muses

Steve Jobs once said that you cannot connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking back. The turn of events during my journey to Paris was marked by dots. One of those dots was at an African bookstore at the beginning of my Paris visit. I saw a book that got my interest; it lay in a box with old second hand books that were on sale. I liked the picture of the mysterious woman on the cover. It had a nice edgy purple colour and the woman seemed cool. It was a 3 euro bargain so I put it in my bag without much consideration.

Only much later did I find out that this mysterious woman would become the first muse of my journey in Paris. Simone Weil, a French Jewish philosopher and mystic who had written about love extensively.

Aimer un étranger comme soi-même implique comme contrepartie : s'aimer soi-même comme un étranger.

-Simone Weil

To love a stranger as oneself implies as counterpart: to love oneself as a stranger.

-Simone Weil

In my journey I questioned this exact thought. Am I and are other religious leaders in Paris able to love a stranger (poor orphan girls from Sierra Leone) as we are able to love ourselves? Are we able to give ourselves the (lack of) love that we give to others? I had asked a nun if she had a free bed for me to sleep in for a night. Her reply was that all beds were taken, but she was not able to offer me her bed. Or to at least help me with someone else who could assist me. In fact she had sent me away just like Maria and Joseph were sent away, because it is not that easy to truly see the other as oneself and be a true Christian, even for a nun, or maybe especially for a nun, because until now the only organised religious institutions that had truly helped my orphan girls was Église Amour de Dieu, a church whose pastor was homeless and hit by tragedies himself. He was able to see the other, because he himself WAS the other.

 Coincidentally I had met another French Jewish heroine with the same name: Simone Veil. I was invited to see a theatre piece that was dedicated to her when I visited the Charlie Hebdo memorial.

I met her again, later on, when I was nearing the end of my journey to Paris, at the Pantheon, her final resting place.
And then it hit me: Simone Veil was an orphan and a war child, just like the orphan girls of Sierra Leone. Both her parents were killed in Auschwitz, because they were Jews.
After the war she had to raise her siblings herself, on her own. And she not only did that, she raised a whole nation and became a heroine of women's rights. She became my second muse, a symbol of what each and every one of my poor orphaned girls can become. And what each one of them can do for the world once they get the help they need. Simone showed that these girls are not just poor victims in need of bread and a bed, but survivors of great tragedies and capable of turning these great tragedies into great victories of the human potential.

Mistakes do not regret,

they take responsibility.

Fear does not escape,

 it overcomes itself.

 Love does not scream,

 it proves itself. "

- Simone Veil.