“Come in”: Searching for goodness in Le Chambon

Where do we turn if we don’t know what to believe?

“Naturally, come in, and come in.”
Magda Trocmé

I, who share the Trocmé’s and the Chambonnais’ beliefs in the preciousness of human life, may never have the moral strength to be much like the Chambonnais or like Trocmé; but I know what I want to have the power to be. I know that I want to have a door in the depths of my being. A door that is not locked against the faces of all other human beings. I know that I want to be able to say, from those depths, “Naturally, come in, and come in”…

Those of us who have the luxuries of peace and retrospection have the time to examine moral judgments made in a time of crisis and great danger, but we dare not ignore the facts and the judgments that are evident in order to perplex our minds with endless arguments about what might have been. We must find what we can believe, understand it, and try to act upon it when the occasion arrives. I believe that we do not have time to mystify it. On matters of ethics we must see, understand, and choose our standards, or our lives are dark, though we may be patiently awaiting the light.
Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed (excerpts are from pages 287 and 292)

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In 1941, a Jewish refugee knocked on Magda Trocmé’s front door in the mountain village of Le Chambon, about 200 miles from Vichy, the occupied capital of France. As Trocmé described in numerous interviews, her initial response was “Naturally, come in, and come in.” She didn’t ask him for identification or details, she didn’t grill him for information, and, most importantly, she didn’t hesitate to open the door and welcome the man into her home. He was the first of about 5,000 Jewish and political refugees during the war who found their way to the tiny mountain village and, and who found a village ready to provide protection and safe passage from the Nazis and their collaborators.

I was introduced to the story of Le Chambon through Philip Hallie’s masterful ethical study, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There, amidst a broader interest in the Holocaust, the history of anti-Judaism and antisemitism, and the impact of the Holocaust on philosophical and theological thinking during college and grad school. While Magda and André Trocmé have been rightfully recognized by Yad Vashem among the Righteous Among the Nations for their role in motivating and mobilizing their entire village to become “a city of refuge” in the face of evil and for saving thousands of lives, the focus of Hallie’s study is not their heroism. His focus, reflected in the subtitle, is an investigation into how goodness happened. While it makes for excellent biographical and historical reading, Hallie’s narration of the education and early lives of André and Magda Trocmé that prepared them for ministry in Le Chambon, of the history of an outlying village which for centuries had been an enclave of Protestant minorities, and of the dramatic and tragic and inspirational life of the village during the Second World War actually serve to demonstrate, systematically, how ethics develop, how they function in the face of evil, and how they shape relationships. In short: how goodness happens.

Hallie’s book has remained at my fore for many years, and I often return to the story of Le Chambon when grappling with a crisis of conscience or when trying to frame something as ethical (or as not-ethical). Hallie reinforces throughout the book that the Trocmés proceeded with a fundamental belief that all life is precious, and they strived to demonstrate this in every action and interaction. Despite philosophical or religious differences, they instilled in their neighbors the same commitment, and when Madga opened the door that winter night in 1941, her response embodied a village who was ready, who had been ready for years, to demonstrate radical love and inclusion. “Naturally,” they all seemed to whisper together through Magda, “come in.” Magda’s repetition of “come in” seems odd until you hear it through the refugee’s ears. Perhaps he anticipated a grilling, an investigation into who and from where he was and what he expected from from these strangers.

It’s no surprise that I’m returning to the Chambonnais’ example in this moment of terrible crisis. For the first time in my lifetime, I live in a nation grappling with (and suffering from federal mismanagement of) a global pandemic, experiencing unemployment and economic uncertainty reminiscent of the Great Depression, and broken by the most recent explosion of racism in the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery at the hands of police officers. Simultaneous and unanticipated, these crises amount to an existential threat to our lives and livelihoods, especially to the lives of the already-most vulnerable, and a moral threat to our assumptions about the ways we should live our lives. In moments like these, I have to remind myself of my most fundamental beliefs, my most essential commitments, and I have borrowed Hallie’s language, inspired by the Chambonnais: all life is precious.

As people die, as people continue to be subjugated and degraded, and as people continue to be pushed to the margins, we don’t have time for soul-searching and deep philosophical pinings. We don’t have time to point fingers at each other’s past mistakes or to seek to justify our actions, omissions, and sins. As Hallie writes,

“We must find what we can believe, understand it, and try to act upon it when the occasion arrives. I believe that we do not have time to mystify it. On matters of ethics we must see, understand, and choose our standards, or our lives are dark, though we may be patiently awaiting the light.”

But where do we turn if we don’t know what to believe? That’s when I return to the Chambonnais. What enabled them to respond like Magda, with immediate care and welcome, in the face of evil? To this question, three things stand out as responses from Hallie’s analysis of how goodness happened in Le Chambon: memory, ethical touchstone, and community.

