Is it still Lent?

I occasionally reflect upon odd convergences (or divergences) in the two calendars that dominate my life, the liturgical calendar and the academic calendar. This week is an odd week. Liturgically, it is the first full week of Lent. It is the week of settling into our penitential practices, finding the rhythm of fitting in those things we've added or taken away to draw us in. Actually, for a great reflection on how the fasting that we do in Lent can and should lead us to put on the mind of Christ (which, by the way, turns out to be a mind of mercy), check out Emmanuel Charles McCarthy's "The Only Guide That Will Serve You Well Is Mercy."

On the other hand, the academic calendar marks this week as spring break. No, I'm not at some beach somewhere, but the interruption from the daily routine of teaching and meetings and class prep and all (welcome, welcome, welcome though it is), can seem almost decadently self indulgent. And, of course, a little added time (for instance) to go out to lunch and catch up with a friend, etc, can add to that feeling of self indulgence rather than penitence.

Add some other calendar issues (St. Patrick's Day, March Madness) and the week really has seemed downright un-Lenten at times. Of course, that has more to do with my willingness to grant myself "dispensations" from my Lenten observances in the name of these other things than anything else.

So, here's to renewed commitment and to staying focused on the more important markers of time.

Kindness, love, and unity

Through the miracle of Facebook, this poem came across my awareness today. It seems to me to get it very much right. Once you know the depth of the sorrow and loss that pervades the world, you know that without kindness, going on would be impossible.

Sometimes, everything seems connected. I'm reading this book, on the Focolare movement. I'm really struck by the simplicity of the Focolare spirituality, which seems merely to put together three basic questions for every aspect of life: (1) how can I love Jesus in the person before me; (2) how can I live for unity in this moment; and (3) what does Jesus forsaken on the cross call me to do in this moment?

These questions are pushing me to think I should be more kind and more loving. They also seem like great questions to ask during Lent.

Loving kindness, of course, is never out of season.

1984 or 1776?

Today, I found myself with a little time to wander in a Borders. Actually, I was very much looking for books to help one learn Italian, in preparation for next year when I'll be living there (and, I promise, promise, promise: blogging more regularly).

As I came upon the section on languages, two young men (14ish) sort of stopped behind me and I overheard one say, "There's totally a book called 1984." The other retorted: "No way. You can't just name a book ... a number." "It's not a number. It's the year. It's a history book, but I sort of think it's a classic." As the other guy refused, yet again, to believe this was possible, I couldn't resist. "There's totally a book called 1984. It's by a guy named George Orwell. It's not exactly a history book, but the rest is right." Oddly, they verified that it was a classic, asked me what section to find it in (if not history) and walked away.

Within a couple minutes, they were back. "Excuse me, but is 1776 a classic?" "The book by David McCullough?" "Uh... I think so." I tried to explain the difference between a piece of literature that speaks to people in a timeless near-universal sort of way and a very high quality, well-written work that reports the history of a particular event. I don't think they got it. I still wonder what kind of an assignment they had. Were they supposed to find a classic? A history book? A classic history book? Or--who knows--a math book? I really hope that they were supposed to read a history book, and I hope that they chose 1984. What would it be like to read that book as history? Would that be possible?

It still cracked me up and made me think that I should blog again. So, here I am!

A promising start

The first week of the semester is behind us.

Here's the funny thing: I really liked it. I know, people who know me know that I love teaching, so they probably don't get the strangeness here. But I usually hate the first week. I hate it, basically, because I hate teaching strangers. I love teaching when I'm into the semester a bit and I know my students and they know me. But I hate that first week, usually.

This week just felt ... different. Maybe it was that I knew at least one student in every class before going in. Maybe it was that when I went around the room and asked them little ice-breaker questions about theology, more of them were positive than usually. I really don't know. It just felt good.

And so the semester is off to a very promising start.

Rosaries and a love stronger than death

I just prayed a rosary for Chad, who passed away yesterday of a drug overdose. Chad's cousin was a classmate at both college and masters level and remains a friend, through the magic of Facebook. He asked for prayers, rosaries specifically, and I said I would pray a rosary for Chad.

Now, officially, the rosary-the-night-before-the-funeral went out with the Vatican II reforms. A very nice Vigil service has been designed. I've been to those Vigils a couple of times, organized by eager, informed priests for families who had no real sense of what should happen at/around a funeral. (I was there not as a mourner so much as parish staff.)

