I recently quit my job, said goodbye to my family, and moved to Italy. Don't worry... while I'm not opposed to happening across the love of my life in the process, I'll do what I can to make sure these pages don't read like an attempted Eat, Love, Pray.
This journey was initiated by a series of encounters that made it clear that it was time to look critically at some of the judgments I had grown accustomed to making in life. Rather than remaining preoccupied with how much we, as individuals, as families, as countries, as churches, are falling short of our potential, I have made a conscious decision to begin looking for traces of us at our best. A stanza that a dear friend read to me once in a camp coffee shop on an early-summer Sunday comes to mind as playing a significant role in this process. Caryll Houselander, in her book The Reed of God, speaks of the ways we risk missing out on half of a person's character when we see them only in a light based off of some insufficiency of our own. The same stands true, she warns, when trying to form a relationship with He who is permanent and good: "We become what our conception of Christ is."
Rather than imaging God elevated far from us, watching concernedly while the hems of his long, white garments wisp over -- but never touch -- the dirt of all that we have yet to change about ourselves, I have begun to more actively seek him where I am convinced he'd rather be -- living in and through those whom he loves. We don't tend to think about it much -- a love like that which a God has for his creation -- it is kind of intense. I think it is intense like that so that we don't ever feel as though we've exhausted it as our food for contemplation. I also think that looking at ourselves and others in light of this love is the first step to beginning to discern solutions to the very valid problems that face our world today -- and the source of the nutrients it will undoubtedly take to continue to be propelled in such pursuits when the going gets tough (as it tends to do from time to time). How are we meant to live as a response to love? How am I being called to respond to this reality?
During this period of re-education, I will strive to:
1.) Be Vulnerable
Learning a new language by way of immersion, as an adult, has a way of introducing you to childhood all over again. And, since sitting in a room alone has very little educational value when striving to relate to a foreign culture, it very quickly makes you appreciate the value of basic human interaction, even if you can't understand a word that is being said.
2.) Be a Listener
For years now, I have been dutifully honing the skills of defending, arguing, and classifying. I think I have finally begun to understand the things you cannot achieve with clenched fists (for starters: embrace, give, receive, nourish yourself, feel, etc.). In Rome, as in most large cities, people have a habit of not looking at each other. there are tons of us on the streets, at nearly all hours of the day and night, but we are scanning maps, phones, historic cites, and storefronts. We rarely acknowledge the person walking by. this will be another way I hope to listen.
3.) Optimistically probe the intersection of the past and the present
It is often said that Rome is the city of paradox. Out of the crevices of the hard, lifeless remnants of centuries passed emerge, day after day, millions of living, breathing people. Nearly every street is lined with Catholic churches that each brilliantly attest to an identity and ideal that once was strong enough to unite an empire. But those same churches are nearly always sparsely attended for daily/weekly mass, as they are throughout other swaths of Europe. What is wrong with this picture? Surely one doesn't have to be among those who devote their lives to formally studying the fruits of ancient philosophy, the rhetoric of Roman art and architecture, or the origins and development of Christianity in order for it to have something to say for ordering the tapestry of your life.
So, andiammo! While the thought of "blogging" still kind of makes me sick to my stomach, I hope for this to be a place to share some ponderings and laughs along the way.
