Pray 15 days with Jean Debruynne
by Francoise Parmentier
New City, 128 p., €13.90
priest and poet. Chaplain of the Scouts and Guides of France, guide of the Christian Movement for Retired Persons, co-founder of Police and Humanism, Jean Debruynne (1925-2006) is a man of his time. A student of Jean-Louis Barrault, close to Jacques Prévert, he has the soul of an artist. A native of Lille, evacuated to Lot-et-Garonne in 1940, he became a priest of the Mission de France after the war. A priest, he was also a locomotive driver or a waiter in the hotel industry. But the crisis of worker-priests comes to thwart this vocation in the middle of the world. No matter: he will be a poet, and this lover of words puts them at the service of the Word.
According to the well-established formula of the “Pray 15 days with…” collection, Françoise Parmentier, who knew Jean Debruynne well, offers fifteen texts to meditate on. Author of stage plays, poems set to song by Raymond Fau and many others, editor-in-chief of the review of spirituality vermilion for seniors, this poet of God has left many traces. Texts nourished by the Gospel but also by everyday life: “The street is my cathedral, the metro is my monastery”, writes Debruynne, who was close to Madeleine Delbrêl. An ordinary spirituality that Françoise Parmentier describes: “Jean’s faith is anchored in the reality of life. »
Wonder in the simplicity of days
For the poet, wonder is experienced in the simplicity of the days, where God speaks, as if by surprise. “Each writer radiates a spirituality, writes the author. With Jean, it is that of the beginnings. » A spirituality of gaze that moves, decenters, and sets in motion: “If I believe one day to reach the port, to have arrived, it is because at one time or another, I would have given way to God. » Songs, scenic games, chronicles are invitations to celebrate God without ever imposing themselves, as if everyone had to write their own melody in turn. The name of the association of friends of Jean Debruynne means it well: “In white in the text”, to leave room not for emptiness, but for silence. “It is in the lack, in the hollow, that man discovers what he is, in the truth of an interior silence, of being poor, born like a spring in the middle of the desert. »
On July 8, 2006, Jean Debruynne died in Lebanon while preparing a show entitled And now ?. And he delivers a final testimony of hope: “You will all believe that I am dead / When my old lungs give up the ghost / I tell you: you are wrong / It is from dead wood that the flame is born. »