Italy: Santa Margherita de' Cerchi

By the time we found this tiny church, we had already seen many of Florence's grandest sights: Michaelangel's David;  the masterpieces of the Uffizi Gallery; the soaring Duomo; and beautiful Santa Croce, housing the graves of Galileo, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Dante. Like so many things in Italy, these glorious works towered over us physically and historically, demanding our attention, even reverence.

Santa Margherita, on the other hand, nearly eluded us. We were threading through a narrow alley, looking for a museum about Dante, when a tablet with some English writing caught my eye.

Without the sign, the doors to the church would have looked like any number of doors leading into courtyards, little shops, or up to flats and galleries.  Once I realized what I was seeing, however, I understood that this was a place I would have been very sorry to miss.

Tradition says that in this church, Dante Alighieri saw Beatrice Portinari for the first time. Some historians apparently contest this claim, but the church, which goes back at least to the year 1032, was undisputedly the parish church of Beatrice's family, and she is buried here.

If you haven't read Dante's Divine Comedy, in which Beatrice inspires Dante's journey toward heavenly revelation, my little blog entry isn't going to do much toward convincing you why stumbling into this church was such a humbling serendipity.

But maybe, maybe I can put it like this: so much of what I saw in Italy was magnificent, built by men of genius for the glory of God. Those buildings moved me to worship, and I hope that the stones of Santa Croce, St. Peter's, and the Duomo stand for centuries to come. And yet, in the Divine Comedy, Dante takes his readers higher than the tallest dome, and his visionary words about justice, mercy, and beatitude have rung longer and farther than the loudest church-bells in Florence. And Beatrice, who captured Dante's heart when she was barely nine years old, and who died when she was only twenty-four, is buried in a little parish church, tucked away on one of Florence's narrowest streets.

The memory of this church has served me well since I returned to the states to my little life: my house with its daily chores and company; my work, meaningful but hardly grand; my beloved little streets and neighborhood. Finding Santa Margherita reminded me that sometimes, the best stories take root in such small and hidden places.

How many places like this have I missed in my tours and travels? How many do I miss as I go about my daily work?

If I keep my eyes open, how many other doors in shadowed walls will lead to a benediction?

Gustave Doré's illustration to Dante's Inferno. Plate VII: Canto II: "Beatrice am I, who do bid thee go" (Longfellow's translation). This image is in the public domain. 

My hypothetical husband, the spy

This week, I'm visiting my hometown in Indiana. My mother and I just had the following conversation, and it was too good to keep to myself: 


Mama: You've had enough big life events in the last year. Let's not get married this year.

Me: Married? But I'm not even.....

Mama: Oh, I know, I know. But these things happen.

Me: Even if I were to fall in love and decide to marry someone, I wouldn't want to be engaged this year.

Mama: But you always said you wanted a Christmas wedding....

Me: Good grief, Mama, I've been unmarried for twenty-nine years already; I think I could manage to wait until the next Christmas.

Mama: But there might be a war.

Me: A war? So, you want me to move up the date of my hypothetical wedding because of a hypothetical war?

Mama [nodding]: He might be a spy. [pause] You know, I had a friend in college who had to get married in a hurry because her husband was going to jail. [pause] Don't marry someone who's going to jail.

Me: I won't. Unless it's for defending civil rights, or something like that.

Mama: Right. Don't marry someone going to jail unless he's going for a just cause.

Me: Okay, Mama. I promise.

(From the  State Library of Queensland. No known copyright restrictions)

I rest in hope

In the Basilica of Santa Croce, I stood before the graves of Michelangelo, Dante, Galileo, Ghiberti, and Machiavelli. I saw Giotto's 14th-century frescoes of the life of St. Francis, and I even saw a bit of robe said to have been worn by that merry Jongleur de Dieu. These monuments struck me like the tocsins of cathedral bells, but in all of beautiful Santa Croce, it was the conjugation of verbs that moved me most.

Most of the foreign languages I have studied --Latin, biblical Greek, Old English--are "dead," and so I am not used to encountering a language I know outside of a book. But in Italy, the walls whispered to me. Words, incised in marble or hammered into gold, surprised me at every turn. I find Ecce ancilla domini over that doorway, and something shakes the dust off my high-school Latin, tumbling me into a beloved chapter from Luke's Gospel. Behold the handmaiden of the Lord.

