Assisi

Another of our day trips while living in Italy was to Assisi, which is also located in the Umbria region. Assisi is the birth place of St. Francis. We went to Assisi on a tour bus instead of driving there ourselves. We discovered on this trip that we preferred to travel with our own car. Tours are nice, you get to sleep instead of drive and you get a guided tour. Jeff and Mandy do not like the guided tours, too much talking, and I don't like to ride on buses so much.

We arrived in Assisi on a very cold, rainy day with extremely cold and strong winds. The town of Assisi is full of hills, so imagine us walking up steep hills in the rain with 100 mile per hour wind blowing toward us. This is how I remember Assisi. Whenever we got to a location of interest and took shelter inside. We got to see the church that St. Francis attended as a child. We got to sit in the pew and look at the cross he was looking at when God spoke to him.

My favorite part of the day was at the church built after his death a monument built to him. Inside this enormous cathedral was the small home that he lived in during his adult years. St. Francis was born into a wealthy family and grew up as a playboy of sorts. He enjoyed spending money and having fun. When he was fighting in the army and then held prisoner for over a year he contracted a fever and almost died. During this time of extreme duress he found a deeper meaning to life. He began a journey of discovery and eventually became a saint. During this journey of discovery, at one point he was feeling that he wasn't close enough to God, or that his spirituality wasn't enough and he decided that perhaps if he were to go outside and roll around naked in the brambles, that the pain and duress would help him to journey even closer to God. When he began to roll in the brambles just outside his house they were miraculously changed from brambles to roses, but roses have thorns and would hurt just as much, not these roses, these roses were thornless roses. He found himself rolling around in thornless rose bushes.

Inside this cathedral made as a monument to St. Francis is his old home, a tiny brick house no bigger than a closet. But, also there is a garden, a garden filled with those thornless roses. Which have been carefully and lovingly tended for over a century by the people of Assisi. Within this Cathedral, you go down a hall and you look through a window, and through that window you can see the rose garden. You cannot go into that garden or touch those roses but even on a cold and blustery winter day there were a few blossoms on the very truly thornless rose bushes. I felt an enormous spiritual connection to St. Francis that day. I believed the miracle of the rose bushes. I don't normally believe in the supernatural aspects of religion all that much. If I hadn't been in that church I would have thought of that story as a fairy tale like that of Cinderella, but having been there I have to tell you it felt very real to me that day. I am most certain that a miracle happened, the miraculous thornless roses.

I like to think of God in this way, I take that thought of a loving God who would not want his child to suffer, I take that with me everyday. I don't believe that people need to suffer to learn or to grow.