Assisi
The day starts off in fog, but it quickly lifts into bright sun. John calls in the Light with our group all together, we have a two minute birthday celebration for our tour manager Dmitri, and then we split into groups for a walking tour of the town, focusing on the Basilica of St. Francis and the Basilica of St. Clare. The frescoes by Giotto in the Basilica of St. Francis are worth the entire trip to Assisi. I really started to understand just how revolutionary the movement around St. Francis was—a lifting of the masses out of the psychic levels and into the spiritual.
Some people in the group are having some clearing—sniffles, sore throat—including me. The Girlfriend mentions that this is common in Assisi. The St. Francis energy was a clearing out of everything that distracted from God—all the accumulated pre-Christian psychism, nature worship, and earthbound rituals.
The asceticism of the time is so foreign to us now. We’re in a new era. But think of the wrenching and stretching and tugging that was necessary to free humanity from the imprisonment of millennia of identification with the body and the earth. We’re heirs to what St. Francis accomplished, living in comparative luxury up above the muck and the mire, the bondage to the seasons and the cycles of agriculture. Would it have been possible to avoid all the body-vanquishing asceticism? Tell me how it could have been done and we’ll let God know for next time.
After we leave the Basilica of St. Francis John Morton does a blessing in the bright sun reflecting off the white stone around the exit. On the way to the Basilica of St. Clare a few of us interact with a street performer posing as a statue of a monk. A group gathers for lunch under the shade of a huge tree in a garden-like restaurant. Free time in the afternoon.
Assisi today is full of shops and galleries, large crowds of tourists and pilgrims. In spite of the throngs of people, it’s a relaxing place with a very distinctive energy. It feels like a big retreat center or spa, but underneath is a hardness that’s reflected by all the stone buildings. Everything here is made of stone. Hard choices, no room for alibis or ambiguity. Are you flesh or Spirit? What’s your answer? St. Francis demonstrated the full commitment of the choice.
This place still seems to energize the choice, even while you think you’re just wandering around the lovely narrow medieval streets, shopping or getting gelato. Everything seems to conspire to pull me into the the earth in order to force the choice. But when I choose to do SE’s the slingshot effect is powerful.
I get really focused on how my body is doing with my sore throat, and I just want to wallow like the pigs of the peasants. I no longer have my Florentine artistic persona giving me a feeling of creative power, motivating me to do and accomplish. It’s just me now, lying in bed looking out over the green Tuscan valley. After a while it gets boring. I choose to get up out of the mud and I get back to work. I take a taxi up to the top of the mountain for the sunset/nighttime view of Assisi that you can see in the photos.
Dear David, Your triumphant pictures and words are such a gift to those of us who love to share in your experience ! God bless you, and heal you asap. With love, Noel