In Santa Croce, the tombs were speaking. Rich panels of marble paved the floor of the nave and transept, memorializing a body and soul at rest. Mostly they told me that so-and-so was buried here, many spoke of resting in peace. The ornate graves sang of the mighty artists and thinkers who had done so much to the glory of God. Of all these voices of the dead, one quickened me more than all the others.

 vixi in deo · quiesco in spe · resurgam utinam in caritate æterna

With much of the Latin I saw in Italy, I struggled to hear clearly, to gather words into the ordered hope of a sentence, but this inscription seemed to cry out in the quiet of the church: I lived in God; I rest in hope; I will rise again in love everlasting.* I lived, I rest, I will rise. Settled, carved in stone, yet moving through past, present, and future with the rhythm of a living breath.

Common hope in a foreign land. Cradle-truths from a half-forgotten tongue. Baptist girls are not accustomed to treading on tombs -- most of our churches don't even have their own graveyards. When I entered Santa Croce, I looked at the monuments of the Greats and thought, I am here to revere the work they have done. But no. The dead said, we are resting here in hope. Walk on us, climb over us, read, recite, and pace over our words, polish them to transparency until the grace blinds you in its shining. Come join us in the floor of the church. Listen to the faithful sing and step over you. Rest here, and rise in love everlasting.






* Before publishing this entry, I checked with some scholar-friends whose Latin skills are sharper than mine. They suggested a few other  translations, including the lovely possibility that the final clause should be, "would that I might rise to everlasting love." However, others argued that my (simpler) translation is actually more likely, since the tomb is medieval. I am choosing to include the text as it came to me in the moment, but I make no claims that it is a perfect translation.  

Italy: The Bells of the Duomo

For most of my life, I have encountered Grand and Historical Works of Art in one of two ways: through museums or in books. While seeing a painting in person is far more vivid than studying its replica in a book, both settings can create an artificial context for a work. Perhaps the gallery imposes a certain perimeter of white space around the painting, or the textbook offers an explanatory gloss under the picture of a famous statue. Often, these new contexts help a visitor make sense of a work. Furthermore,  gallery collections and mechanical reproduction allow far more people to experience important works than would otherwise have access to them.

Museums and books also tend to organize works of art into sensible narratives. Perhaps I study the doors of the Baptistery of St. John in a chapter on "The Birth of the Renaissance," or I see Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" not in the Medici country villa where it originally hung, but in a gallery room full of other Botticelli paintings. I can look at the work, place it in the story, and move on. Or I can choose not to study it at all. I can close the book, turn away from the gallery.

The most moving works of art I saw in Florence, however, upset my typical experiences with art, context, and choice. On our first day in Florence, my friends and I had an excellent guide who took us on a walk through the city. Our plan was to see the famous works of the Uffiizi and Accademia galleries the next day. The day was low and cloudy, threatening rain. Towards the end of our walk, we were strolling down a busy Florentine street, savoring cones of gelato and talking about something utterly unrelated to the Renaissance or to art history.

We turned a corner, and suddenly a mountain of pink and green marble soared up in front of us. Or so it seemed. As it happened, we had taken a back street to the Duomo, Florence's mighty basilica, with a dome that shapes the city's skyline, if you look from a distance.

Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore

The breadth and height of the Duomo, approached from such a near angle, crushed any sense of consoling distance. This was no gallery piece, no flattened photograph in a hand-held book. It was a standing, as it had stood for hundreds of years, bearing witness to God's glory, human genius, Florentine wealth, political history, Catholic theology, and more. Our guide was saying something about the marble, local quarries, Brunelleschi, but I heard little, for as we stood at the foot of the bell tower , bells began to ring. These were not like the sweet Methodist bells of my neighborhood, but powerful, unrelenting tones.

The bell tower

Hearing those bells was the only time in Italy I cried. I think it is because they eradicated any lingering distance between me and the object I had come to contemplate. They knocked down the white walls of my mind's gallery, ringing me into a living city, with a vast, beautiful, complicated church at its center.

The marble of the Duomo

The weight, the nearness of the massive church almost offended me. How dare it surprise me like this? How dare it stand there, presuming upon my reverence? Reeling from this offense, I was shocked to realize how much of my appreciation for beauty depends upon my own ability to choose. What picture shall I hang on my wall? Which room in the museum shall I visit? Which picture will I study from the book? The Duomo gave me no such choice. Either I could encounter it on its own terms, or I must leave the city and all it stood for.

