It was the end of my trip to Italy with the 140 strong Blackhawk Chorus.  It had been quite a trip, my first time to Europe ever.  I’ve never had much of a desire to go to Europe, but when the director announced we were going to Italy I had my down payment in the next day.  We sang in Florence, Assisi, Genzano and at noon Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.  It was beyond a thrill of a lifetime for me; sometimes I still am in disbelief that I was blessed with the opportunity for my voice to rise to the vaulting ceiling of that Basilica. 

The trip in general had its ups and downs, as guided tours will.  As a loner at heart, it was difficult for me to have a roommate, and my roommate was difficult.  I was able to get away from her after a few days when other friends realized what a pickle I was in, and surrounded me like bodyguards wherever we went. 

It was not until Assisi that I got my own room.  We actually stayed in the town below Assisi called Santa Maria degli Angeli.  My room was a beautiful corner room in our rather rundown hotel.  The 3-4 star hotels we were promised were somehow all “overbooked” when we arrived.  Most people were not happy but as a girl who gets around in travel trailers, I was just fine.  As soon as I got into the room I threw open the windows and breathed in my freedom.  The Basilica of the same name as the town was only a block away. My room looked out over the stunning domed church and I could clearly see the statue of the Madonna greeting me,  and in the morning I was awakened by church bells and birds – and no chattering roommate.  I was in heaven.  It was our last three nights in Italy, and finally I had my peace.

The first night we went to dinner as a group in in Assisi.  It was a hot evening and the town was rather quiet, and the lighting afforded the town a mystical quality, which is appropriate for the town where St. Francis of Assisi walked.  Almost immediately I felt calm and my spiritual self felt quite at home there.  I remarked to a fellow traveler that this was surely a very special place, you could feel it in your bones, and he agreed.  He later gave me a souvenir of a Tau cross, which St. Francis used as his symbol, as a reminder of the blessed time there.  It is now in the hands of my nephew who went to Africa and Afghanistan for humanitarian reasons.   It seemed fitting that he should carry it…

The next morning I joined a few others and caught the bus up to Assisi and “did the town” – there is even a $.99 store in Assisi, can you believe it?  I went into all the shops, visited the huge Basilica di San Francesco, tried to grasp all of the history and art in that one church alone, lunched with friends in the piazza del comune, bought the coolest pair of Birkenstock clogs that I haven’t seen anywhere since, in a tiny shoe store no bigger than my kitchen which was packed with shoes from floor to ceiling.  I had spent a lot of money getting to Italy and was on a strict budget (gelato not included) and those shoes were my only extravagance.  I still have them but just this year they became garden shoes.  They were painted with tropical sea creatures, of all things, in bright tropical colors. 

Assisi is not Disneyland, people actually live there, and you are likely to get run over by a speeding car if you are not paying attention as you amble along a narrow side street.  There is no way to see the whole town in two days.  The town is so chock full of history, and it had been a long trip, I found myself just wandering without much brain left.  I was definitely a tourist that first day.  I will go back, of that I am sure.  I’ll tell you why later.

The next day I decided my last full day in Italy would be all to myself, a silent retreat of sorts.  I took out the map of Assisi and planned my route.  I would walk through the whole town, to the other end, via side streets.  The sense of antiquity and the realization that St. Francis had walked these streets left me near tears.  I found my way down to what I consider the heart and soul of Assisi – San Damiano – the church and the convent.  To get there you must leave the town, and walk down a steep dirt road, with olive trees on either side, a gorgeous view of the valley in front of you.  It was here that St. Francis experienced his conversion, and although the Crucifix which spoke to Francis is kept in the church of Santa Chiara, when you kneel down in the little chapel you cannot help but be moved by things beyond our human understanding when you kneel where he knelt and know that he looked at a Crucifix like the one you are seeing, and said this prayer, day after day: 

Most High, glorious God,
enlighten the darkness of my heart and give me
true faith, certain hope, and perfect charity,
sense and knowledge, Lord, that I may carry out
Your holy and true command. Amen.
  

It was here at San Damiano that Francis wrote the Canticle of the Creatures and where the convent of St. Clare still stands.  I was mostly alone in this place – it is off the beaten track of tourist Assisi.   The convent was empty, and I let the grace of St. Clare cover me as I walked from room to room, tried to imagine her living there, praying there for forty two years.   I looked out the windows at the countryside that she saw when she looked out the windows.   I stood in the room where Clare died.  I am sure if anyone had taken a photo of me as I walked around that convent, my mouth would have been hanging open in awe.

It was hard to walk away from there, back up the hill.  I could have stayed forever.  It was so hot, I remember telling myself that if I died tromping up that road it would not be the worst place I could die, nor would it have been the worst day of my life.   Along the way I stopped to hug an olive tree.  Did you know if you do your dreams will come true?  So I hugged that tree, and I’ll tell you what I wished for – that I would go back some day to Assisi, and bring Al with me.  I have a photo of my olive trees (there were two side by side) hanging here next to my desk.  When I return there I will take it with me and see if I can find my tree, and hug it again.