One Wild and Precious Life

One Wild and Precious Day (Well, Two, Actually)

Two beautiful weekends of Indian Summer just past; last weekend I thought of all the shoulds and oughts first:  I could weed a badly overgrown veggie garden, and put it to bed for winter:

Or maybe I should clear the windfall tree that fell onto my labyrinth in the last big storm:

Nah.  I didn't want to do either one of those things.  I'd have had to go get my chain saw back from the sharpening shop to clear the tree, and I just didn't feel like weeding and mulching on such a gorgeous day.  But then there's the brush pile that needs burning -- I love a bonfire!

Or there's the brush pile behind the church -- even bigger and more in need of a burn!

But really, you can see by the light even in these pictures, that the day was calling me -- calling me to something way beyond work.  This day wanted to be admired and adored, savored and enjoyed.  The day called me to do what I wanted to do -- asked me how best to make use of this one wild and precious day. 

So I started out with a bike ride that made me feel wild and free, like a kid again, really, exploring roads I'd never taken, panting my way up small hills (hey, I do live in the mountains here!), scaring myself a little bit with the speed of the downhill coasts.  What fun!  I was having too much fun (and too out of breath) to take pictures of my ride.  But when I got home, the day still beckoned, and I went for a solitary walk in the woods behind the church.

Our church is blessed with 18.8 acres of property, only about 3 acres of which is cleared.  The other 15 acres or so is woodland, complete with a rough, overgrown gravel roadbed-path laid by a previous owner.  So I set off down the path, through the woods, across the creek:

And on back through that particularly beautiul slant of light that only comes in the fall.  First I checked on the tumble-down A-frame that used to be someone's fishing cabin:

Then I took a look at what I think was once a hunting blind -- someone told me it looks like the top to a silo -- but I always fancied it to be a flying saucer:

Ah, what fun I would have had with this, when I was a kid!  It would have been the ultimate clubhouse, spaceship, playhouse, fort, teepee, whatever my iimagination could have conjured!

Finally, I came to the pond.  Please don't tell my dogs I came here without them!

Ah, the light was so perfect and round, the sky so blue that I sat down right there for a time to watch some small fish, listen to the breeze, and puzzle out why trees seem to like to lean right out over the water, as this one has.  Slowly, slowly, in the silence broken only by woods noises, I began to feel my soul fill up again.  Then I could head back out, re-crossing the creek and walking uphill to get back out to the church parking lot -- and this is what I saw as I left the woods:

It's hard to see that tiny, tiny moon in the very center of that blue, blue sky -- but it's there!  And it looked much bigger when I actually saw it last week!  Of course, tomorrow that moon will be full -- but last week it was just a plump crescent, hanging there in that late afternoon sky.

This weekend -- last Friday on my day off, actually, I went on another adventure -- with the dogs this time!  I finally decided to explore Fall Creek Falls State Park, one of the several that are fairly near to me, this one being only about 45 minutes from my home.  Other people have encouraged me to explore it, saying it's "really nice," and the park's own PR says that Southern Living Magazine called it "the best state park in the south."    So Mapquest was my friend, giving me great driving directions, and off I went.  Yes, it was/is spectacular.  I can only show you these pictures to prove my point:

I got down there to the base of the falls (maybe 300 feet?) by way of a heavily-traveled, but steep and rather treacherous path.  The dogs loved it, but they wore me out, trying to keep them from greeting every fellow-traveler, not pull me down the path too quickly, not explore every nook and cranny, like this one:

And then, once we got to the bottom, a fairly steep half-mile -- well, then we had to come back up!  Whew!  I was beat by the time we made it back to the car -- but I felt glorious, at the same time.  And I don't think I could have done it before I lost this 68 pounds in the last 18 months!  And the view from the top was deinitely worth it:

Why didn't I find this park sooner?  Why did I have to live here for nearly 9 years before I got around to exploring here?  There are lots of other features and vistas that I didn't have time to explore yet, and the campgrounds look really fine.  It makes me want to get a pickup truck with a camper cap and just take off for a few days -- or the rest of my life!

Snow Day!

Oooh, it's snowing on the Plateau!  Snowing and snowing!  It has been snowing for just about 24 hours straight, without stopping.  Today it's very light snow, like powdered sugar -- but non-stop, nevertheless.  It's exciting!  Everything is closed, almost, and everything that can be cancelled in this part of the world, has been.

Brrr.  The wind is blowing, too, and the temperature is 13F.  Not quite a blustery day, but close.  You can see I've been out with the snow shovel; I've also been over to my office (all of about 200 feet away).  Earlier this morning I even took the car out for a quick trip to the grocery store; but mostly I'm staying inside and cozy today, doing some work from home, taking it very easy and enjoying the day off that everyone else is getting.

I'm thinking about a conference that I attended in October in Mississippi, one that I never took the opportunity to tell you about.  It's called CREDO, and is sponsored by the national Episcopal Church for active clergy (and also for full time lay professionals in the church).  This was my second CREDO conference, the last being 8 years ago.  CREDO stands for "Clergy Reflection, Education, and Discernment Opportunity."  It's a wonderful way that the church has developed to take care of its clergy.  We were at the Gray Episcopal Camp and Conference Center near Jackson, Mississippi, and it was for priests who all attended a previous CREDO, and who are roughly the same age and years of experience.  It lasted 7 days.  It was a great opportunity to reflect on where I've come, where I am now, and where I still want to go in my career and in my life.  They fed us well, gave us lots of information and food for thought, and assigned us to small groups where we could discuss our ongoing reflection and goal-setting.  Before we went, we were to have a physical exam and complete a health profile, fill out some (absolutely confidential) financial and vocational worksheets, and ask several people from our work life to fill out surveys about us.  This gave us some really valuable baseline information to contribute to the week's work, as well.

Here are some shots of the place we stayed:

This is what I saw out my bedroom window every morning -- mist rising over the lake.  Ethereally beautiful.

This is the labyrinth (with my shadow cast across it) where we could walk and meditate as we pondered our lives.

And this is the chapel where we worshipped daily.  The weather was perfect, perhaps just a bit too warm a couple of days, but we wore shorts and t-shirts most of the time.  The camp, located across the road from our section, had a swimming pool for our use, as well.

One evening, we went into Jackson for a nice dinner out.  The street where we ate still had the facades on the buildings that were used when "The Help" was filmed.  If you haven't read that book, you must.  I loved it.  Here are a couple of shots of the fun storefronts from the early 1960s:

You can't see what's playing at the Capri, but it's "Cleopatra," with Elizabeth Taylor.

It looks a lot like the streets of the town where I grew up.  Same era, too.

On the way home I went to see Graceland.  But I'll have to share those pictures and related reflections another time.

At the end of the conference, most of us had detailed goals and plans completed.  One of my biggest realizations from the conference is how isolated I've become here in my little corner of the world.  Little by little, this corner has, in fact, become littler.  I've become more and more alone, and it was all so gradual that I didn't even notice it.  I found excuses not to go out and be with people, as the little corner became very comfortable.  But God said, "It is not good for Adam (humankind -- not a man's name) to be alone."  And it's true.  So I've been making real efforts to incorporate other people into my life and activities.  Some of that is blogging here.  Some is about being in better touch with friends and family who are distant, and also with friends close at hand -- as well as seeking out new friends.  It has involved a little effort, a little stepping outside my comfort zone again.  We introverts can play alone very happily in our little corners, but we need others, just like the extroverts do.