I remember gently suggesting the Vigil instead of the rosary for my mom's funeral. Not to put too fine a point on it: hell, no. What WE do when people die is we pray the rosary.

So, it was good tonight to pray the rosary for Chad, and to have a sense that I joined with people in something of a "virtual" collective rosary for him. It was also bittersweet to remember those losses that have hit me closer to home, but to keep plugging through, praying the same prayer.

The rosary--especially its backbone the "Hail Mary"--really is the perfect prayer in the face of death. You find yourself repeating over and over the request that Mary "pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death." There is nothing like a death to make that line stand out, and I heard it each time I said it but for Chad, for those deaths past, and for my own death coming at some future time that I don't know yet.

I know that sounds a little ... morbid, a community of death or something. But I actually don't mean it like that at all. I'm really convinced that the good news of Christ in the midst of death is that love is stronger than death, and that the way that gets best embodied for us is in the love of the Christian community in the face of death. We offer love, and prayers, and that gentle reminder that the last enemy to be defeated is death. The love of Christ conquers all.

Timely reflections?

Happy New Year!

For some reason, I've been thinking a lot about time this week: the passing of time, how I use my time, what I have time for, make time for, the ways I protect my time sometimes, only to end up squandering it.

As I often do this time of year, my thoughts turned to Auden's "For the Time Being." Usually, I'm most struck by the line about "Remembering the stable where for once in our lives / Everything became a You and nothing was an It." But this week, the lines about time have grabbed me, especially that the time being is the "most trying time of all" and the suggestion that we feel we must redeem it from insignificance.

Time, of course, has already been redeemed from insignificance, not simply in the stable Auden mentions, but in the 33 years or so that followed, and especially in the death and resurrection of the babe from that stable. (Quick parenthetical shout-out to the brilliance of the gentle inclusion of the Cross in this Christmas poem, mentioned only in the "whiff of apprehension" at the coming of Lent and Good Friday.) But, of course, that is precisely what makes the time being so very trying: the battle is won. The temptation is, then, to simply bide our time, to live in the Aristotelian city. And, of course, the challenge is to figure out how to be in the world in such a way that we know that we don't need to redeem it and yet we also know that the difference we makes matters.

I'm not sure how well I do that, but I've been thinking about what I do make time for, fail to make time for, etc, and I want to change a couple of things. I'm usually not a great one for New Year's resolutions, but it seems the time is ripe, and I want to make one here publicly: I will blog more this year. Of course, blogging more than last year would probably not be much of a challenge, so I'll be more specific. I'll aim at blogging weekly, even if something brief.

My others are, I suppose, more personal. Or, to put it another way, they don't involve any of my potential readers so directly. Suffice it to say that they involve me becoming more disciplined with my time so that I manage to do the things that I want or need to do, rather than doing the things that I sort of drift into. There are, after all, bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, and (always my favorite!) irregular verbs to learn. There are also a number of books and articles that need me to write them. And there are some other things I would like to find a way to get done as well.

May 2011 be a blessed and wonderful year for you and yours!

Still not walking alone

For the last three years, I have captained a team in the annual fundraiser walk for NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) of Rhode Island. The team is called Paul's Pals in honor of my brother Paul, who has suffered with a severe mental illness since he was 19. (His current diagnosis is schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type.)

I wrote a very similar post to this last year, but I want to say this again: so often, I feel very isolated as the one person really intentionally involved in my brother's life. Although I have great friends who are always willing to step up and help me out, there is something overwhelmingly wonderful about the feeling of this day. I was surrounded by a bunch of friends--mostly colleagues from work and their families, with some overlap with and some additions from church and neighborhood friends, about 35 people total sporting our purple "Paul's Pals" shirts.

In addition to that, though, I had about 40 other people donate to sponsor me in the walk. I went online this morning to write down all the team members' totals, and I took a moment to look over the list of my own donors. Most of them are my Facebook friends who responded to an invitation to donate (okay, to my begging them to donate). No one could see quite what I see without my explaining it, but I can go down the list and it includes current colleagues, friends from different periods of my life (elementary school, high school, college, grad school), people I was quite close to but have drifted, people that I was never quite that close to, and a few who will always be close. Some have their own reasons to donate--a friend or family member affected by mental illness--and others are basically just doing it for me. But the point is, it buoys me to feel this support. It helps me feel that I am not Paul's only support.

