I GATHER THAT TRAVEL ILLNESS IS AS CONTAGIOUS AN EVIL AMONG US AS IS THE HORRIBLE TOBACCO HABIT
Eugene is sometimes accused by those who are not familiar with his writings of always being serious and not having a sense of humor. In fact, in his writings, we come across a very dry sense of humor.
He was frustrated with the community at Notre Dame des Lumières, because it appeared that each Oblate there had plans for enlarging a part of the building. Father Bellon had just arrived and had caught the building bug:
I gather that travel illness is as contagious an evil among us as is the horrible tobacco habit. You have scarcely arrived and already you propose to add more to the enormous expenses already incurred at Lumières.
I am sorry to go against you in regard to enlarging the organ loft. I have written about it to Father Ricard, because, without calumniating him, I believe that he had you promote this matter, not daring to speak to me about it himself after all that he has wrestled out of me.
Then in a moment of tongue-in-cheek humor he makes his point:
Won’t we have to build very soon over the sacristy to house all the sea shells that Father Chauvet gathered during his stay here. I believe that he has carried away at least eight thousand. That is quite excessive, but we have to please all tastes.
Letter to Father Charles Bellon, 10 July 1844, EO X n 846
This entry was posted in
WRITINGS. Bookmark the
permalink.
The longer I live the more human I seem to become. And the easier it is for me to not just tolerate but accept the humanness of others. And Eugene was not so very different.
When I first moved from Vancouver to Ontario I tried to take pictures of every single snowflake that fell and believing that I would be able to relive those first experiences over and over again. I was enchanted with snow (still am) but I don’t think my family shared my passion as they viewed the many pictures I sent to them. And then with my first autumn I began to pickup the beautiful leaves that were falling with the rich yellows, oranges, and reds. I have never seen anything like them! And I would carefully wrap them and send them out to my family to enjoy. I tried to capture that which cannot always be captured and then to expect my family to ooh and ahh over them as I had done. They never said anything in their letters except that the leaves were beautiful. And would thank me for the pictures of the snow. They loved me. But looking back I believe they also talked about my little obsessions and joked about them as we do now when we dig into our memories.
We look at how God created us to laugh and love, to sing and dance. I don’t know how often we remember that. Our sense of humour is a gift from God. Eugene loved greatly and I cannot think of that as being only serious. I am sure that looking back on his life as he often did he must have smiled and laughed. After all, he was a very alive and passionate man.
Golden moments indeed! I bet that Eugene had many of them. Isn’t it wonderful how we share our experiences of both sorrow and joy.