Memory
The people of the village possessed what Martha Graham called “blood memory” of persecution. Many descended from the few Huguenots who didn’t flee France, and most were part of a religious minority, Calvinists surrounded in Catholic France. Through this, they had the experience of being “the other,” different from the norm in a culture that highly prizes cultural unity, and they were religiously different in a time when people of a different religious “other” were being systematically exterminated. I don’t claim blood memory, but as a gay person, I find affinity, comfort, and safety among queer folks and proudly claim membership amoing the LGBTQI community. We don’t all share the same experience, because of location or other identities that our persons and lives intersect, but we can claim a shared history of being pushed to the margins, of being defined as moral, biological, or cultural aberrants, of being harmed and persecuted without recourse for justice or protection. We also claim the pride that came with the establishment of the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, the fury that fueled the Stonewall Riots and ACT UP, and the achievement of equal rights reflected in United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges. And we face the nightmare together that our success is tentative, that our civil rights are continually put to a vote, and that it could all be stripped of us at any moment. For me, my experience of difference isn’t a key to understanding your experience; it’s a well I can tap to ensure that I act with compassion and empathy at the fore.

Touchstone
Throughout his narrative, Hallie frequently cites the phrase “all life is precious” as the mot that captures the ethical touchstone for the Trocmés. It didn’t emerge ex nihilo or as a self-evident principle for the Chambonnais — it was at the core of the Trocmés’ ministry and, at least by Hallie’s telling, became a mantra humming under the life of the town. I was taught the same principle but in a different context and with different language — my parents’ faith commitment included belief in the dignity of human life and the primacy of conscience. This guided them intellectually, morally, professionally, and philanthropically (though, not always perfectly), but they set a standard for me to affirm or reject. I didn’t understand it in the same way they did — the dignity of human life and the primacy of conscience gave me vocabulary to reconcile my sexual orientation in the context of our culture and our faith tradition. When I came out to my parents, we shared the language of dignity and conscience, and over time they came to see my embodied experience not as deviant but as another manifestation of divine creation, as evidence of the diversity of creation, as as aspect of life with inherent dignity and that their consciences trumped the teaching of the Church and the practice of their peers. For me, the preciousness of my life, the inherent dignity of my life, is a touchstone not just to remind me of the value of others’ lives but also a reminder of my own value. It has guided my professional trajectory (and thrown in a few swerves), my commitment to pacifism and non-violence, and in the current moment my commitment to listen, to be present, and to reflect on the choices I have made, the failures I have and have not owned, and the ways I am using my voice and my privilege. “Dignity” and “conscience” constitute a short checklist when I’m ethically troubled, when I’m not sure what my impact has been or when I’m unclear about how to assess others’ actions.

Community
The people of Le Chambon were not united in their efforts to be a city of refuge only because of their shared history, and they didn’t adopt an ethic of “all life is precious” only because the Trocmés preached it when they came to town. They made a choice, of commitment to each other despite the hardships they faced, despite their internal differences, despite the creep of occupation and the threats of war, and their commitment to each other translated into a commitment to strangers who faced some of the same and some far worse realities. For the Chambonnais, being a community didn’t mean closing the gate and protecting what’s inside; in fact, it meant making themselves all the more vulnerable. In this, the Chambonnais demonstrated that being a community is not just a passive fact of location, association, or affinity — it is not just a group of people who share traits or experiences. The Chambonnais exemplified community because they chose to apply those traits and experiences to serve their most fundamental beliefs and to save the vulnerable folks knocking at their door.

I started teaching in a School of the Sacred Heart, part of a network of schools that share a mission, expressed in the Goals and Criteria. The Goals include five huge, abstract objectives, many of which appear in other schools’ mission statements — educating toward faith, intellect, social action, community, and personal growth — but the Criteria distinguish a Sacred Heart school’s vision from the rest. With great specificity, each of these objectives is defined, with action items for which the whole school community is responsible. At 25, it was the first time I’d ever seen a compelling definition of community — not just what it is, but what it does. For the building of community, the criteria are specific, intersectional, and person-centered, and the criteria serve as ethical standards against which everything from a student’s classroom experience to the general purpose of the network of schools can be judged. Like the Chambonnais, though, this ethical disposition requires a commitment not to something external, some abstract entity or identity, but to each other in their full personhood, to recognize the preciousness and dignity inherent in them.

Right now, I long to understand not only who is in my community but what I need to do to be part of that community. I want to be in a community with people who are righteous, with people who are vulnerable, with people who are oppressed, but it’s not enough to wave a flag and claim solidarity. So many are promoting books and films and resources for folks to better understand this moment, to better understand the experience of Black people in America, to better understand the systems and the choices that people made and continue to make that perpetuate social injustices. With each list of resources that appears on my feed, I imagine my bookshelf getting more packed and my podcast queue overflowing, but I understand this less as an invitation to learn and more as a precise definition of what it will mean for us to be in community together. It will require understanding — no, it will require that I understand, that I listen, that I honestly assess my privilege and impact and relinquish some power and advantage. It will require of me humility, patience, and perseverance. It will require that I give life to my most fundamental beliefs. It will require that I open the door and, without hesitation, say, “Naturally, come in, and come in.”