So, thanks to everyone who walked and to everyone who donated. And, if you want to add your name to the list, donations are still being accepted here.

Thoughts on time

This fall, like every fall, time has a way of standing up and demanding to be noticed.

One reason this happens every fall is my affinity for Notre Dame football. Somehow or another--be it through old film during game coverage or YouTube clips posted to Facebook--I find myself watching clips of the Irish throughout history. Notre Dame is one of those places for me that seems to defy time and therefore make you more aware of it. I remember walking across campus on foggy nights (or early mornings!) and having the sense that I might get where I was going and somehow find the place 50 or 100 years before. History seemed to hang about the place thicker than the fog, in just that sort of way.

Now, I find myself on a college campus again, this time as a professor. Today was the first day of my fifth year of classes. That means that, with rare exceptions, all the students who started when I started have graduated. I have seen an entire student body turnover, in a mere four years. On the one hand, that is exactly as it should be. But a college campus is a strange space that way; people walk through for a time and are gone. It's not at all unlike life in the world, actually, except that a generation lasts a mere four years.

Of course, my time in Italy this summer is not far from these thoughts. People are so much less permanent than the space they occupy, the things they build. And something about the fall really gives me the sense of the years flying by, of the transience of this earthly life, and a hope in the "world without end" our prayers promise.

Grateful for Facebook

I sometimes find myself complaining that Facebook is a useless time-suck, but today I find myself oddly grateful for it. I logged in at some point this afternoon, and I read the following collection of status updates in my newsfeed:

An elementary school friend (one I've kept up with a bit in recent years) talking about the fact that her son, eager to head out to a day of Motocross biking, brought her breakfast in bed.

Another elementary school friend (one I haven't spoken to accept on Facebook in 20+ years) wrote about her sons in a way that I found myself saying "that's just like Leo," even though I've never met the kid.

A college friend posted a Haiku about her son's birthday party.

A friend from graduate school posted an announcement about his daughter's birth.

There were others, of course, but these struck me and made me think about a time when most people's lives most of the time were lived out within the confines of a single village, and they knew people for their whole lives.

I found myself--poor self, whose life has taken me far from my hometown--very grateful that Facebook offers me a glimpse of what it might have been like to stay home in the village and watch my childhood friends' children grow up around me.

Of course, I should also note that not a single one of the people whose status I cited above lives in the place where they lived when I knew them, so it is not simply my own mobility that is the problem. But what a gift Facebook can be in the face of such mobility.

Another pilgrim

Well, I've been home over a week, and now my nieces are here visiting, so I expect to have more adventures to share, but there are some untold Italian adventures I want to post.

I realized that I failed to tell the story of Ann, the pilgrim I met in Assisi, who was walking from Rome to Jerusalem. Side note: this is one of the joys of the hostel experience. Ann and I (and others) had breakfast together in the hostel the morning I left Assisi. Just a little of her story: she had grown up Catholic (in the UK), but had outgrown the faith by the time she was 15. She lived the next 35 years or so of her life in what she now calls misery. She said she had everything she thought she wanted, but she was never happy. Then, as a total unbeliever, she got a sudden and certain sense that she was to make the Santiago pilgrimage. She did. She rediscovered her faith and has never been happier. But God keeps telling her where to walk. She walked from London to Rome, and now she is on her way to Jerusalem. I found her pretty inspiring.

She put my own pilgrim-ing in perspective. Though I tried (cautioned by a friend of mine) to always remember the holiness of the places I visited and be more pilgrim than tourist, I know that I was both, at best. And here was a true pilgrim, driven by vision and the need to answer a call. Still, I was very glad to have my pilgrimage put in perspective in this way.

Tridentine Mass

So, now I'm at this conference on Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church in Trent. Today I gave my paper, which went very well. But also, we had Mass in the cathedral here at Trent. The cathedral here was the site of a rather famous (in certain circles) sixteenth century Church Council that really charted the course of the Counter Reformation. It was astounding to feel the history bearing down during the course of this Mass. In addition to the ghosts of bishops past, the Mass was interesting (as is the whole conference) for the variety of language groups it included. The liturgy of the Word was principally in Italian, with parts of the homily in English, and the liturgy of the Eucharist was principally in Latin. But at some point, not only these languages, but also French, German, and Spanish were spoken or sung. Four bishops concelebrated, including the local ordinary. Really a beautiful, historic, and global occasion.

