Religious Films
I am of the belief that our early experiences shape us in some way or other.

I have always had a thing for French Existentialism - well someone has to.

I know where I got it from and I can't believe I'm writing about it on B3ta, however, I've never let shyness come between me and telling a story, so here goes….

At the age of 13 my parents took me and my sister on an unusual family holiday.

As many of you will know, I was brought up as a Roman Catholic. I went to Catholic convent schools from the age of four to 18. I had my first communion at the age of seven and attended mass at school on a weekly basis - not on Sundays because my dad often worked weekends and my mother couldn't be bothered to go, neither could I, so we were Catholic in name but very much of the Can't Really Be Bothered Sect.

But the holiday when I was 13 that was to change all that for a week at least.

We went on a Pilgrimage.

A proper Pilgrimage.

To Lourdes.

For those of you who don't know Lourdes is a small village in France near to the Basque region of Spain. It's very mountainous and is famous for a little girl called Bernadette who saw Our Lady. Bernadette was an uneducated child yet she managed to tell the village priest that the lady she saw was the Immaculate Conception - words that she would not know. Over the last hundred and thirty or so years since then Lourdes has become a very popular destination for thousands, if not millions of people praying for a miracle or simply wanting to visit somewhere holy.

At the age of 13 my response to my parents telling me we were off to Lourdes was not positive. The idea of spending a week going to mass and praying with a net curtain over my head was not appealing. However at the age of 13 I didn't have much choice in the matter.

In all honesty I don't remember a great deal about the trip; I remember not taking any make up because I was sure my father would disapprove, I remember being mistaken for 18 by a group of elderly nuns, I remember being chatted up by loads of students who had come as volunteers, but most of all I remember the sheer joy and party atmosphere of the place.

On our first night we went down to the grotto where Bernadette saw her visions and we took part in the candlelit procession - just imagine thousands of people, many of whom were in wheelchairs, each carrying a single candle and walking while singing. This wasn't a place for non-believers or 13 year old cynics, not because they weren't allowed but because of mass hysteria, the strength of faith, whatever, everyone was swept away by the atmosphere there.

For that one week I was a fully paid up believing member of the Roman Catholic God Squad.

Our second night was spent going to the one and only cinema in the town.

It showed only one film on a permanent loop.

"The Song of Bernadette"
In black and white and in French.

The cinema was packed with a multitude of people many suffering from disabilities which then in the 80s prevented them from being visible members of society. I don't remember the film, I do remember the rapt audience - many of whom had never been to a cinema before.

The rest of the week passed in a buzz of religious rugby songs, cheers, laughter, and sheer joy of being alive.

On our final morning my dad and I rose early and went down to the one and only mass that we attended - while there we had got to know a young priest from Yugoslavia - as it was then - and he had been given the opportunity to say mass in the grotto itself with two other priests.
So at 4.30 am my dad and I stood amongst a handful of others in the cool shadow of a beautiful mountain grotto and listened to a Latin mass. The walls of the grotto are covered with crutches and walking sticks handed in by those who are cured and the hills echo at that time of the day with the songs from the women who work in the baths where the faithful are plunged into the ice cold water taken from the spring that Bernadette was shown by her visions.


I can't say that the trip changed my opinion of the Church and my ever diminishing faith but it did leave me with a sense of wonder at the unexplained in our world and a continuing love of French black and white films.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 18:48, 7 replies)

Why did your parents take you on a pilgrimmage?
You said your family weren't very strong believers.

Was it just for a holiday?
( girlinthehole, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 18:57, closed)

The short answer is...
it was a holiday. Although my dad was and still is a confirmed believer, I think.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 18:59, closed)

It's grim up North (london)
Friend of ours took her 7 year old (non cripple) daughter to Lourdes. I mean she seems to be a good parent but WTF???

Husband is an athiest and so stayed at home.

All this bother about (non)working class white disfuntional families. They've got nothing on the middle classes when it comes to disfunctionallity.
( buffet_the_appetite_slayer ٩(●̮̃•)۶ jacked in to the ICE on, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 19:08, closed)

Outside of the grotto
Is best described as "Grotty", at worst pure carnal consumerism. You want a 2 gallon container for that holy water? Certainly sir- with a picture of the Madonna on the side. HOW MANY SHOPS SELLING THIS TAT? Fucking HUNDREDS, its like Blackpool. Even when you go into the area itself, the small candles are free, but if you want to be closer to God, you buy the biggest candle at silly euros, and have a special stall ONLY for the big candles.
Finished me right off, it did. Shame it seems to have gone down since your day, Madame Poulet.
( Duke Of Belmsford has got 99 records, but Jay-Z ain't one, Mon 21 Jul 2008, 23:20, closed)

I Too Am A Believer
.
I took a friend of mine to Lourdes once. He was a paraplegic in a wheelchair and we were desperately hoping for a miracle.

So we got there and I wheeled him down to the sacred waters and gently wheeled him in...

There was a flash of light, a chorus of angelic singing, and a sense of being near to God.

Then I wheeled him out of the waters and, Praise God!, he had two new tyres and an MOT!

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Tue 22 Jul 2008, 1:13, closed)

@ Belmsford
Yeah, it was like Blackpool when I was there too...which at the time I found really tasteless.

Now I adore tat like that - Madonna with flashing fairylights? Oh yes please! Not that I want to own crap like that, oh no. I love to photograph that type of crap.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Tue 22 Jul 2008, 9:50, closed)

I clicked
partly just because it was nice to read a story.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Tue 22 Jul 2008, 13:44, closed)