If all roads lead to Rome, those same roads can lead you away. We take the one that leads us one hundred miles north to Assisi. There’s not much in minuscule Assisi, but that’s its charm. Narrow roads, impassable by cars, spiral up a hillside and cradle limestone houses connected as one long, multiwindowed facade. As a known settlement from a thousand years before Christ, the entire town is declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. People still live in the village and worship at the Basilica Papale di San Francesco d’Assisi, built in 1228. After Rome, we spend a day here with Dan and Bethany to wander shops of wood-carved trinkets and ogle frescoes of its favorite citizen, Saint Francis. The kids run with glee down carless streets and Finn chases pigeons through the Piazza del Comune. We sample fragola and stracciatella gelato. The sun falls asleep behind farmhouses in fields, and we witness the spectacle from Assisi’s pinnacle. The sky transmutes from powder to amaranth and St. Francis’s six bells knell its ominous, warbling song on the hour. The moment is sacred, and it is earthy. Francis would be pleased.
We commute ten minutes downhill on a bus to the nearby twenty-first-century town of Santa Maria degli Angeli, where our guesthouse perches above a store on the main street. Dan knows of a pizzerie named Penny Lane where the menu options are named after Beatles songs. Kyle orders Sexy Sadie; I order Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. The kids split Get Back. After dinner, we stroll a few blocks to the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels, where an evening service has begun.
The kids are amused for two minutes, then beg to leave. In Kenya and Australia, flamboyant animals are hyperbole, yet safari drives and zoo excursions become commonplace, predictable. In Italy, every gilded chapel is a pageant of legendary art. Visit them in abundance at rapid-fire pace, and they might become banal, monotonous even. We want to guard the kids from the danger of renowned artistry becoming sidewalk art. Kyle agrees to watch them play in the piazza so I can stay a few more minutes.
The service in session isn’t technically in the basilica; it’s in the Porziuncola, a miniscule chapel erected in 1211 and parked inside this standard-size basilica. Its location marks where Saint Francis established his order and where he was brought to die in 1226. It’s a chapel plonked in the middle of a grand cathedral, built with rough stones hewn by the saint himself, and eventually covered with frescoes in the fourteenth through nineteenth centuries. The newer cathedral, built in the seventeenth century, pulses light through its windows and ricochets through chandeliers above while Francis’s humble church prostrates, dark, with a few flickering candles scintillating a yellow-lit altar. The entire structure is ten by eighteen feet, squeezing the crowd inside. I join them, cross myself, and let an Italian homily wash over me.
This is a Catholic service, and as a low-church Protestant my entire life, I am personally in the midst of walking the Canterbury trail of Anglicanism. With some intention, we aren’t visiting local church services this year, keeping near instead our Bibles and our Book of Common Prayer. Neither Kyle nor I doubt the tenets of our faith, but we are on a spiritual pilgrimage, desperate for freedom to question, brood, and venerate, without the necessities of ecclesiastical culture. We went to church twice in Chiang Mai, and it was enough.
Tonight, in the flush glimmer of Santa Maria degli Angeli’s tapers, I hear a merciful, moored voice. The priest prays in Italian, and a voice in English whispers, It’s time for you to return.
God, I never left, I reply.
Neither have I, says the whisper.
I think of Nora in Chiang Mai. There in her office, I would stare at my own bitterness, turn it over and over in my hands, beg God to reveal its purpose. I would sit in silence and hear God say, Your bitterness is not about me. It is about your brokenness, the weight of this world from which I’ve already set you free. I tell Nora what I hear. She would put her hand under mine, help me unclench and release the bitterness, throw it away, wash my hands. She would pray a blessing over me, then tell me to go write a poem.
I stare at the yellow candles at the altar.
Where do I return? I ask. The priest speaks, and people stand. I copy.
Community. To the order of humanity and neighbors. Home.
God, I ask, where is home?
Silence. The answer I hear every time I ask this question. This silence has grown louder on our travels. Tonight, however, my shoulders slack and my spirit loosens; some of my frustration releases into the candlelight. My question still lacks an answer. I resolve that perhaps I’m not yet to know.
People of the earth make home all over its crust, but their particular whereabouts aren’t the chief concern. These people cluster together, huddle into families, and flock into parishes, neighborhoods, precincts, villages. Saint Francis gathered twelve men to break bread and live in the mountains near birds and trees. He made his home wherever; the whereabouts weren’t the issue. He lived in community.
It’s getting late, and Kyle is still outside with the kids. I cross myself, leave the chapel-in-a-chapel, and walk to the main doors. As I leave, I notice leaflets in a basket, blessings from Saint Francis typed out and offered for passersby. I snag one. It reads:
May the Lord bless you.
May the Lord keep you.
May He show His face to you and have mercy.
May He turn to you His countenance and give you peace.
The Lord bless you.
I slide the blessing into my pocket and slip out of the church.
Venice has an unfair reputation. When we planned our trip, American friends swarmed us with unsolicited advice to avoid Venice—it’s touristy, smelly, not as impressive as you’d think. We go anyway. It’s one of my favorite places.
It’s March, low on tourists, and the mildewy canal odor is divorced from summer’s heat and humidity. Boats hug winding sidewalks, bobbing in waterways and parked like carpool pickup lines. Row houses share laundry lines, pristine sheets and shirts hanging brave, spanning canals like a tightrope. Venetians have an odd obsession with pocket-size dogs; most stride the sidewalks dressed up in sweaters and hoodies as if they own the place. Why a city with no actual grass and plentiful opportunities to descend into dark waters is a haven for miniature canines, I’ll never know.