The Great Dolomite Road

Up to the north of Trento, heading out northeast of Bolzano, the mountains get pretty dramatic. The road is windy but beautiful, stunning view after stunning view. I don't think I've ever seen mountains with quite these kinds of angles. (I'll try to add some pictures when I get back to the States.) We had lunch in the quaint little town of Cortina. It was a great day. And though we got back a little later than the conference started, it turned out that all we missed was some problems with the translation technology.

Pilgrim's Last Post

Writing this from Assisi, but the meter is running....



Brief recap: when last I checked in here, I had just arrived in Florence. Spent a full day there doing the Duomo, the David, the Uffizi. Cannot begin to do justice to any of it. Still processing the beauty, the sheer quantity of art of ridiculously high quality.

Did a day trip yesterday to Siena. Prayed before the head of St. Catherine for my theological friends, especially the women who have been my teachers, my classmates, my colleagues. Had a phenomenal lunch, hit a museo, the Duomo. So much beauty and holiness through the ages.

Now I am in Assisi. Arrived by train late this morning and spent the day walking my way down from the top of the town (San Rufino) to the bottom (San Francesco). Saw most of the key holy sites in the lives of Francis and Clare along the way.

Here is my thought for the day on Assisi. The cathedral, San Rufino, where Francis and Clare were both probably baptized, was named for the first bishop of the diocese (third century, I think), who was martyred. On either side of the doorway as you enter, there is a lion, faded away by time, with a tasty Christian in his jaws. I found myself thinking that that is the kind of art that makes saints. Imagine the young Francis, who once leapt up on those lions to preach, thinking as we so often do that God wants us to be safe and comfortable. I mean, what is poverty, simplicity, and even a hair shirt compared to being thrown to the lions?

Here is one other thought that I have been having as I travel through all of this beautiful scenery. I share it here even though my Protestant travel buddy was a little scandalized. The thought is: I now see why God saw fit to move his church to Italy. It really is beautiful here. The hills, the valleys, the sunsets. Everything is amazing.

Tomorrow, I head north. Train to Trento. I cease to be a pilgrim and become a conference-goer. Sigh. I have come to love the life of the pilgrim.

Florence

Had an awesome couple of days in Naples and on the Amalfi coast. Did you know that Sorrento is the legendary home of the Sirens that gave Odysseus so much trouble? They lured us in as well. We ended up staying two wonderful days in Sorrento and met some great and interesting people at the hostel we stayed at. Saw the great archeological museum in Naples, ate pizza. Then train to Salerno, bus to Amalfi (windy road but beautiful views). Then ferries to Positano and Sorrento. Beautiful views and a much smoother ride.

Train to Pompei. Amazing. What they could never convey in the history books about the sudden and total destruction of this city is its immensity. You picture a small, primitive town. It had art and culture, a theatre, an amphitheatre that seated 20,000. This was destruction on a huge scale. I sort of thought that after all the Roman ruins I had seen in Rome, that I would be unimpressed by Pompei. Wrong. Certainly worth the trip.

Now, I'm in Florence. We arrived about 7 and walked the city a bit. Clearly a beautiful place that holds several adventures over the coming days. And, computers are available in our hostel, so I'll try to update when there is no line.

Blessings to all from beautiful Florence.

Ciao for now

Well, friends, I owe you a couple days' of postings: my adventures failing to meet a friend at St. Ann's gate, suffering through bad guidance of the Vatican museums, going back self-guided and doing it a little better. I went to the Angelicum (that's the school of the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas; also known as the Dominican school here in Rome). My first solo adventure on the Roman buses figures in there with some wonderful conversations with new friends.

But all that will have to wait. My computer is going home without me tomorrow, and my travels will take me out of the relative comforts of Rome to a number of places. As I told a friend, I have some ideas but I don't really have a plan. The idea is Naples/Pompeii, Assisi, Siena, Florence, Venice, then Trent for my conference beginning the 23rd. Milan on the 28th and home on the 29th.

I may surprise you, but don't count on any more updates before the 29th.

Ciao!

St. Peter's Basilica

This morning, I went to St. Peter's Basilica. (Yes, for the first time. I'm always a little astounded by the friends who assume that I must have been to Rome before.) I really don't think there are any words that could do this experience justice, but I want to try to reflect a little of what struck me.

