Days 14 & 15 Plus Epilogue: Assisi to Turin to Home: Crying in the rain; eating in a gas station (twice!); the surprise of the real Shroud of Turin; reading Scientific American; Living Love at Home

This is part of an ongoing story; if you are just joining the journey, you may want to start at the beginning.  
 

Day 14 - Leaving Assisi

I wake up at 3am with a stuffed up nose and sore throat. Maybe it had something to do with the three glasses of wine my fellow pilgrims poured for me at dinner – then again, maybe I’m just a cooked pumpkin, overwhelmed from several weeks of intense travel. When I finally get out of bed two hours later, I mope in the shower with a heavy kind of melancholy. Leaving Italy is heart breaking, and we fly out bright and early tomorrow.

For the most part, we have had miraculously beautiful weather. Of course it is this morning that the wind turns bitter cold. When the first drops of rain hit the windows on the bus, I wish I could cry too. 

The bus parks a few blocks away from St. Mary of the Angels, and I am too tired to remember to bring my camera, and too tired to really care.  I bravely walk against the cold wind and into the giant Cathedral.  We are directed into a tiny chapel down a side hall for our mass.  I sit in the very last pew, under the loving gaze of a long icon of St. Clare.  Realizing it is my last mass in Italy, my last moment in Assisi, my last everything (for now) in Italy, I start to cry.  Grateful for the moments when the group is singing or chanting loudly enough so I can blow my nose without making a loud fuss, I just let myself sit quietly through mass and shed cleansing tears.  I am much more sad to leave Italy than I was to leave Medjugorje.  I’m sure part of it is just a release of all the intensity of the last few weeks.  There’s another peculiar quality to the heartbreak; it can best be compared to the grief of leaving a lover.  It’s a strange feeling. 

After mass, we walk quickly through the museum.  On the way, we see a statue of St. Francis with a live dove perched in his arms.  I’m sorry I missed taking a photo of that one! 

***

Seven long hours later on the bus, I have just eaten my second meal of the day at a gas station. There's an entire country full of amazing food and I am eating at a gas station for the third time this trip. I will concede that Italian gas station food is nothing like the scary burritos and hot dogs in US convenience stores. My lunch was spinach and ricotta wrapped and baked in whole grain dough covered in seeds, and it was surprisingly memorable. Dinner included a radicchio and escarole salad with tuna and olives with half a ham (Italian parma – no Oscar Meyer here) and cheese (yes, real cheese, not simulated-cheese-product) sandwich on baguette with tomato. It was surprisingly good. This should cheer me up. It does not.

The reason we are eating at a gas station for the second time today is that we have a hot date with a live viewing of the Shroud of Turin. It had better be worth it.

***

We are driving through Torino, and so far I feel lukewarm about this city - in fact I feel like the gray sky.   There is a line to get into see the shroud - it is 3-4 people wide and several blocks long leading up to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, the shroud’s permanent home. So even though we already have tickets, we stand in the cold drizzle for a long time. (Here's a photo of a small portion of the line!)

I am at first cranky, then I simply find it hilarious. I learn that Gus has had many logistical challenges on this day, including the hotel canceling our reservations, so I get beyond my own fatigue to thank him for all he is doing to take care of us.

Fortunately, seeing the Shroud of Turin is beyond my expectations. We are extraordinarily privileged to see the real shroud live - not a replica or digital image. They make the shroud available inconsistently every 10-25 years. I did a research report on the shroud when I was 11 years old. It is a fascinating mystery that still eludes scientists. I knew it would be cool, but what I did not expect was the emotional and energetic response that I have never had from image reproductions. 

After being ushered through winding hallways and a little section of a neat museum, we are pushed into the cathedral.  As if all of a sudden, I am standing in front of the real live shroud, and I am stunned into silence. Then a deep emotion rises in me that I can't quite categorize, to be honest, but it brings tears to my eyes. When we are ushered out of the viewing area, I notice many of my fellow pilgrims look as awed as I feel. Despite being tired and sick, I feel that two gas station meals and a long wait in the chilly gray weather was worth it. I am grateful.

Our last night in Italy is otherwise unremarkable once we leave the shroud - although the city is beautiful at night!

We rush to our newly booked hotel, just in time to repack for the long flight to the States, clean up, and squeeze in about 6 hours of sleep. Hotel Record is nice and I finally sleep deeply so I am oddly spritely the next morning at 5am.  I even forget to be sad that we are leaving until we board the plane.

Beginning the journey home
During the flight, I read Scientific American magazine. I don't see any synchronicity or irony in this until I'm deep into an article about theoretical physics. I realize that the same thing I have been contemplating this whole trip - how our human filters and imagination affect our conclusions and beliefs - is evident in science too. This is certainly not a new thought for me, but it is definitely fun to see this same mechanism in action across apparently conflicting parts of life (science vs. religion).  We tend to think of science as "cold, hard, indisputable facts," but that's not the whole story. The questions we ask, the way we gather data, and how we interpret that data are all heavily influenced by our filters and beliefs. The fascinating thing about science is that even though we know so much, there is so much more that we do not know and do not understand. Part of the fun is that we don't know what we don't know. How we explore new frontiers is limited and opened to us by the audacity of human imagination. Science begs faith and creativity too, in its own way.


***

Epilogue

You never know how a deep internal shift will change the life around you.  When I first arrived at home it began to slowly dawn on me that the Sonya who left for this trip was not the same one who returned home.  Though the changes might be subtle internally, they are unmistakable.  Because of the new spaciousness and vibrancy within, everything I do in my life has had to change a bit – some things in a subtle way, other things in a more dramatic way.  It’s touching my work, where I want to live, my marriage, everything; it’s an effect of even greater love, ease, and inspiration than I had before.

One of the first things that happened when I returned was I began dreaming about my next trip to Italy.  I am promising myself that next time I will not stop for any meals in any gas stations – and no pilgrim is going to stop me!  This next trip just may have to be a culinary and art tour.  ;-)

I find myself returning to the Christian prayers, just because I love them.  Because they work as an immediate clarifying factor in my life - as I mentioned before, it’s like shaking an etch-a-sketch clean.  As I recognized in Medjugorje, I have not stopped feeling Mary’s peace and compassion, though the intensity of the Medjugorje experience definitely quiets down over time. 

A while after I arrived home I received the gift of a different representation of Catholic rules and practices. One of my in-laws is a Franciscan priest, and he came to stay with us for a few days.  Without knowing about my experience with religious conservatives on this trip, one evening he began talking about, as he called it, the black and white duality and conservatism that is gaining hold in the church again.  I immediately told him about my experience with the judgmental conservative elements on my pilgrimage.  It opened a truly beautiful conversation about how God is love, not about judgment; how Jesus came to us to help us know that Love here in the world and in our lives; and how God can be experienced through nature and all around us. I told him repeatedly over our time together that his parishioners are very lucky to have him as their priest.  Our conversations drove home for me yet again how we can all read the same materials, hear the same homilies, pray the same prayers, meditate in the same way – but it’s all about our perspective, our filters, and how we choose to act on what we perceive.

I realize as I write this that this ending is completely arbitrary in one sense, because the journey is not over.  The plane may have landed, I might be back at work, but the realizations, openness, and love continue to deepen.  I hope these stories have offered you a mirror reflection of your own truth and love.  Thank you for reading this, for taking the time.  I would love to hear from you.  Blessings on every aspect of your journey – wherever it may take you.