Something I've noticed, since I recognized my own isolation, is that now I feel lonelier.  I think I kept those feelings locked up for a long, long time.  But sometimes I miss the people I love so much that I cry.  Eventually I think I'll be looking for employment that will bring me closer to those who have known me my whole life, or close to it.  It's funny how they all are more and more important, the older I get.  When I was a kid, or even up to middle age, I could flit off on my own adventures that took me far away:  Moving from Indiana to Buffalo, then off to Connecticut to seminary, then down here to the Plateau and this lovely little church.  But as I get older, and now especially that I've unlocked my lonely heart, being close to the old, good friends, and family who has known me my whole life, seems more and more important.

I'm eager to see how this new awareness unfolds in my life; it feels as though I've set off on another leg of my journey.

Everyone stay warm and dry, you hear now?

Autumn

Summer has come and gone since I've written.  But I've been reading my friends' blogs again, and it has inspired me to return.

Since the 3rd of June, my last post, much has happened.  I've had a birthday.  I've lost 27 pounds.  I've been on vacation.  It has been a wonderful summer, though very hot!

For my birthday I was in Indiana and Illinois, visiting family.  I had a wonderful time.  I had delicious strawberry shortcake at an urban church's strawberry festival, a huge affair where over 10,000 desserts were served!  I told them about my little church's festival in May, where we serve about 350.  But it was the same wonderful feeling of a church doing ministry all together, feeding the whole community.

My sister-in-law's yard was in fine form.

 

This is looking toward the neighbor's house.  SIL has had the landscapers in, and they've worked hard on it all.  Here's where I sat in the mornings to write in my journal:

On my actual birthday, I had lunch with 4 high school friends, two of whom I literally have not seen since high school graduation.  We were all part of the same crowd in high school, attending one another's slumber parties, crying on one another's shoulders, playing soccer with a crushed up soft drink can in front of the gym, and laughing till we cried on more occasions than I can count.  It fed my soul so to see them, and was truly the best gift I've received in a long time.  That night I went to dinner with my sister-in-law and her friends at a lovely Italian restaurant located right in the Terre Haute airport.  I had chicken piccata that was to die for, as I watched through the huge windows when a huge, bellowing, blowing, lashing rain storm swept across the tarmac.  I also watched videos on big screens showing scenes of Italy -- and it was such fun to say, "I've been there -- and there! -- and there!"

I had lunch one day with my brother Paul -- the only one still alive (my brothers were all 12+ years older than me).  He seemed his frisky old self, now a year after his beloved wife of many years died.  Ramona, we still miss you.

Then, in July, I went to Buffalo for 2 weeks, staying, as always, with my best friend in the world.  We had such fun!  She has the best little veggie garden on her upper front porch, and we ate a few things from it while I was there.

This is actually a shot from last year, so I got her pretty flower boxes (that we planted together), but not the veggie garden, in the corner where I'm standing to take this shot.  This year the porch was even more beautiful than last.

We spend weekdays at the campground, lazing along and barbecuing, going to the beach late in the afternoon and catching up on our reading (I read the first 2 Steig Larssen books, and two books about compulsive eating, which gave me much food for thought).

Oops, ignore that man -- it's Cheryl's partner and my good friend, Tom!  But you can see the camping trailer where we stay and the pretty, shaded lot where it's parked.  And this is what we saw every night we were there:

Oh, I'm not even sure this is a good example of the best of them!  But the campsite is literally steps from the lake (maybe 100 yards?), and after dinner it was delightful to walk down together and feast our eyes on the beauty of it.

On weekends, when the campground filled with noisy campers and many noisy motorized vehicles of various sorts (golf carts, ATVs, go-karts, motorcycles, and the beach with ski-dos and motorboats), we came back into town (about a 45-minute drive) and did city things, such as the stunningly beautiful Buffalo Garden Walk, movies, and parties with the girls.

Okay, this is a shot of Cheryl and her pretty table -- but quite frankly, when I was with the girls, I was having so much fun that I forgot to take the "girlfriend pictures" of all of us together that I love so much!

I drove home a happy woman.  We ate healthy, wonderful, fresh food, grilled meats, and drank lots of water (along with other libations!).  I maintained my weight -- even lost a couple more pounds.  My soul was filled with good friends and happy times.  I went to church at two cool churches, and got to talk to two cool priests that were new since I lived there.  Ah, it was the vacation that I needed last year and didn't get, because I was too busy in California and too sick in Buffalo.

Yes, I've had bothersome allergies on and off all summer.  But I learned to manage them!  Triumph!  Claritin-D is the antihistamine that works for me with minimal side effects (I believe different ones work best for different people), and also Nasonex nasal spray.  I've had to keep my house closed up and the cooling system fan running all the time, which is a great disappointment for me, as I love nothing better than open windows and fresh air blowing through, when it's cool enough.  But this is how I managed to keep things well under control, so I did not have a recurrence of the bronchitis that laid me so low for two months last summer.

So now I feel rested and energetic again.  This is a testimony for at least one good, refreshing vacation each year, and preferably two.  I've continued to lose a bit of weight, though the heat in Tennessee has resulted in me being less active during August, and now even into September.  My yoga studio closed, so I haven't done yoga regularly, either.  So the weight loss has slowed, and I'm struggling again.

My friend Susan (who's also our parish secretary) gave me a great 18-speed bike she wasn't using, and I've ridden it a few times.  Funny, though -- when I was in my 20s I did not own a car, and my only transportation was a bicycle.  I rode it everywhere, at first with my daughter in a little seat on the back, and then later, she followed me on her own little bike.  My 10-speed bicycle truly was almost like an extension of my own body.  It's not like that now in my late 50s, I can tell you!  It was a great surprise that riding uphill (on this very hilly Plateau) was difficult, even in the lowest gear!  What has happened, except for 3 decades and 80 pounds?  Huh?

But I am energized and excited about the season to come at church.  We're doing 4 sessions on Sunday morning about Christian healing, and it's a lively group of 6 of us.  The Bible study on Wednesday is finishing up our very long study of Exodus, and that's exciting, too.  This is the first time we've attempted a formal study of the "biblical theology" of a book of the bible (though I tend to think that's what we actually do each time we meet), and it's exciting to see people finding the theological themes or loci in the book, and learning more about God, more about humankind, more about judgment, compassion, and grace, as we review what we've discussed.  We'll soon wrap this up and our next study will be the Gospel of Luke.  I've started reading "The Wisdom Jesus" by Cynthia Bourgeault, and think maybe I'll have a book discussion on that for our next Sunday series.  Can you tell I'm well rested and ready to roll?

Just the last bit of wonderful news from my autumn is that my friend Sandi got a new Kindle for her anniversary, and she has given me her old one, already loaded with maybe 100 books, mostly detective novels!  What fun I'm having with it!  What a generous heart, for her to give me such a wonderful gift.  So I'm reading Steig Larssen's third ("The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" -- I was waiting for it to come out in paperback), and next is the Sue Grafton "U" book.  Yay!  Lots of fiction to supplement the nonfiction that I'm also enjoying.

Now the colors are changing in my yard, and I'm about to uproot my dear veggie garden and reduce it in size by about half.  I'll keep the rhubarb, grapes, and herbs, and try to coax the asparagus to life again next spring.  But it's being reduced from a large, rectangular plot, to a smaller triangle.  The dear parishioner who built my gate is going to help me move my fence, and I've got to get out there and weed and remove the raised beds, so the job can be simply done.

I'm sure all of you are stopping to enjoy the fall.  Take time just to be in a few delicious moments -- as many as possible.  You'll never live these particular days again!

Well, Okay, It's Pentecost...