Someone pointed out to me at St. Paul's the other day something that is equally true of St. Peter's: these things were designed to accomodate huge numbers of pilgrims, so they had to be big. But they were also designed to feel more intimate than they are. It is astounding how well that has been accomplished.

We got off the bus and crossed the Tiber (I thought of my many convert friends who have done this metaphorically and was quite pleased to finally join them, more literally) along the "angel" bridge, and I got my first really good view of the domed basilica together with the courtyard. Even from a distance, you notice the statues of saints lining the roofline. It really feels like the communion of saints are gathered there to welcome you in.

After enjoying the courtyard for a while, we made our way through security and lined up for our chance to get into the basilica. I think it was at this point that I began to be impressed by the sheer numbers of people making this journey. Jim made a comment at a later point that one can see how, when American bishops or others who spend much time in Rome have no patience for American Catholics (or other Americans) who seem to think we ought to almost apologize for being Catholic, well ... you can see something else at work here. St. Peter's (like so much of Christian Rome) is a world designed as if the Catholic worldview is spot on. Saints and angels are a part of the fabric of being. Christ is king. And people are flocking to it.

Jim, who's been here a thousand times before, walked me through some of the key sights and gave me some of the highlights from his book on the place. We started in the portico, which is impressive enough. But walking through the doors into the main church, it literally took my breath away. It is hard to say exactly why; I suspect that those who have been there know, and those who have not cannot really be told. I feel like I was told before, and I don't feel like I really got it until now.

Before you even notice anything in particular, you feel both grandeur and balance at once. If you have read any Thomas Aquinas, for whom such ideas as "right ordering" and the "fittingness" of things looms large, you feel like you have entered the world as he must have seen it. And then you begin to notice the art--so many sculptures and paintings (okay, mosaics copied from paintings) of the saints. You feel that you are being welcomed in, invited to be a part of this church.

It wasn't long before I found myself before Michelangelo's Pieta, with a crowd of my new friends. I'll go ahead and admit it: I found myself in tears and I can't really give an account of why. But I want to share one thing that I noticed and one thought process. I have of course seen photos of the Pieta before. But I have never noticed or at least not remembered what (if anything) is behind it. As it stands in St. Peter's (behind bulletproof glass), on the wall behind it is an empty cross. I was so struck by the fittingness of that.

The moment the Pieta embodies is the absolute darkest moment in the history of the church. The one that the early Christians had followed was dead and needing burial, and the promises of resurrection seemed nearly forgotten. I found two questions coming unbidden to my mind. First, how could we possibly, as a church, live through that moment of humility and despair and respond to it by building all of this? And the second, more simply, how could we not?

I mean both of those quite honestly. On the one hand, it seems completely ridiculous to think that the followers of Christ (who said such things as blessed are the poor and those who fail to renounce their possessions are not worthy to follow me) could or should ever imagine such a place, let alone build it. And yet, the real historicity of the thing is astounding, too. There is a tradition of Peter's death and burial in this place, pilgrims came to venerate it, they needed a church. After several centuries, that church was falling down and we needed a new one. Who else to get but the best artists of the age over the 120 years of building the thing? How to do it except exquisitely?

It really did feel, for the most part, like the people's place. People were praying and snapping photos everywhere. I think the name (St. Peter's) suggests that you would find the pope hanging out in there lording it over people ("Look at MY church!). But I really got the sense that this is the church of the people. Sure, it houses the bones of a lot of popes and quite a few theologians (Chrysostom is there, and Gregory of Nazianzus, to name but two). But they belong to us, too.

I had a few moments of prayer in the midst of the whole thing. We slipped into a side chapel where they had Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament going on and spent a little time there. I also spent a little time before John XXIII and Gregory of Nazianzus, praying for the church and for myself and all my friends who try to live our vocations as theologians in service to the church. I also stood beneath the central dome, near the tomb of St. Peter, and prayed for the unity of the church. I thought with gratitude of all my Protestant friends who have been real witnesses to Christ in my life, and, of course, with sadness over the divided Body of Christ. May Christ use Peter's office to make us one.

St Paul and the Forum

If yesterday was a slow day, we made up for it today.

We went to Mass at St. Paul outside the Walls, one of the five patriarchal basilicas here in Rome. Today was the feast of St. Benedict and this basilica is attached to a Benedictine community, so it was particularly fitting.

