On the morning after we returned from Rome, Victoria and I awoke at 11 a.m.—Roman time. That would be 4:00 a.m St. Louis time. To our dismay, the temperature  in St. Louis hardly differed from the mid-90’s in Rome after the 15-hour flight (including three-hour layover). It rose to 93 degrees in St.Louis at midday. I started mowing the waving savannah about 7 a.m. to beat the heat of the day.

To give a decent travelogue I’d have to study what we saw among the ruins of twenty-seven centuries, but I can immediately remember how we enjoyed our pilgrim fellow-travelers and their journey. We enjoyed exhibitions of celebrated original art and sculpture, the earthly and spiritual tracks of an unsophisticated saint, the evidence and ruins of a great empire, and the love and dedication of guides/ teachers who led us through it all.

I cannot say enough about our guides, who could also teach and lead.  I will cite two, but they all were skilled and passionate about their subject. In a previous blog I already mentioned Antoinella, “who shepherded us through the masses to find the painting in each room that represented the time period or artistic development she wanted to explain. She pointed to small, but significant details that educated even a philistine like me to the changes in form and character of each painting. She made a chaotic museum mob into an entertaining classroom.”  As a teacher she was passionate, strategic, selective and considerate. She saved us from insanity at the Uffizzi, an amazing collection attended by ten thousand people a day.

Alex gave us every development of St. Francis in lore and example. Alex loved the holy man, yet gave us a perspective of a saint who had struggled with doubt and uncertainty. Each church we explored he related to the previous one, sewing together a biography that had no continuous source. Alex himself was warm and tender, hard-working and patient. As I said earlier, he “never looked down on the weak, who took the bus” instead of hiking up the hill from San Damiano church. He had a hard act to follow, conveying St. Francis in word and deed, .

Pictured below, some of our pilgrims gathered at a table around the corner from our hotel in Rome, where the highly recommended St. Benoit beer was served. All pictured below were from Southminster Presbyterian Church of Birmingham Alabama. Although they were the prevailing majority, they welcomed the four “outliers” from Missouri and Minnesota into their group.

On the rooftop cafe at the Uffizzi in Florence I was victim of the best irony of the pilgrimage when I ordered “imported beer” from the menu. At left the imported beverage I drank.

Assisi on the Plaza was a delightful mix of electric guitar, tourist shops, and the prominent temple of Minerva, now a Roman Catholic church. Two of the other “outliers,” from Minnesota, are pictured here: David and Cindy; Bill in the middle.  Along with Augusta (from Birmingham) at far right,  we are enjoying beer and wine on the plaza in Assisi before dinner.

In Florence on a hill above the Po River, we dined outside before seeking out the sunset. (It was obscured by clouds).

On a rooftop bar the final night of Rome. Apparently a run on orange spritzers.

At the end in the center, our tour director, Eric Doss, who engineered our escape from Rome around an anticipated transportation strike.

The Pieta–poignant and tender– good reason to visit St. Peter’s Basilica

My apologies to any in our group who were not captured in our random photography. We love you all. I cannot explain how Laura managed to appear in three out of four group shots, but we are investigating . . .

My favorite traveling companion.

Tuesday and Wednesday have been a blur of churches, temples, and fora, not to mention the giant Colosseum. Finally bought a copy of Rome: Past and Present, hoping to make some sense of it in the aftermath. It is an amazing city where,everytime you put  a shovel to soil, you bring up something two – four thousand years old, and, as you pass through neighborhoods, not a hundreds years old, you see brick and mortar from the time of Caesar. The archeologists must be a little jaded with discoveries.

We are walking distance from the Panthenon, the Roman Forums, and the Trevi Fountain, and the Colosseum is within foot-ache distance. The heat and  the crowds are suffocating here in mid-June. Even with advance tickets you stand in line up to a half hour to get in to the big attractions like the Panthenon and the Colosseum. Standing in the vast ruins of the Roman fora is different, because the area is huge.

The challenge on the plain of Roman fora, basilicas, and temples is to reconstruct these layers of history ravaged by war and layers of later buildings. You can see the fragmentary remains in the photos below. Nothing is intact. Rome: Past and Present is a somewhat helpful in the reconstruction with its translucent overlays, showing what the building looked like centuries ago. Still, I am overwhelmed by the names, the centuries, the politics, the differences between a basilica, a temple and a forum. They are not what I thought they were.

The food has lived up to all expectations. I have had spaghetti, ravioli, rigatoni, pizza till my belly cried for mercy. It was all perfect. The Italians are smart about moderate portions, but you add in the beer (high marks for St. Benoit) and the bread and hefty salads and you are talking calories. I don’t even have the burden of gelato with my sugar intolerance. I still manage to eat beyond all sense, and, when I pass the countless restaurants walking home from a feast, I wish I had more room for the food I can see being consumed in plain sight on the patios.

