Today I saw this scrawled on a wall near my home. JESUS SAVES. I was with Jean-Paul at the time and he insisted I take a picture with my phone. He was laughing hysterically—not at the scrawled message, but at my question: “Jesus saves what?” He was dumbfounded that I didn’t understand. Between chuckles he blurted out, “Your soul, you heathen!” Those words went right into me and tugged hard.
Heathen.
He used to call me that, the boy I lived with on the street, my best friend. He was a Catholic; his mother took him to church all the time before he ran away. He knew so much about religion—saints, God, angels and like that—and would teach me about the statues and engravings in the cemetery where we often camped out. I remember how he loved hiding out in the old churches of Montmartre, but I didn't understand why. Unlike him, I never had any religion in my life, never learned about God in a formal way. He used to laugh at me, like JP did, and call me a poor heathen orphan boy.
Heathen. I hadn't heard it since those days, not until JP said it today. It was like being pulled straight back into the past.
Am I a heathen? I suppose so. But anyway, we French aren’t the most religious people, as a whole. Knowledge is our religion—philosophy, science and like that. I’m definitely much more cerebral than spiritual. But above all, I’m physical. If I can’t see it or touch it or smell it, I don’t bother about it. I don’t pray or wish or hope—I take action. I’ve always known that you have to make your own way in life. Just live, that's all. And if you’re lucky, like I was, a real-life angel will come and save you.
God? I'm not sure there is one. Well, except maybe Zinédine Zidane.