...and I'm finally back!  Don't even ask me where I've been, what's taken so long.  I've been mostly around, but distracted by ever so very many things.  I did attend a short conference in Newark last month, quite inspiring and informative.  My role there was as Board Chair for our church's Jubilee Ministry, the Cumberland Adult Reading Council.

Otherwise, I've been struck down with allergies for about 6 weeks.  Now, I'm not someone who has had allergies, but as I get older (and yes, fatter), these things bother me more and more.  I got to feeling absolutely sick with them -- in fact, I thought I was sick, at first.  Of course, I was ignoring the yellow film of pollen that coated every inch of my house, inside and out.  It was my favorite season to have the windows open, the air and heat both turned off, and fresh air blowing through.  When I finally realized that allergies were the problem, not illness, I decided that my focus needed to be on learning to manage them, since it seemed that I would have to live with them.  Everyone I spoke to said that the level of allergens in the air has been extraordinary this year, probably due to a long winter, a cool, delayed spring -- and everything deciding to bloom all at once!

So I read up on allergy management on the web, and I asked everyone I know.  I closed up my house and turned the fan permanently on (to filter and re-filter the air), I dusted my house thoroughly (well, I got my cleaning lady to dust and vacuum carefully while I was at the conference), I bought a neti pot, and I went in search of an antihistamine that didn't immobilize me.  Claritin-D is my magic pill.  I do know that different brands work for different people, but this one works for me.  Once I could put aside my resentment at even having allergies at all, and having to close up my house during the beautiful springtime, then I could accept the fact that lots and lots of people have to live with allergies and learn to manage them.  I was determined not to be incapacitated as I was for 2 months last summer.  And I did it!  I got through the very worst of the worst of allergy season.

Presently, though, I've been off my antihistamines for 4 days, and I can even lie down to sleep again (previously I had to be propped up to a nearly sitting position to sleep, to avoid that postnasal cough that laid me so low last year).  I've been sleeping like a rock, 8 hours straight and waking up groggy like I could sleep 8 more.  It feels so good to get good rest!

And I've been working outside.  The electric company gave me 2 truckloads of wood chips from their trimming up and down our highway, so I've got lots of mulch for paths and my labyrinth.  I've also started work to reduce the size of one of my front beds -- to much garden for me to maintain.  I have thriving black walnut trees that I have to uproot with a pitchfork and mattock -- the squirrels harvest the black walnuts that grow profusely around my house and the church, and they like to bury them in my flower beds!  Everything has been so unkempt, but this has been a glorious year for flowers!  Here are a few that I just shot today:

I think you can click on any of these to get bigger pictures.  This is just one tiny bit of what's blooming in my gardens -- you can see that the flowers are flourishing.  My veggie garden is another story, however.  Yes, I have rhubarb, raspberries, herbs, grapes, and one tiny, neglected asparagus that has gone to fern.  But I'm completely overgrown with ragweed, thistle, and other nasties.  I've got no annual garden veggies in, not even my beloved tomatoes.  Between allergies, busy-ness at church, the half-moved fence that I haven't finished, I just have not had the energy to tackle it.  In fact, I'm going to pay someone to renovate it for me!  I may get a few late crops in this year.  I'm so ashamed of it that I won't even take pictures of it.  But, as Anne Sexton really did say, "There is hope.  There is hope everywhere.  Today God gives milk, and I have the pail."  Things may yet happen.

And here are a few signs of hope:

Lots of promise here.  It looks like it'll be a good year for the sweet-tart English apples in the back, for grapes, for the golden delicious apples in the driveway, and yes, for wild blackberries in the part of the yard that never gets cleaned out, the part that faces the highway.  So yep, lots of promise, indeed.  Hope, indeed.

Oh, yeah, at church we also doubled the size of our gravel parking lot in two long, hot days:

 

The men's group also threw in some weeding and mowing with the job they did on the parking lot, amazing guys that they are.  I spent the first day fetching lunch orders, making fresh-brewed sweet and unsweet tea, serving donuts as a mid-morning snack, and making sure the water was iced and ready for thirsty, sweaty workers.  You'll have to enlarge these pictures to really see what's going on, but in the third picture, down by the dump truck, there's a tulip-poplar tree they left standing -- just for me!  They removed 3 other trees from that little cluster -- all growing too close together.  I hate removing healthy trees, but decided to bite my tongue, as the men were doing such a great ministry to the church.  What I discovered was that by being very meek, I won one healthy tree!  It was worth it.  Big-mouth little sister that I am, it has taken me nearly 58 years to learn the art of keeping my mouth shut once in a while!

We also had one heck of a great strawberry festival, the 3rd Saturday in May!

A really good time was had by all, we fed a record number of people, and also raised a record number of dollars for the church from this event.  It was a ton of work, but we all work together, and it really does bring us closer together as a parish.  I remind them each year of how it's such a clear sign of the Spirit working within and among us.

And finally, I want to tell you about my big project for the year, which actually subsumes a number of projects within its scope:  I intend to lose weight.  A lot of weight.  I reached a spectacular, horrifying, all-time high weight on March 5, 2010.  I got on the scale for what must have been the first time in months, and I almost passed out from horror at the number I saw.  No, I'm not going to even tell you what it was, but it was way too high.  Mind-numbingly, health-threateningly high.  And it took me a few weeks to figure out what I was going to do, but it was like waking up from a long, bad dream.  I realized, really realized for the first time that my mother's sister had Type I diabetes, and I see relatives all around me developing Type II.  I'm just pushing my luck and asking for trouble here.  I also realized that in 2 years I'll be 60.  Why would I head into a new decade, and into at least the threshold of old age, without giving myself every health advantage that I possibly can?  Why am I doing this to myself?

So I'll share my simple strategy.  It's not brain surgery -- we all know what to do.

• I've given up alcohol altogether for now.  I had a bad habit of drinking daily, or nearly so -- and I think it was playing hell with my metabolism and the way my body was processing carbohydrates.
• I've taken up activity again: walking and running with my dogs, yard work, yoga classes.  Since the time I was so sick last summer, my vigorous activity was sporadic to nonexistent.  No more.  The older I get, the more crucial activity is for my weight loss.
• I eat at least one salad every single day (with a very few exceptions).  I need the veggies.
• I'm drinking lots and lots of water and other non-carbonated liquids.
• I'm really working at getting plenty of rest.
• I'm thinking about trying Overeaters Anonymous in one or more of its several incarnations.
  

How's that for a start?  I have to say, I'm down 14 pounds from where I was on March 5.  I'm down a full size in clothes.  Now that I've really started the journey, about the first of this month, I'm losing at the rate of 3 pounds a week.  The more I lose, the more I'm motivated to lose.  The more I move, the more I'm motivated to move.  I hope I can lose at this rate for a while longer, though I know it will slow down as I lose more.  I hope to reach my goal weight by the end of the year.  What a gift I'm giving myself!

And my owls?  Three of the four are flying now.  Max, Pattison, and Austin are all flying as soon as the sun sets.  I enjoy the chat room community there, as well.  And little Wesley should fly within the next day or two.  Certainly by the end of June, they'll all be fully fledged and gone from the owl box.  I feel a little sad to think about the end of my journey with these owls.  I've been watching them since the day after the oldest one hatched.  I've seen them go from blind, pink, naked little hatchlings to darling, fuzzy little chicks, to nearly fully feathered adolescent owlets.  I've seen them take their first steps outside the box, seen them fly for the first time.  Now they'll learn to hunt, and then they'll be off on their own.