Thursday, we are visiting the catacombs, final scheduled stop before a full day of travel  Friday. There is a lot to digest: caloric, historic, architectural, cultural. Probably more blogs in the aftermath of Rome, if I can absorb any more than this.

The dark outline of the wolf on a pedestal, symbol of Romulus and Remus

O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.

What I have wanted most of my life is to be understood, but not for who I am, but for who I wanted to be.  I lacked things: athletic skills, animal attraction, social grace, material wealth. These things mattered to me. I had some things: intelligence, writing skill, and religious dedication. I always had religious dedication, even when I wasn’t the smartest or the best writer. So I often took credit for that. People might say to me: I wish I had your religious faith! What would St. Francis have said to that?

One story Alex told gives a clue. The one that impressed me most.

During a fast one novice monk cries out that he is dying of hunger.  Long into the night he is crying and suffering out loud. St. Francis did not see that novice as a rookie, an inferior, or one who did not make the team. He said, “Come with me and we will find something to eat.” He broke his fast so he could share the condition of the weakest in the group. St. Francis did not try to be the strongest, but identified with the weakest. He would not try “to be understood as to understand.”

I think that tells me what St. Francis would do when someone would say, “I wish I had your religious faith.”

On our pilgrimage I met many who  sought to understand. They listened to Victoria and me and showed that they attended and cared. We did not feel weaker or less capable for sharing. I felt self-conscious about not hearing or forgetting or losing my way, all of which are part of who I am now. I did not feel less accepted or less respected among the pilgrims. I heard all about how much they enjoyed my writing.

That makes me happy, but I have been struggling with a memoir for more than a year, and I know that I am not a great writer. I look at one draft and wonder how I could have said stuff that was so obvious or repeated stuff that was easy to understand.  So I am grateful for the pilgrims who liked my writing. Thank you, pilgrims.

Thanks to Alex, who was patient and never looked down on the weak, who took the bus, and who gave me a love for Francis.

Thanks to Eric, patient, and willing to repeat directions five or six times to make sure all the sheep got into the fold at the right time.

Thanks to St. Francis, who never looked for credit for all the kindness he gave. He set the example for an order of followers and for pilgrims who need never seek credit for doing the right thing. An example for me who never wants to claim credit for my religious dedication.

Thanks to the pilgrims who were willing to understand more than to be understood.

St. Francis washing the leper

Alex, Best Guide to St. Francis

Last view of Assisi

St. Peter’s Dome Wednesday

Laocoon – A Messenger Aborted

Arrived in Florence at what would have been breakfast in St. Louis hour on Monday, but has now become our lunch hour. The transatlantic trip is eight hours through the night added to several hours layover and a quicker jump from Paris to Florence. So we were having lunch at the Trattoria Dalloste about the time we might have been having a Groundhog Day breakfast back in St.Louis.

So it’s Tuesday, and Monday did not entirely disappear in a flare of jet-lag. The lunch was expensive, but I demanded pasta for my first meal in Italy, so I had something that looked like cylindrical noodles with meatballs, but was so much better! Victoria had a thick, savory sew.

I can only describe the afternoon as map-wandering as we tried to work our way toward the Duomo, but only managed to wend our way to the Arno River, which is picturesque, but southeast of our hopes and dreams.  The narrow streets are teaming with motorcycles, buses and cars of every nationality. Traffic tends to open up in the large piazzas, but many of the streets are no wider than alleys. Foot-traffic on the sidewalks is pretty purposeful–not many window-shoppers in the midday.

We retraced our steps, returning to the hotel to find our room ready for our first jet-lag collapse.

We met the “Instruments of Peace,” not a musical group, but our pilgrimage tour group, in the lobby at 5:45. Quick orientation, then on to St. James Episcopal, an English-speaking stately church about a half mile away. Met a newly-married Chinese couple on the steps on the way in. Apparently documents and weddings are St. James’ lucrative income in a Catholic city. Below you can barely see the happy couple receding through the front entrance of the church.

We had a brief worship and reflection service with Holy Communion in the adjoining chapel, which was about the right size for our sixteen-pilgrim group. We are mostly in the Second Half of Life,  several retired, mostly Presbyterian, but an ecumenical bunch. Our name comes from St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi, whose home we will visit on Wednesday- Saturday.

Palm Sunday is depicted in the rosette over the entranceway to the church. The inscription at the bottom says, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”

Below is a tribute plaque to Henry William Tucker. honored as “Plebendary of St. Paul’s Cathdral.” I thought I knew most of the titles Episcopals throw around, but not this one.

A prebendary is a member of the Catholic or Anglican clergy, a form of canon with a role in the administration of a cathedral or collegiate church. When attending services, prebendaries sit in particular seats, usually at the back of the choir stalls, known as prebendal stalls.

Hmm. . . no wonder this doesn’t ring a bell. Primary role is to sit.  

Oh, those Anglicans!

I am assuming Henry is no ancestor of mine. Sitting! The very idea!

Today we’ll hit some of those great art museums. No sitting for us!