Vicki and I were visiting our daughter, Wende, and her family in Lyon, France. While crossing the Rhone River on a pedestrian bridge our eyes were drawn upward to the Fourviere Basilica, a modern day acropolis that dominates the city.

After checking our maps and exploring narrow streets we finally found stairs so steep and numerous that Wende warned me to stop if I became winded. Not wanting to acknowledge my limitations I replied, “I’m not stopping until I get to the top or until my heart fails which would give me a wonderful opportunity to test French socialized medicine.”

After 253 steps (I counted) we traversed a busy street to find a shrouded path winding toward the Basilica. Within a few steps, a jungle of vegetation smothered the dusty, loud city that now seemed miles away. Giant trees which I couldn’t identify cooled our upward journey, while luscious plants and flowers of all shapes and colors made aromatic the vibrant surroundings. Park benches along the way provided a blissful rest or an opportunity for contemplation or perhaps a place to sit and read a book.

The peaceful climb ended with a spiraling staircase that took us around the Fourviere Basilica onto a courtyard that overlooked the vast city. As we leaned on a chest high wall that separated the courtyard from a precipitous fall, Wende contrasted the scurrying and hurrying below with our meditative amble along the winding path. “All the people in those streets and buildings below have souls as do we all,” she said, “but all of us tend to neglect our souls without taking time for a contemplative stroll through the garden of our minds, without time for contemplative prayer.”

Returning home I was looking for a book on the French Resistance during WW II having discovered on the trip that Lyon had been the hub of the resistance movement. As I pulled a Time-Life book from a shelf a small pamphlet fluttered to the ground. The subject matter? Contemplative prayer. In my mind serendipitous events are God events. So I took up the pamphlet and read.