So yes, it's Pentecost.  It's the end of the Great Fifty Days of Easter.  Things quiet down around the church this time of year, and I begin to think about vacations and fresh tomatoes and cold glasses of unsweet iced tea.  I told my congregation this morning that Pentecost is the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit: the time when the Church received the last tool it needed to get on with living a Resurrection life.  And I feel that I'm living an abundant, fulfilling, Resurrection life myself.  I hope I'll post here more often this summer.

Most of all, I hope that all who are reading this are having happy, abundant lives, too.

The Weather Here, and Thus, More Travelogue

Well, in two days, the weather has gone from this:

...sunny, lovely, warm enough to go out and play on my front porch, rearranging and adding toys -- though the odd-looking white thing on the right is actually an "ice bowl" from a pot I left outside...

To this:

And this little guy:

...buried up to his catunkus in Christmas ornaments (the hanging ones are so much fun -- they sway and sparkle in the slightest breeze), looks like this, this morning:

"Glub, glub, help, save me!"  Yes, we have not only snow here, but ice.  It looks like a silver-gray fairyland out there (no sunshine to make it twinkle, though).  Thank God we still have power and are warm and dry in here, with another day off (my third in a row, oh, happy day!) ahead of me.  But you can see why I'm going to heartlessly leave this poor little guy to thaw out on his own, and go back to my sunny Italian pilgrimage.

Sunny, yes.  It didn't rain a single day of my 3-week trip.  Here I will inject a travel tip:  If you are a heavy person, prone to overheating and uncomfortable sweating in temperatures that others find "comfortable," or even "a little cool," don't take a lot of easy-wash, easy-dry nylon/spandex clothing with you.  It's lovely to carry fewer clothes, and clothes that don't wrinkle, and that can be washed out and dried overnight in your hotel room.  It was so very convenient.  But I was so damned hot all the time!  Had I been demurely sitting and sketching, like a refined 19th century madamoiselle on her Grand Tour, I would have been fine.  But hiking up hills and running after trains, hauling a rolling knapsack over cobblestones and wearing a heavy backpack with journals, tripods, and travel guides -- next time I'll take light cotton, and seek out laundromats.

So here I am in Livorno, pretty miserable with a cold, ensconced at the Hotel Citta.  I'm planning to head back north and east, to Bologna, Padua, and Venice.  I'm seriously re-examining my itinerary.  It's Tuesday, September 29, the 8th day of my trip, and I'm realizing that I simply can't see and do all I'd intended.  The more northerly locations could easily consume another week of my trip.  It's clear that if I stick to my original plan, I'll probably not get anywhere south of Rome, and certainly not to Sicily.  I'm determined to get to Sicily!  So it's here in Livorno that I start slicing and dicing my itinerary.  I'd love to return to Venezia; I'd love to visit Santa Maria Salute.  But it's clear that everything is taking longer than I thought.  And that's fine.  This is a pilgrimage and a study trip, but it's also a vacation after a long period of illness, and right now I'm still sick.  I'm not willing to haul myself out of bed at the crack of dawn in order to race to see three madonnas before lunch (well, that's an exaggeration, but still).  As it is, I'm having great adventures, seeing lots of beautiful sights that I didn't see in 2005, and getting lots of writing and reflection done.  I have no one to speak to, so I find myself speaking a lot to myself, on the pages of my journal.  I'm already halfway through the small journal that I brought with me!

So I decide to travel across the width of the country and go to Loreto, because I certainly don't want to miss that -- probably the most famous religious shrine in Italy.  So off I go.  I changed trains in Florence, and even in the station, you could feel the atmosphere of that beautiful city.  I actually heard other people speaking English!  It felt warm and gracious and honeyed, and I longed to stay, but pushed on -- I didn't even have enough time to walk out onto the streets.  I didn't even take any pictures.  No, I continued on, bound for Loreto.

Getting off the train in Loreto, I find myself in a pretty little town, but I'm still miles from the shrine itself.  It's about 2:00, and the bus driver (who's sitting there on his bus) tells me he's not going anywhere till 4:00 (16:00 in Italy).  So I walk around a bit, find a grocery store, buy myself some lunch and a bottle of red wine, and wander a bit more.  Eventually the bus takes me to the shrine: up, up, up the mountain.  Funny, after two millennia of Christianity, we're still "worshipping in the high places."  In the Old Testament, God doesn't seem to like that very much -- but we humans just keep striving to get a little closer to heaven, I guess.

When I get to the shrine, I find another whole little town, built up around the church itself.  There are lots of hotels for pilgrims in all price ranges, souvenir shops, groceries, and the usual pharmacias and tobacco stands (that sell everything from postcards to playing cards, and especially bus tickets).  I find a suitable hotel, right next door to the tourist office.  The hotelkeepers are rude, but I don't care.  I get a room with 3 twin beds, and go exploring.

You know, I told you last night that this photo was Montenero.  I don't know what happened to all my photos (at least the ones I thought I took) of Montenero.  I may have them on a flash drive somewhere.  But I thought this looked like Loreto, and now in the light of day, yes, it is Loreto.  See the pretty shops along the right, including a sidewalk cafe.  And directly ahead is the Loreto shrine itself, which fully contains a small structure that is, legend has it, the house of the Virgin Mary, transported by angels from the Holy Land at the end of the Crusades.  Modern scholarship confirms that the stone structure is identical in composition and workmanship to the grotto that remains in Nazareth, that is also reputed to be the home of the Virgin Mary.  Modern scholarship also found a deed of transfer for the structure, made out to someone named "Angelis," thus the confusion with the angels.

Anyway, within that structure is the little black madonna that is Our Lady of Loreto, probably one of the most famous black madonnas in the world.  I do not have photographs of her, since I was able to buy reproductions in the souvenir shops.  But here is a picture that I took in Rome, in a shrine dedicated to her there:

 

I truly am sorry about the blurriness.  I promise that the next time I go I will take better equipment and use it more professionally.  The rough brick wall at the left of this photo is reminiscent of the rough stone of the actual shrine in Loreto.  I did learn that the actual statue of Our Lady was carved after a fire destroyed the original in 1921.  That was a great disappointment.  My next quest is to try to find photos of the original statue.  Without her dalmatic (the liturgical clothing in which she is dressed), the newer statue really has an art-deco look about her -- I wonder what the earlier one looked like?

The thing that struck me about the shrines I visited was the devotion of the pilgrims.  In Loreto there were people of all colors, kneeling devoutly on the stone steps inside the shrine.  There were people at lots of levels of physical ability, of course -- because the Loreto shrine is renowned for its healing properties.  Despite the commercialism, despite the hype, these shrines all feel like very holy places.  Someone told me Thursday that the prayers and devotion of every pilgrim who ever visits a shrine remains there, and I believe it.

So I bought some prosciutto, fruit, bread and cheese for my dinner, and retired to my room.  I was just recovering from my cold, and so I needed my rest.  I ate, I drank half my wine, and I retired early.  The street outside my room was very noisy, and it was only the antihistamine and ibuprofin that allowed me to sleep.  The next morning I was off to Rome.  I met a very nice German man who spoke excellent English, and so we had a nice conversation while we waited for the bus back to the train station.  Rome will have to await another entry.  But thanks for the chance to revisit warmth and light and adventure.

Helloooo Out There!

