la passione per il lavoro

on easter sunday i woke up and decided to travel to iran.

this easter monday morning i am looking out of the window onto sunsoaked white houses and swaying green trees.  i am in erica and brent's appartment.   erica travels all over italy as a tour guide on a bus.  brent is a graphic artist from canada who is looking for work at the moment in rome.  they met during erica's school exchange programme in canada.   i met them last night on the train and my enquiry about where i could find internet access led to a beer in a bar and then being invited to stay at their place.

online i have found out that an iranian visa for a UK citizen may cost 275 euros.

i was sitting on the train platform playing my ukulele when a woman gave me a bag of chocolate eggs and a smile.


i used to curse God because i had no shoes
then i met someone with no feet.

(muslim proverb)

brent is playing the guitar and erica is making some pasta.  a sunny easter monday morning in rome.  easter sunday was also a very sunny day.  i left the rainbow gathering in the morning and began walking along the via francigena, the old pilgrim path to rome.  across the sunny garden fence, a group of friends having a barbecue invite me for a glass of wine, which leads to a plate of pasta and salad and the most succulent soft lamb i can ever remembering tasting.  massimo the barbequer and i talk about being open to the new opportunities that life offers us each new day, about the importance of sharing with the people we meet along the way and the essential unity of all beings.  we end up embracing each other often and, looking into each other's eyes, commenting that it is not so frequent for two people to choose to look directly and honestly into the eyes of the other.  massimo's fidanzata - whose cuban parents gave her the name lady - says she will give me her eyes in return for mine.   massimo says that she is a wild african spirit enclosed in the appearance of a lady.

next to the welcome home arch leading up the the rainbow encampment is a sign bearing these words:

Fermati, respira profondamente
sintonizzati e ascolta la Madre e il Cielo,
entra in profondo contatto con te stesso.
Risuona con la tua frequenza, il tuo colore libero delle impurita che ti hanno appesantito.
Armonizzati in un unico ARCOBALENO
che rifletta la strada piu alta.

it sounds like a religion, especially the last bit.

what makes a religion a religion? i said to the guy from holland with the cowboy hat and the long hair and the smile and the guitar.  do you believe in the rainbow? he asked me the first time i met him by the evening fire.  what is belief?  it is our way of seeing the world, our way of behaving in accordance with our deepest values.   all religions have a sacred book, says he, ours would be The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.  Now is our religion.  we believe in Right Now.
the Power of Now suddenly acquires an extra resonance as i listen to his words.  he is an animated figure at my side flickering in the soft blazing glow of the fire.  the beats of the bongo drums powerfully measure out the flickering passage of moments, overlaid with a female's singing tribal voice

i left finlay juggling by the fire circle in the morning.  he said he was thinking of travelling back to la valle degli elfi - the community in the wooded valleys in the north of tuscany.  finlay and francesca travelled up from calabria, and we met at the festa della luna piena, which was combined with their celebration of thirty years of occupation of the old farm houses which were falling into ruin, scattered throughout the woods of the steep valleysides.  being there is like stepping back in time, many houses have no electricity, the various young families educate their children in their own school and they live by growing their own vegetables and herding goats, as well as by touring the music festivals in the summer, making and selling pizzas.  often they gather together for a festa lavoro - playing music and sharing sumptious meals of lasagna and pasta and homemade bread, in between working together on some project - planting potatoes or recementing an old leaky wall.  the morning when it rained roberto, the grey bearded animated young soul, encouraged everyone with his exclamations, "oi, raggazzi. voi siete fantastici."  he encouraged everyone with his exultations of the wonderful act of all working together in the freedom of the open air, and handed us cans of beer.  when finlay and i told roberto that we would leave to go to the rainbow gathering, he responded: "ma il rainbow e qui. noi siamo il rainbow"
he said they all came from the rainbow.  "the rainbow is good," he said, "but they don't do any work.  what we have here is la passione per il lavoro."

it was a gleaming vision of the sort of life i would like to live if i ever decide to settle down.