And how did I respond? I wept when the bells rang, for it sounded as though they were calling all the world to prayer. And the next day, after a morning in tourist-thronged galleries, we returned to the Duomo and attended mass. Though I am not Catholic, I have attend various masses with friends, and my knowledge of Latin helped me follow along, dimly, with the prayers, scriptures, and songs. Like so many medieval Christians, I worshipped and prayed without understanding, in my own tongue, exactly what was happening. Nevertheless, attending mass in the Duomo helped reconcile me to the astounding beauty of the place. No longer was the Duomo a  Grand and Historical Work of Art I was trying to "appreciate," but a church in which I worshipped. In a humble, stumbling way, I went from being a spectator to a participant.

For the rest of our time in Florence, I always waited for and heard the bells of the Duomo with joy.

Italy: Sunsets in Venice

As I was growing up, my family only travelled for two reasons: to see family or to meet Jesus. We made yearly trips to relatives in Indiana and Mississippi, as well as numerous pilgrimages to religious conferences and mission trips, usually as part of my parents' ministerial work with college students. I loved (and still do love) such journeys, not least because they have a clear purpose, and I like Purposes. 

Going on a trip with a purpose lays the foundation for telling a good story when you return. Perhaps you fulfilled the purpose gloriously. For example, you might report that you and your kin renewed your love for one another, that you helped clear debris after a natural disaster, or that you heard a life-changing sermon. Even if the purpose falls apart, there's a tale in such disasters.  

I know how to tell family stories and mission trip stories. However, I'm not really sure how to talk about my recent trip to Italy. Last month I spent nine days in Venice, Florence, and Rome. And why? Because I could.  I could enumerate my list of justifications (a desire to travel with four bright young women; an academic interest in seeing the cradle of the Renaissance, etc), but in truth, the trip was like art itself: gratuitous, costly, and yet, mysteriously, essential. 

 I'm not going to try to give the grand narrative of my trip to Italy because I have no idea what that story is. It's out there, somewhere, beyond the ken of my mere week's worth of reflection. Instead, I want to share a few moments from our trip, scenes and experiences that suggest, but do not explicate, the mysterious purpose that compelled me to buy a ticket to Italy instead of paying to have my car's air conditioner fixed, or instead of buying a washer and dryer. 

Maps are curious documents: in order to guide a traveller through a multi-dimensional world, cartographers simplify space, color, and information. As a child in a midwestern town, this simplification seemed slight, since the grid-even streets of my neighborhood contained little more than the map suggested: modest houses and lots of green grass.

In Venice, my excellent map necessarily excluded almost all of the really interesting things about the city: the shop-window full of Carnival masks; the gelateria smelling of fresh waffle cones; the children playing the piazza; the glorious little church, all pink and green marble, tucked behind humbler buildings.; the deep quiet of a city without cars. The cartographer had more than enough to occupy him (or her) with mere directions, for Venice is a warren of tiny streets that seem to change names every thirty feet.

When deciding what grand sights to see, my companions and I planned our days in Venice from other sources, using the map simply to navigate from one point to another. However, on our last evening in the city, I noticed a curious detail on the map. Along the northern shore of the island-city, a little note said, "Vantage point for the most spectacular sunsets in Venice."

All the other information on the map was objective, offering names of streets, stations, museums, and neighborhoods. This tantalizing note, however, offered a glimpse of the map-maker, surely someone who knew Venice well and could not resist sharing a favorite spot to rest after a long day of walking cobblestone streets.

We followed this note, expecting to find a picturesque park or a historic pier from which we could enjoy the sunset. Instead, we found ourselves far from the tourist mainstays. The map lead us past a large hospital, through a quiet neighborhood of apartments, and finally to a little vaparetto dock. Lacking chairs or benches, we sat on the dock, looked to the west, and waited for the sun to set.

As we sat in the twilight, something in us settled. For an hour, we stopped feeling like tourists. We were not gazing upon, nor even discussing, any of the famous landmarks of the city. Instead, we sat on a ordinary boat dock, under the windows of ordinary families. As we watched the sun dye the sky, we shared stories about boys and laughed. We were half a world away, entirely at home.  Our mapmaker had guided us to a little corner of Venice we would not have thought to seek on our own.

Until you bless me

Under my pillow. Inside the blue teapot. On the porch windows.  Above the doorway. Between the couch cushions. Within the folds of a bathroom towel. 

These are just a few of the places I found benedictions today. In a sense, these serendipities are of my own devising. On Sunday, I invited friends, baked bread, set the table, and then demanded a blessing. Go into each room, I said, and pen a prayer. Inscribe my walls and tuck your blessings into the smallest corners of my house. Speak peace over this place. 