Oh, my, where does the time go?  A whole year has come and gone since I wrote on this blog!  Well, at least the date has turned over to 2010.  My only excuse is that I had an absolutely abysmal Advent, Christmas was fine, but gone in a flash (the whole Twelve Days!), and there doesn't seem to be the lull I expected between Epiphany and Lent.  We've had the Bishop's visit last Sunday (I also celebrated my 10th anniversary of ordination to the priesthood), tomorrow is the annual parish meeting, and next Saturday is our vestry retreat.  For non-Episcopalians, the vestry is like the parish council or board; we meet monthly, but once a year we take the better part of a day to do a little self-evaluation, planning, and envisioning for the next year, as well as to orient new members.  Of course, for each of these big events, there's a lot of planning and preparation that I also do, so it keeps me hopping.

As for the abysmal Advent:  I don't know exactly why or how that came to be, but almost without realizing it, a few days before Christmas, I realized I was very depressed -- so much so that I knew that I needed to monitor myself carefully, and if it continued, get some help and medication.  I think a lot of things came into play all at once, including, of course, post-Italy-adventure letdown.

In any event, on Christmas Eve I woke up, and suddenly everything was all right again.  It felt like a peaceful Christmas Eve morning, and I had energy, and my mood was fine.  I spent the day decorating my house (I had my tree up, and the rest of the decorations in from the garage, but hadn't had the energy to decorate), including hanging some tinsel garland outside (I don't do outdoor lights) and buying a new garland for my front door wreath, with little mittens on it.  Very cute.  I did some grocery shopping, including a turkey roast (with light and dark meat -- perfect!), a duck (frozen -- to cook on New Year's), and a beef rib roast.  I had gifts to open from family, and especially, as always, from my generous friend Cheryl, who is the best gift-giver I know.  I had a festive little house.  My sermon was done, and my time was my own until some time before the 10 pm Christmas Eve service.

I had a great week after Christmas, doing some intensive journaling, reviewing 2009 and preparing for a new decade.  I started a new book, When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd, and I'm still reading it, little bit by bit, savoring just a page or two at a time.  Her language is beautiful, and she captures that time of transition and discernment so well.

Now my decorations are mostly down (though not completely packed up and put away).  I tend to leave the predominantly red, white, and silver stuff out through February, when I begin to switch over to green for spring and St. Paddy's day.

I will continue my Italy travelogue another day.  I'm still working my way through it all.  But here's a photo I'll leave you with -- my creche for Christmas 2009-10.

I hope you can get a clearer image if you click on it.  I didn't put all my critters there, but the dragon on the roof of the stable is new, and I'm not sure I used the airplane (also on the roof)  Elvis and Santa are there, as usual, along with the snack truck, the street lights, and the little mouse, offering the baby Jesus his piece of cheese.  It makes me smile every time I walk by.

I will also leave you with one Italy shot:

I ate lunch here one day, just outside Altavilla Milicia, which is about 20k from Palermo (Sicily).  It's a great story that I promise to tell one of these days.  The trees in the foreground are lemon trees -- the lemons are green in Sicily -- and that blue line at the horizon is, of course, the ocean.  The restaurant owner gave me a bag of lemons, right off the trees, which I took back to my landlady in Palermo.  What you can't see off the far right edge of the photo is a line of several attached cottages -- kind of like old-fashioned motels used to have.  Now I didn't ask, but I'm convinced that at least some of them are summer vacation rentals, and my fantasy is that I will spend my retirement winters in one of those cottages, writing books and walking my dogs to the seaside every day.

Incidentally, at midnight in Palermo, it's 55 degrees F and partly cloudy right now.  As a man said on the train one day, "Ahhh, Eeetaly!"

Travelogue: Milan to Biella to Oropa

In the morning I left my room in Milan and boarded the train to Biella, northwest of Milan, back into the foothills of the Alps.  When I arrived in Biella, about 1:30 pm or so (13:30 European time), I found that since it wasn't a festival season, the next bus to Oropa wouldn't leave for about 4 hours.  So I had to find a way to pass some time in Biella.  Fortunately, it wasn't so difficult; the hardest part is that I arrived in town during that long, 3-4 hour lunch break, and so most shops were closed.  I wandered the town, dragging my luggage (why didn't I remember about leaving my luggage, for a small fee, at the train station?  What was I thinking?), and found a clean little town with lots of cobblestones (and yet not seeming so very medieval), and a grocery store where I could purchase some fruit for lunch and a bottle of wine.  I did so love trying the different regional wines!

This is a view in front of the train station at Biella, where I would also catch my bus:  a pretty fountain, benches to sit on -- but all, unfortunately, in the sun, and the sun was still hot and burning on my poor, sensitive skin.  But next door to the station (on the side opposite my camera angle) was a park, with grass, benches, and peace and quiet.

This stop was an important lesson in Italian travel and my need to adjust my timetable and itinerary.  If I had been willing to arise early, I could have caught an 8 am train to Biella, and there would have been several buses before noon that went to Oropa.  I could have had the four hours I spent wandering aimlessly in Biella to view and pray with the black madonna at the Sanctuary.  But it was a real dilemma:  I was on vacation, as well as a study trip, and really wasn't willing to arise at 6 am to catch an 8 am train.  So I was already beginning to guess that this transportation schedule might be typical of the smaller towns I would be visiting, and that I would have to lower my expectations.  I simply was not going to be able to see 35-40 black madonnas in 21 days.

Once I was on the bus, and we traveled through the city of Biella, which was actually quite large and attractive (I had only seen a tiny radius during my walks from the station), we began our ascent to the Sanctuary: up, up, up.  I could never have walked there, and certainly not have bicycled.  It was a very steep trip up the mountain, through a couple of very small and charming villages, and finally to the large monastery complex near the top of the mountain.  The monastery complex itself was far too large to photograph in one shot, but here's a small piece of it: 

This shows the old church or chapel, where the black madonna was housed, on a gloomy mountain morning.  The cloister area at the left was a gallery on the 2nd floor, accessible, yes, by a lift, but also by sets of stone steps.  My own room was in an identical section in front of the old church, blocked by the church itself.  I could come down the steps near my room and be right next to the old church.

I didn't have a reservation; it was a Friday night, and it was made clear to me that groups of pilgrims were coming in tomorrow, and I could have my room for only one night.  I would like to have stayed longer here.  If you go, make a reservation.  I did get to see the madonna that evening, before they actually closed up her little reliquary.  I know that's not the right word for the small box-type enclosure in which she stood; but I can't think of the correct term just now.  In any event, the doors to the enclosure operated by turning a small wheel near the floor, and I watched one woman turn this wheel and block the madonna from sight until the next morning.  I did not get photos of the madonna that I can show you without extensive editing; if you Google, you can see her, but not, I think, in her little enclosure.

But this was my lovely room, for 30 Euros (pretty cheap): 

This is one wall.  The furniture was pretty old.  I'll post another view, including my bed and a very old pre-dieu, below.  I was enchanted.  I'm also going to show you the stunning view outside my shuttered windows (did I tell you that screens "just aren't done" in Italy?).  My window opened out onto the most stunning scene.

I even had my own bath in the room.  Lovely.  A nice bath, at that -- probably the largest I had throughout my whole trip.  I could actually stand, turn around, and take several steps from the toilet to the sink.  Amazing.  Quite luxurious, actually.  BUT....

But there was just one problem with this absolutely charming room: the bed.  This bed was absolutely lovely, antique, the bedside light assisted my bedtime reading.  I loved it.  But it was the hardest damn bed I've ever slept on.  It was literally like sleeping directly on the floor.  I don't know why I didn't think of taking ibuprofin, both to assist sleep and to kill the pain of the hard bed -- but I didn't give it a thought.  Or maybe I did, and even the ibuprofin didn't kill the pain of this bed.  So all night I tossed and turned, hips and back aching from such a terrible surface.  Later in my trip, I learned about the ibuprofin.  But not yet, I don't think.  I suppose I was a little bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed when I faced the new day.

