Lessons from France Part 3/4: Carcasson and Saint Emilion (Genesis 17:15-19)

We walked around Carcassone. This is an amazing city in wine country. You can see the vineyards. It was beautiful. It was massive; It seemed impregnable. We also stopped in Saint Emilion, Bordeaux for lunch. It was a great lunch! There was wine sold everywhere in many of the shops. We obviously didn’t try any but we tried lots of great food. I believe I had shrimp here. I had lots of duck while we were visiting France.

The exciting thing about Saint Emilion, Bordeaux, for me was the church there. Like many places it had been a pilgrimage stop. Like many places it had been attached by the revolutionaries during the French revolution – the French revolutionaries robbed, looted, destroyed, vandalized, attacked many churches. In this amazing church that was very old there were many remarkable things. One was a chair. We were all invited into the church and we gathered in a room and someone stood in front of this ancient chair. I don’t think anyone was sitting in it while we where there. Which is good. You wouldn’t want to sit in this chair by accident: our guide announced that this was a fertility chair! People come from all over just to sit in this chair so that they (or their partner; it works for either) can become pregnant. The person standing next to the chair moved away quickly when this was announced and Susan did not sit in it and I did not go anywhere near it. Apparently people send the those who run the building lots of letters and postcards with birth announcements every year as testimonies to the miracles of God – If God can give an 90 year old Sarah, a baby – look out – don’t sit in the chair! (Unless of course you want a baby)

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