Madonnas of Italy

Greetings, fellow travelers!

I am back from Italy, my brain and camera filled with images of statues and shrines, Tuscan hillsides, Tintoretto paintings, flying buttresses and a thousand shades of marble. I'm sure it will take weeks to process everything, both the experience and the images, but what I do feel this morning as I begin trying to label the pictures (Honey, was this Lucca or San Gimignano?) is a deep well of love: for my husband, who proved to be the perfect traveling companion; for Italy, so incredibly beautiful; and for the Divine Spirit which inspired so many amazing works of art.

There are a jumble of impressions to sort out, but what rises to the surface first this morning are two pictures I didn't take. The first was of the thousands of steps that stretched before me when we got off the funicular one stop too early in Naples, and had to climb (and climb, and climb, and climb, and climb) to get the ancient monastery at the top of the hill overlooking the city.

This was at the very beginning of the trip, when I was still recovering from surgery and easily overwhelmed; I was terrified, jet-lagged and exhausted, and almost in tears as the stairs continued up beyond my vision no matter how many steps I climbed. But my dear sweet husband was amazingly patient with me, and ultimately the monastery proved to be more than worth the trip. It housed room upon room upon room of incredible art and statuary; inlaid cupboards that my brother-in-law swore were paintings until he pulled his ever-present flashlight from his pocket and we realized each brushstroke was a separate piece of wood; and a gloriously beautiful courtyard that took on an extra radiance in the late afternoon as the sun began to set.

The second photo I didn't take was of the tomb of Saint Francis, in his basilica in the town of Assisi. As was often true, photos were forbidden inside the church (I confess I didn't always adhere to those rules!) but it was easy to set the camera aside in this instance. There was something about going down to that lower basilica (one is built atop the other) and then walking down the stairs with the monks chanting their evening prayers in the background, kneeling before St. Francis' tomb, which was lit by candles and surrounded by the delicate aroma of incense, and feeling the overwhelming aura of peace and love that emanates from this holy space.

Today, back on my island, after a night in my own bed (thank God, no more twin beds!) and a good NORTHWEST cup of coffee (large and strong), I returned to the reading I had begun before I left of Jack Kornfield's book, The Wise Heart. Today's chapters are all about desire and the transformation of desire; a perfect sequel to my recent travels.

Because, though I did little to no formal meditation on the trip, I was often aware of the pricklings of desire: the desire for connection with my fellow travelers, or their approval; the occasional grass-is-always-greener desire to be sitting "on the other side of the bus, where the GOOD views are"; the desire for something other than pasta for dinner; the desire to fill my camera with inspiring photos... lots of desires kept percolating in me.

But the strongest wish, for reasons I can only begin to understand, was to capture all the lovely images we passed of the Virgin Mary and her beloved child. I loved them all, and loved watching for them.Whether tucked into corners and niches on buildings or larger than life on the walls of cathedrals, the Madonnas of Italy, like this one spotted on a random building as we walked down to our bus the morning we left Assisi, never failed to fill me with joy.