But before that new day there was one more experience for me.  I had already begun to recognize the gifts that were granted to me each day during this adventure: the hotel desk clerk in Milan, and the lady (with not one word of English) who helped me find and read the bus schedule in Biella.  There was the helpful desk clerk in Oropa, who helped me with my luggage and had to show me my room (I'd never have found it on my own!).  And now, at 7 pm (the earliest possible minute to get a dinner in Italy), I had a dinner that reminded me of some of the other reasons that I loved Italy.

Before I forget, here is only one shot of the breathtaking view from my window:  Is this lovely, or what?  How did I ever get so lucky?  Another gift.

So, the dinner.  You know, it takes a certain amount of energy for a single woman to go into a restaurant, sit down alone, and prepare to have a dinner all by herself.  Maybe I'm old fashioned, but it's not always easy, especially when couples, families, and groups of friends are seated all around me.  Even though I'm an introvert, I prefer to share meals with others.  That's why it's so easy at home to eat alone in front of the television, I think -- at least I don't feel completely alone.  And the dogs begging at my knee at home just aren't the same, somehow, as a human dinner companion.  But I needed to eat, and this was the only remaining restaurant open.  Boy, was I lucky!  I'm only sorry that I forgot to take pictures for you.  First I had a small salad, then a small serving of ravioli.  I'm not sure what was inside that ravioli, but I just held the food in my mouth to savor it.  That became my catchphrase for a good meal:  "You just want to hold the food in your mouth and cry."  This was my first meal like that.  Then I had something (not sure what it was called in Italian) that was sauerbraten.  Oh, my, it was lovely.  Oh.  Another gift at the end of the day.  The waiter was so gracious (as they usually are in Italy), and I felt so very special.  Perhaps I had a glass of wine; I don't even remember.  The food overshadowed whatever beverage I consumed.  I remember Rick Steves said that in the mountains it wasn't about "German" or "Swiss" or "Austrian" or "Italian" food, but it was mountain food.  I had always thought of that marinated, very tender, rather vinegary meat as "German," but here I was, in the mountains of Italy.  It was superb.  Then I had a regional dessert, a "bonnet," they called them, that was essentially an individual custard, turned out on a plate, with a caramel top (a bit like an upside down cake), with a powdered sugar frost on top.  Oh, it was lovely, too.  In the US,  creme caramel is my favorite dessert, and this was similar, though the top was not seared to a crispy crust.  The flavors were the same, though.  Yum yum.  This was my first sit-down meal in Italy, and couldn't have been a better welcome for me.  I went to bed a happy woman.

The next morning I got up, checked out (did remember to leave my rolling knapsack in an anteroom of the office), spent a short time in the chapel with Our Lady, and did a little shopping for a figurine, postcards, and booklets.  Even though I knew everything I bought would be edited and approved by the Roman Catholic Church, I wanted to gather all the local material that I could.  The next time I visit, I'd love to be fluent enough in Italian to ask some of the pilgrims and employees what they think about this particular madonna, and what legends and stories they know about her.

Who has ever heard of Oropa -- especially if you're not Italian?  Who besides the Swiss have ever heard of Einsiedeln?  These sites are not widely known to the world, but they are very popular in their particular locations.  When I left on Saturday morning, I counted (unless I mis-remember) 13 tour buses parked in the lower lot of the sanctuary, all carrying pilgrims to this site.  Amazing.  Very fierce devotion, it seemed, whether the church or the world acknowledges it, or not.

I decided I would go to Genoa, and possibly get better information about and directions to the black madonna at Crea, which was almost directly south of Oropa, but not easily accessible.  More about that another day.

Travelogue, Day 3: Einseideln to Milan

Surely by now you see that these blog entries are as much for me as they are for you.  Of course I want to show my trip to friends and family -- but I am processing, processing, processing exactly what this trip and these madonnas meant to me.  I have bunches of people who are waiting with bated breath to hear about my trip (I'm lucky that way), but I also need to figure out the importance of this trip for me, and for my study of the black madonnas.

One thing that was a common thread, is that it was often an ordeal to get to the madonnas, and this was my first experience of this.  A lovely but tiring day in Zurich, a mistaken train ride, arriving late in a strange place, and having to find my way.  And of course, once I did get to Einsiedeln and the monastery, and get myself a room and some dinner, the whole church site was locked up for the night -- so I had my bath and still had to wait to see the madonna until the next day.  The ordeal to find the madonna began to feel like my "rite of initiation" at each site!

The bulk of the time I spent viewing the madonna, shopping for not only souvenirs, but study materials, was on the following day, on Thursday.  And then, after not enough time in Einsiedeln, I had to board the train to Milan.  It was a short ride, really -- I think I boarded the train about 2:00 pm, and arrived in Milan about 4 (or 16:00, as the Europeans tell time on the 24-hour clock).  Here are just a couple of pictures of my stunning ride through the alps:

My first sight was of peaks enveloped in clouds -- all very beautiful and mysterious.  I couldn't help but think of Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Law from God, and the Mount of Transfiguration, where Jesus was also encased in cloud -- the clouds are so often a sign of God's presence in the bible, and I surely felt God blessing this trip, and my sight of the Alps.

The view from the train was so beautiful -- I encourage any of you setting out for Italy to check the fares to travel through Zurich -- certainly if I had been in a hurry and disinterested in the madonna in Switzerland, I could have taken a train directly from the station,  headed to Italy, and been at least to Milan on my first day in Europe (which was actually the second day of travel, since the trip over the Atlantic was an overnight trip, landing me in Zurich the morning of my second day).

I have to say, I felt like Heidi.  Please ignore all the feedback from shooting through the window (like my hand and camera!) -- and see the cows.  I also saw sheep, and many beautiful little vegetable gardens.  I saw the landscape change from Swiss/Germanic/cold weather to Italian, warmer weather, more gardens still producing.  It was mostly green, lush, and beautiful (this was September 24, keep in mind), even high in the Alps.  I was also alone in my 4-seat "pod" for the trip down to Zurich, midday, mid-week.  My only conflict was between writing in my journal, which I did, madly, and gazing at (and photographing) the scenery.  Mostly I chose to look and photograph, figuring I could always write and reflect later, but I couldn't always attend to the beautiful sights I was seeing as I traveled through the Alps.

When I arrived in Milan, I found that the luxurious tourist offices of 2005, when I was in Italy before, had been reduced to a tiny booth and a plexiglas window, where I was provided with a city map and a photocopied list of local hotels.  That was discouraging!  in 2005, the tourist offices were places where one could come in, sit down, and speak English with a worker who was fluent in English and thrilled to use the internet to locate and reserve a room.  I left the station with my map and list, and proceeded to orient myself to the streets and available hotels.  Since streets are not posted on easy-to-read signs, but rather must be read engraved into the side of buildings, I had to walk, sometimes for blocks in each direction to discover what street I was on.  From the station I could see a good number of chain and 4-star hotels, but I already knew I could not afford to stay in those -- and so my quest for a 1 or 2-star hotel began.  I eventually did find a hotel (I'm sorry that I can't remember how many stars, one or two), with a very friendly  young English speaking (sort of) desk clerk, who not only gave me a room with a bath included, but also searched out Oropa (my next destination) on the internet, and gave me directions about how to get there.