Taizé

"i am really interested in what people really mean when they say 'God'"

"lets talk about this later," said stephan, the german washing up at the sink, for the church bells had already begun ringing.

rita, the german mother who did her knitting during the morning discussions, said that she was filled with something at taizé which had to keep her going till her next visit because she couldn't find it anywhere else.


it is a feeling, an awareness, God, that everything is insuperaby good.  it is an overwhelming wave of Peace, the perception of goodness, the perception of beauty - Love - it is a recognition of the value of, God it is Hope and Faith and Charity and Love, it is a feeling and a perception, an attitude, an affirmation, begot by such words as:

In manus tuas pater, commendo spiritum meum

or:

Mon ame se repose en paix sur Dieu seul: de lui vient mon salut.  Oui, sur Dieu seul mon ame se repose, se repose en paix

or simply:

Toi, tu nous aime, source de vie

or:

O toi, l'au-dela de tout, quel esprit peut te saisir?  Tous les etres te celebrent, le désir de tous aspire vers toi

sung by everyone sitting in the church either side of the central isle where the monks in white robes sit; the voices of all rise in unison, humble-hearted voices, sincere, full of tenderness and hope, accompanied by the simple melody of a harpsichord.  it feels awesome.  it is a feeling.   God, what is it?

another taizé song offers this:

The kingdom of God is justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.  Come Lord, and open in us, the gates of your kingdom

ma che bello!


however, in the underground crypt in the early morning catholic mass, my principal thoughts were:  "but what are the thoughts of he who reverently, spectacularly holds aloft the holy host? he who is draped in those robes, he who repeats those words because those are the words that have to be said, what are his real thoughts and feelings?  what is he experiencing in this moment?"  i can see that hitting upon a good ritual then following it again and again may give a feeling of security to the worshipper, but give me the simplicity of the taizé service, the silence, the simple melody of the harpsichord and the super simple focus on the super positive superthemes of our lives.


brother norbert wrote back and said that even though i was "only" 28 years old, i have experienced a lot of things in my life.  he hoped that i understood that the diversity of countries, cultures, churches is already very big and they need to keep a common age among volunteers. As well, they like to give a priority to young people who begin their faith journey, who are about to make important decisions in their life.

i came round to appreciating their focus on the young.  i watched the video about the founder Brother Roger and appreciated that from the outset taizé has been conceived as a place for the young.

long live the young!
off to pastures new

the group of belgian high school students made a lot of noise in the dormitories.  one night they all sat in a circle and one of them dashed into the middle to pick up the spoon as soon as they recognised the song played by luigi and gabriel on the guitar.   luigi and gabriel, the young italians who took a photo of us all together smiling in the sun on their polaroid camera, which they soon signed and gave to me, telling me to give them a call if i ever came near their village near torino.  the photo which i was admiring in the street in cluny on the day i left when lo and behold! they drove past and we all sat in the square and they played stairway to heaven while the sun sank.  we talked about italy and travelling and europe, and the international goodness of taizé.  wide-eyed they were at me saying that i would go in to the woods over there and look for a place to sleep seeing as night was now coming on.  i could see that such solitary sleeping in the woods could be seen as not so much fun from a standpoint of social conviviality.  i told them of the joy of solitude; the return to the source that is meditation, the beauty of being with the trees and falling asleep with the stars above.  in the end i did in fact spend an evening of human conviviality because when i walked into the boulangerie, asking if they could fill my water bottle, marie said:

"tu est en voyage? tu fais du couchsurfing?"
i said: "oui, de temps en temps.  cette nuit par contre je pense que vais dormir dans les bois"
"dans les bois?  ben, tu peux dormir chez moi si tu veux, il n'y a pas de souci.
c'est comme tu veux"

"ben, comme j'ai dit, dormir dans les bois est ce que pensais faire, mais ton offert d'hospitalité commence a me sembler une bonne option."


an offer of spontaneous hospitality.

a night of meeting her partner nicolas and his circle of friends in the bar, then going out to a restaurant, then admiring her spectacular photos on her laptop of the year she spent working as a chef in new zealand.  spectacular, new zealand is a place where the air is pure and the water is pure and the plants grow to their full sparkling best.  even the rocks seem to radiate with extra special verve.  everyone who has been there says that.

quite impressive really: a stranger walks into your life and twenty seconds later you invite them back to your house.  "intuition," marie later explained, "i always trust my intuition."