Paris je t’aime

Last night we were in the middle of a friend’s 24th birthday party. I was vaguely attempting to dance when someone asked me where she could find an outlet. We went searching into the next room, where the TV was playing and there was already a crowd. The screen read “4 attentats fatals à Paris.” The only choice was to stop and watch. Everyone who came into the room stayed, or after a while went into the kitchen to get away from the TV.

We are a 40 minute train ride from Paris. I have visited some of the places the bombs went off, with some of the people who were at the party. One of the girls at the party had just moved out of Paris last week and had been thinking to visit the bar where the shootings occurred. The birthday girl almost had her party in Paris.

All public buildings are closed today; I’ve had to cancel a planned outing with the students. Our school was open as normal, but perhaps it shouldn’t have been.

“This shouldn’t happen here!” said one person last night in the kitchen. “In the Honduras, you can go to the grocery store and not expect to come back alive. But not here, in France, where it’s safe!”

The people at the party who were the least affected were the people from Syria and the Congo. “Just move on and forget it,” one said. “It’s nothing.”

It took me some time to realize that this wasn’t flippant: just a statement of what life is like in his own country.

And life goes on, just like the party did, only deflated. And I’m getting the feeling that there is a lot of pent-up anger that is about to spill into the open.

Pray, if you would, for the safety of France, the comfort of the grieving, and, somehow, the glory of God.