It was warm there, and I did not have air conditioning in my room; but by evening, it cooled considerably, and I could open my shuttered windows onto a courtyard, and it was fine.  There were other windows looking out onto this courtyard, but they seemed to be mostly offices or rooms under construction/renovation, so no one was home later in the evening.  I went out in the early evening, shortly after dark (the time of the traditional passagiata in Italy, after the day's work (which usually concluded about 7), and before the dinner hour (which began about 8), and found myself in a largely student neighborhood, which was not threatening, and allowed me to explore, finding a shop in which I bought a nice bottle of Italian wine, and a grocery store in which I found a bottle of laundry detergent (I carried lots of synthetic knit clothing, which I could wash out, and which would dry overnight).  I also saw food that I could purchase in the morning for my trip to Oropa, to eat on the train for lunch -- and the usual large bottle of water (with gas, also called frizzante), to drink in my room, and also on the early part of my journey in the morning.

It was in Milan that I had my third kebap.  These were a type of wrap sandwich sold in little shops run by Middle Easterners.  They featured meat that in the US we call "gyro," or a large hunk of meat cooked slowly on a vertical spit, and sliced off thinly.  The difference between the "gyro" that we get in the US and this new "kebap," was that this "kebap" also included a liberal garnish of fresh veggies, so it was a bit like meat and a salad all wrapped up in a tortilla: definitely NOT Italian, but delicious, filling, and cheap.  Yum.  I still had 2 1/2 weeks of time to get some lovely Italian dishes.

I'm sorry I didn't take any shots of Milan.  I'm sorry I didn't get to see the Duomo -- the elaborate, sugar-icing, gothic structure that looks beautiful in any photographs I've seen of it.  I'm even more sorry that I didn't get to see "The Last Supper."  I knew I was taking this trip 6 months or more ago -- why didn't I book a reservation then?  But when I tried it a week or two in advance of my departure, I couldn't get a tour.  I can't believe I didn't take any pictures of Milan.  It reminded me of New York, though -- big and dirty and a bit impersonal.  I enjoyed my mini-walking tour of my own neighborhood, near the station and my motel -- but I left knowing there was so much more to do and see there.  Once again, for the second time now, I had arrived in a strange place, and with minimal help, had managed to find myself to a suitable hotel, and then found dinner and a bottle of wine!  Yay for me!  To be continued, of course, as I head back north and back west in order to get to Oropa....

Travelogue, Continued: Einsiedeln, Switzerland

Now you see, I really shouldn't have been blogging when I was so jet-lagged as when I made the last entry.  My first day was not Zurich to Milan, but rather Zurich to Einsiedeln.  Einsiedeln, while a small town, is a famous pilgrim site, and everyone I encountered had heard of it.  Maybe I just haven't been a great follower of religious pilgrimage sites, but I'd certainly never heard of it until I started to follow the black madonnas.  It's not like Medjagorje, which just about everyone has heard of, or Lourdes, or even Loreto.  But in Switzerland, at least, it was a hugely well-known pilgrimage site.  So after my day in Zurich, Einsiedeln was my destination.  I had been assured (either by the ticket master or the tourist information clerk -- Zurich's was the best tourist information office I used) that I would find lodging easily in Einsiedeln, so I set off.  My second experience of train travel on this trip (the first was from the airport to downtown Zurich) was interesting, to say the least.

First of all, it was not impossible to find people who were fluent in English, but it wasn't completely easy, either; and even when the English was good, the German accent was often quite strong.  Somehow I missed the fact that I had to change trains to get to Einsiedeln.  I had even asked a railroad worker (but not a conductor), and had been emphatically told to "STAY ON THE TRAIN."  So I took a nice, hour-long detour into the Alps before a kind conductor helped me reverse my trip, to get back from Sargans, definitely not my destination point (but beautiful, nevertheless) to Wadenswil, where my change of train was to occur.

Of course I made the mistake of getting the nonstop clear back to Zurich, and had to turn around and head out again.  This got me to Einsiedeln after dark -- and of course I was in a town where most shops were closed, and I had no idea how to get from the train station to any lodging for the night.

A sweet group of teenagers, hanging out near the station and with some English, helped me find the street and a not-too-long uphill trek to the monastery and the lodging that they assured me I would find nearby.

But this wasn't at all a bad view for my mistaken "side trip," was it?  Even the clerk in the tourist office, when I questioned her about my ticket, said that I was fortunate to get that tour!

At random, and with very little difficulty, I located a room.  I shared a bath, choosing that compromise for the 40 francs I saved!  Now we Americans aren't really used to sharing baths when we stay in a hotel, and it wasn't really comfortable for me; but unless you travel 3 or 4 stars all the way, it's common in Europe to share a bath with a few other rooms.  This was my initiation.  And this was my first, comfortable little room: 

You can see that it was plenty for me -- a desk with a lamp and chair are luxuries, as well as a small reading lamp by the bed.  Out the window (my attempt at those shots didn't come out well at all) I had a full view of the monastery and its bells, which rang quite loudly.  At night, the monastery is brightly lit; during the day it carries its own radiance in the bright cleanliness of the stone.  I was enchanted.  Breakfast the next morning was the charming European breakfast I remembered: an assortment of rolls, juices, cereals, and yogurt.  It was all served on tables with real cloths and napkins, and some things were brought by a waiter, on plates with little doilies on them.  I remembered the great care that was given to a simple breakfast, and vowed to return to that when I came back home!

The monastery and grounds were beautiful, as was the church in which the sanctuary of the black madonna was contained.  She was actually in a small shrine or chapel that was fully contained within the larger church.  Her legend is that she was brought up here, to a place that was a simple hermitage, by St. Meinrad.  Many miracles, including protection of the area from the plague in the middle ages, are attributed to her.  Over time the monastery grew, then fell upon hard times during the Protestant Reformation, and then revived.  Here is a fountain outside the monastery:   

Despite the sunlight, you can see the impressive nature of the site.  I was overwhelmed at my first sight of the madonna herself, and could only shoot blurry photos.  I was lucky to find the small sanctuary open -- it seems there was a funeral there on that morning, so all the gates were open, and I could even sit for a few moments inside the small sanctuary.  I was in tears and could hardly get my breath.  I'm sure that the cause of my blurry photos was a combination of relief and being thrilled to finally see my first madonna, after so much anticipation.  When I returned a time later, after the funeral, the gates of the small sanctuary were locked, even though the larger church remained open, and the madonna could only be seen through the grating of the gates.  Here's the best of the photos I could get of her.  I have cards and books, but my own photos were shaky, at best:

This is as people gathered before the funeral or memorial mass that was being held that morning.  You can see the black chapel or sanctuary that is fully contained within the lighter, white church.  You can also see the radiance with which she was displayed.  I did go into that small sanctuary for a time.

Following this is the best photo I was able to get myself, through the grating, after the service was over and the gates were closed.  I'm not sure why I was so shy (especially after the service) about setting up my tripod and getting a steadier shot -- I still wasn't sure about the "rules" for photography in these churches -- I've since learned that for the most part, they simply discourage flash photography during actual church services.  Here's the best shot of the madonna that I was able to get.  It seems that the more I used my telephoto, the more the image was magnified, but so was my movement as I held the camera.

I'm sure that a Google search will get you far better images than I've got here -- but the blurriness might just convey some of my complete excitement and exhilaration at actually being there and taking the photographs with my own hands.  My heart was pounding!  But as I said, until I figured out my camera settings a little better, the settings themselves may have had an effect on the clarity (or lack thereof) of the photos, too.