Mass was an interesting experience for me. As someone who knows a little Latin and almost no Italian, it is both funny and confusing how they switch back and forth. Actually, it's really just the Mass parts in Latin and everything else in Italian, but it feels a bit strange. Also, I think this is one of my unconscious presuppositions about Rome. I think I basically thought they would all speak Latin here, at least in church. Now, if I had every really stopped to think about it, I'm sure I would have realized it wasn't the case, but I don't guess I really stopped to think about it.

We toured the cloister and the basilica after Mass. Not unlike my experience with Catherine of Siena, I was really awed to be so near the bodily remains of St. Paul. I was also struck (more here than there) by the sense of centuries and centuries of Christians coming to venerate those bones in this space (well, more or less). I commended into St. Paul's hands the care of my brother Paul, so let's look for a miracle!

After lunch (carbonara! mmmm!), I went with my friend Jim to the Forum and the Colosseum. To me, it is really amazing to see such history before me. It is astounding to me both that they built so much that lasted so long and that it is in such a state of ruin. I am impressed at once both that they accomplished so much and so little. It certainly invites reflection on the transience of all created things, that sense that we are all dust, and to dust we return.

A slower day

We slowed down a little today, because we needed a slower day. Hit a farmer's market, did some laundry, cooked our own lunch and dinner. Took in a few sights in the cool of evening.

This is just blocks from where we're staying. I love this picture because it shows the Colosseum looming at the end of the street, but also life going on in just the way it goes on in thousands of places throughout the world.

Catherine sopra Minerva

Today, life in Rome was interrupted by a bus/train strike. We did manage to find a bus on the way to start our day (though it probably took longer to come than usual), but we ended up having to take a taxi home. My friend Jim says there's a saying that basically says, "If you don't like how we do things in this Rome, go ahead and go to the other one instead." Every city has its quirks, and Rome is certainly worth its hassles.

Today, we headed over to the area around Piazza Navona. Some highlights were the Pantheon, a couple of great Caravaggio paintings at San Luigi, the Dominican church (Santa Maria sopra Minerva), and just walking through piazzas and feeling the life of the city.

I want to say a bit more about Santa Maria sopra Minerva. As we walked in, my friend Jim was explaining (as you might see from the name) that this church was built over the site of what had been a temple to Minerva, goddess of wisdom. I made a comment about how typical it was that men can't deal with a smart and powerful woman and so they cover her up like that. Jim pointed out that it is a church named for Mary, so woman for woman, but it didn't quite strike a chord with me. I mean, Mary is certainly smart and powerful, but her more leading virtues seem to be about holiness and submission. It's a balancing act, but, well, like I said, it didn't strike quite the right chord with me.

But we got inside and I just loved the feel of this church. Before long, I wandered toward the altar at the center and discovered that the body of St. Catherine of Siena was lying right there. It really took me aback. I mean, talk about your smart and powerful (and holy!) women! I was really struck by the power of her presence there. I knelt before her body for awhile, contemplating her presence over that of Minerva, both in that space and in my life. When I was a child, I read a lot of Greek and Roman mythology and I really identified with Athena/Minerva particularly since I was in a gifted/talented program called the Athena program. Fast forward 30-plus years and I am a theologian working in a building named for Catherine of Siena. There is a strange way in which Catherine sopra Minerva is the story of my life.

I found myself asking Catherine to help me live my vocation as a theologian well. And yet even as I phrased the prayer, I found myself asking her to help me use my time and intelligence wisely in the service of the Church. The funny thing is that this was a motto of the old Athena program ("Use your time and intelligence wisely and this will ensure that you will think.")

It really is the case that Athens has plenty to do with Jerusalem, that the pagan gods are never completely obliterated, and that church and world are categories woven together too intricately to really ever be separated from one another. And perhaps there is no better place than Rome to discover the truth of that.

I can't resist sharing one other photo, just to help you appreciate something about my journey here. The place I'm staying, I chose both because it was inexpensive and because my friends who have a history here are staying here now. I didn't know how it would work out. Maybe it would be inconvenient or something. Didn't really care. Not important. But, just to give you a sense of things, this picture is something that I walked down the hall from my room, stepped out onto the rooftop/patio, and snapped away.



You might want to notice the dome of St. Peter's, just to the left of the setting sun. Also, you can see the twin chariots atop the towers of the Victor Emmanual monument behind the Forum. It's a dang good view!

(Small note: blogger cut off the monument after one chariot. You still get a sense of the place!)