In a sense, these blessings were superfluous. The friends who came--students, colleagues, children, mentors--have already blessed this house with their presence. They have stood in the yard, offered compost for the garden. They have brought their children to gallop across the wood floors. They have come to cradle my new puppy. They have sat at the table and planned trips across the seas. They have been here with me. 

Even so, I begged them for their prayers. Gently enough, of course, but still cringing a little. Is it selfish to demand a blessing? Audacious to expect them to write words over my house, when I have yet to do as much for them? Superstitious to want their handwriting to cover the house from floor to ceiling, yard to Spare Oom? 

Yes. Yea, verily. Even so, I asked. 

And they gave. They gave me their prayers with all the generosity and abandon of the saints. They prayed that friends would be familiar with all the doors, that the table would be full, that no harm would come to the house or its inhabitants, that even the lean days would call me back to the heart of Christ. Some wrote formal poems--staggering prayers for comfort, laughter, mystery. 

As they did this thing for me, it seemed that  they were kin to the one with whom Jacob wrestled: "I will not let you go unless you bless me." But of course, they are kind and image of that one who blesses and wounds, and I felt a strange reverence for each of them: children of God, Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, glorious and fallen, strong in the harrowing love of Christ. 

When they left, I felt the weight of what I had done. I had called upon the Lord, demanding a blessing, and he had delivered me through the prayers of his people. The weight and rhythm of their love settled on me, and I slept.

When I woke, I let myself read one or two of the blessings I could see, but most I have left, intending to savor them slowly.   Every day since, I have woken to find some new mercy waiting. 

Spare Oom

In C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, the marvelous, soul-shaping adventures of the Pevensie children begin when the youngest of them, Lucy, enters the spare room of a large country house. The only item in the room is a large wardrobe, and it is through this wardrobe that Lucy finds her way into Narnia. As she explains this to her first friend in Narnia, Mr. Tumnus, he mistakenly thinks she is from a country called "Spare Oom."

When I was a little child, first hearing these stories, our house had no spare room, and I suspected that my inability to find Narnia had to do with this lack. When I was twelve, my father turned our unfinished attic into a precious garret-bedroom for me, a second bathroom, and a spare room. It had considerably more furniture in it than the room Lewis made famous, but it was a spare room nonetheless. 

I never found a portal to a magic world, but once we had our own Spare Oom, curious things began to happen. Once, an Kenyan student who arrived at the university and found she had no housing stayed with us for a week, filling our house with her warm, cadenced laughter and insisting on braiding my long hair into a network of intricate braids. Then Lennon moved in. We had been friends since we were twelve, but in the months he inhabited Spare Oom, I learned what it meant to have a brother. When we made a space that was open to the needs of others, we found ourselves tumbling into stories we would not have imagined for ourselves. 

When my friends Grant and Jenn bought their house in Texas, they sought a house big enough to share -- a house with rooms to spare for whomever God would bring them. I was the first person to benefit from that beautiful generosity, and during our year together I experienced what it meant to live in common and in accord. Many in my generation will talk about the idea of Christian community, but they made physical space for a radical way of living, and that year bore fruit in ways I am only beginning to understand. 

And so, with Narnia and Waco in mind, I have kept one room of my house empty, spare of furniture, wares, or sundries. I have vowed to keep it free from things so that it will be ready when the Lord calls for it. I will not let it become a place to store excess clothes or books or boxes. I have room enough for my wealth in the other rooms of the house, and I tithe my money, so why not my house as well? 

One day, I think this room will be full, but I don't think I will be the one to fill it. Sometimes I pray pictures of how this might be: wayfarers stopping along their road to Elsewhere; a friend fallen on hard times; a young prophet painting banners for God's revolution; someone who wants to plant a garden with me.

Most days, however, I simply rest in the knowledge of this room. On days when my desk is piled with bills to pay, papers to grade, tickets to book, lessons to prepare, meals to cook--in the midst of so much tending, Spare Oom stands apart. Uncluttered. Unhurried. Demanding nothing from me (nothing to dust, nothing to buy, nothing to do). Waiting. Simply knowing that it is in my home, open and waiting, settles me. 

My Spare Oom holds none of the things that make a place recognizably "mine," but in a sense, it is the heart of this house--a reminder that even if the property is in my name, the home belongs to the Lord, and I fill, tend, cook, welcome, work, and rest here at His good pleasure. My Spare Oom has no wardrobe, but my prayer is that in this room, we will build doors to other worlds: the realm of the redeemed, the new heaven and new earth, home.