After I spent some time with the dark lady, I really did not take time to view the other sights in Einsiedeln.  There is a panorama of Bethlehem (but I've been there, anyway), and a hike one can take further up the mountain to follow the stations of the cross.  I did, during the funeral service, purchase a few souvenirs and clear photos and books.  I also visited a stationery store to buy some envelopes and glue for putting things in my journal.  Here, finally, is a shot of the village, looking out from the peak of the hill on which the monastery sits.  This is as it looked just before I set off back down to the train station.  I had just enough time to purchase a corkscrew at a nearby grocery store.  I knew that if I was heading into Italy, I'd need a corkscrew!

So off I went, stopping for a sandwich and water (with gas, as I prefer it), and then the corkscrew.  Then on to the station and down through the beautiful Alps to Milan.  I had survived my first experience of landing in a town where English was limited, and finding my way to lodging and the sight I came to see.  I had a grand time, and developing that skill for seeking out lodging in a new and foreign place served me well for the rest of the trip.  It not only boosted my confidence, making me feel like the intrepid world traveler, but I truly needed that ability to negotiate in completely strange surroundings for the rest of my journey.

It's too late tonight to show you my pictures of the Alps, and I don't think I took a single shot of Milan, though I do have a thing or two to say about my sojourn there.  But that will be for another entry.  For now, I will bid you goodnight.

Travelogue: Day One

Of  course, travel doesn't really begin on day one, but far, far in advance of that, with the purchase of tickets, the reading of travel guides, the purchase and preparation and anticipation.  So day one, September 22, really wasn't day one at all, even though it's the day that I left the US for Europe.

I was very lucky to get such a cheap ticket from Nashville to Zurich, via Newark.  I've watched the prices of tickets since before I bought mine, and nothing has been within $100 as cheap as the one I bought.  Lesson:  It pays to start looking early, being flexible with regard to dates and destinations (I would have flown into Milan or Rome, probably -- but the ticket to Zurich was not only cheaper, but allowed me to go to Einsiedeln and see one of the famous black madonnas there).  It also allowed me to ride the train through the Alps, both to and from my destinations in Italy.  There were multiple gifts in that simple decision.  One of my hopes for this trip was that I would remain open to the gifts that same to me every day  of the trip.

I had shopped for clothes to take with me, and had five things to wear "on the bottom:"  3 light skirts, a pair of well-worn and much-loved black cotton knit gauchos, and one pair of fairly new, LLBean black cotton knit slacks, and also six nylon t-shirt tops that I knew (from experience in California in July) could be washed out and dried overnight in most situations.  I had only a little underwear that I would also wash out overnight.  I left with one large rolling backpack (the best $25 I ever spent in my life), and one lovely leather bag that could either be a knapsack or large shoulder bag.  I also had a small nylon duffel crushed into the bottom of the not-completely-full rolling bag.  It was all very portable and carry-on, eliminating the question or problem with checked luggage on the trip over.  There was plenty of room to expand as I went along, and then to check a bag on the return trip, as I had done in 2005 when I made this trip).  I also knew that less is better where jumping on and off trains and other transportation is concerned.  Hauling lots of heavy luggage makes any trip more difficult than it needs to be, with a little thought.

I shouldn't have taken my large, telescoping tripod or my mini-notebook computer.  That would have cut down on bulk and weight, and I didn't/couldn't really use them much, anyway.  I took a swimsuit which I didn't use, but that was a good idea anyway.  A parishioner friend, a very gallant retired pilot, used to say, "Never leave home without your passport or swimsuit."  I like that attitude; it's  quite romantic, really.  There were beaches, and on another trip, I might have made excellent use of that swim suit.

So, a parishioner/friend drove me to Nashville.  All flights left on time and seamlessly.  I sat beside a sweet young German couple who sneezed, coughed, and blew their noses for the entire 7-hour flight over the ocean.  I swore.  I prayed that I would not get sick, too.  Yes, I did get sick, but not immediately, so who knows if it was their germs or some other that caught up with me, 5 days or so after arriving.

I arrived in Zurich, Switzerland sometime on Wednesday morning.  At the airport I bought my ticket into Zurich and also to Milan in the late afternoon.  Then I found the tourist information  center in the Zurich train station, as I expected, and received great advice (and a map) about how to walk down either side of the river (the upscale shopping side, and then the charming, infinitely more interesting, "old city" side.  After that long walk, I would take the train to Milan, Italy, riding through the Alps.

Here's a little of what I saw:

This is the station  where I arrived in Zurich.  It's a lovely old structure, and very few of our US cities have retained this sort of train depot.  Of course, the pigeons fly in, especially from the back end, where the trains come in.  It's a lovely combination of outdoors and indoors, and the air never gets close and stale, because there is always the part that is open to the trains.

Around the perimeter of the  interior, there are lots of shops and cafes, and in the front part,   the entry you are seeing and to the right of that, there is a lovely market -- not simply tourist trinkets and other "gift items" such as flowers or candy, but a full-fledged market with stalls that sold meat, breads, cheese, and other household supplies that could be easily picked up after work and taken home.

Switzerland uses the franc, not the Euro, so I had to visit the bank machine to retrieve some Swiss currency.  I thought I withdrew an exorbitant amount, but things are so expensive in Switzerland that I really didn't.

Zurich is also a very gracious city, however.  There was charming old architecture to observe at every step.  There were lots of parks and benches to sit on and relax.  Unlike Italy, where there are often not places for a weary traveler to relax (though I say the monuments of Rome are highly polished by the butts of locals and tourists), Zurich offered lots of benches along the way.

The Swiss are known as clock makers, of course.  This clock, on a street corner near the station, chimes on the hour with a lengthy song.  See all the bells that ring so sweetly?

I walked down to Lake Zurich on this street, mostly past very high-end stores.  When I stopped for lunch, I found a middle eastern place that offered "kebaps," which I'd never had before.  I fully expected them to be some sort of "kabob," as we say in English, some sort of meat skewered, roasted, and eaten from a stick.  On the other hand, what a "kebap" really turned out to be was meat that we in the US would call "gyro," meaning a large chunk of meat roasted n a spit and turned, turned, turned.  It was put into a soft tortilla with a whole bunch of vegetables  as well as a sauce that moistened it -- and it was eaten like a soft-shell taco or a burrito.  It was cheap, fast, and tasty, but in no way local to Swiss cuisine.  Still -- when you're on the run during the day, it was an easy meal.  When I got to the lake (maybe a mile?) this is what I saw:

Ignore those cranes  in the distance.  It was a charming sight, with many swans.  It was a popular local lunch site.  I know these pictures look like cloudy black and white, and am not sure why; but the sun was shining, and people really flooded out of the businesses and came to walk on the many docks, or to sit on the many benches to eat their lunch.  I also saw lots of tourists lining up for ferry tours of the lake.

The walk down the other side of the river, for this was the great crossing point for traffic, was through a very medieval-Europe-type area, with winding roads, beautiful churches, and lots of charming shops.  I stopped into the church where Zwingli preached some of the more radical Protestant doctrine of the time (which actually sounds very moderate, compared to the radical evangelical preachings and teachings I hear daily here in Tennessee).  I bought myself another journal, which I had decided would be my  own souvenirs of a place.

After some time spend lingering in a park close to the station, I caught my late-afternoon train through the Alps to Milan.  Lessons and reflections for that first day:  Try to have a little German, or at least familiarity with a phrasebook, when traveling in what is essentially a German-speaking country.  It's a bit arrogant and rude to do otherwise.  I was careful to have a tiny bit of Italian and some facility with my phrasebook for Italy -- but completely, thoughtlessly ignorant, where Zurich was concerned.  I'll do better next time.