“While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.” – Francis of Assisi

It’s been a while since I shared an update from my progress on the new book (the memoir). This week I have been working on a chapter from 2011 and my first visit to Assisi. Here is an excerpt:

ASSISI, Italy

I do not have an excursion to Italy on my calendar, but our son Andrew (who is living in Tuscany) runs into a sudden change of plans that leaves him at a loose end. He has an itinerary, reservations and a week off work; it’s the kind of travel that is more fun when you’re not on your own. 

“What if I come?” I suggest. “Then we could fly back together for Thanksgiving in Florida.”

“Good deal,” he responds. So a couple of weeks later I meet him in Rome, where breakfast is café-Americano, yoghurt, granola, bread, local cheeses, salami and cappuccino. Yes, it’s going to be a cappuccino kind of a week.

Andrew and I arrive at Assisi having enjoyed a bright clear drive through Umbria with spectacular views. We check into our hotel, enjoy a late lunch and then walk through the great basilica and down to the tomb of St Francis.

Before leaving Florida I had spent some time talking about thin places with my brother, Geoff. It’s the idea, drawn from Celtic mythology, that the physical and the spiritual realms are separated by a membrane, and that – at certain times or places – the membrane is stretched so thin that communication (or even passage) is more possible.

It’s as if time and eternity… heaven and earth… the sacred and the mundane… are not so much separate as they are out of synch with one another, a condition that requires but the slightest of shifts in calibration to remedy. It resonates with my reason and my experience.

“I understand that Assisi is a thin place for many people,” I tell my brother.

“That’s right,” Geoff agrees, “I’d very much love to go there myself some time, but I just don’t see that happening.”

Geoff calls me again just before I board the plane, asking me to light a candle at Assisi and to pray for him. The virulent cancer has migrated to his liver and of course we are praying anyway. But some extra time dedicated to talking with God at one of the world’s foremost thin places is always a great idea. 

Down in the crypt I make a donation, I pick out two candles and I pray. I find a quiet location in one of the old wooden pews in the very place where Francis of Assisi himself enjoyed the same kind of chats with the very same God, and I talk with God for a few minutes about my brother and I also pray for a friend. I even tip forward – ever so gently – on to my banged up soccer knees for a moment or two. God and I discuss the need for healing.

I feel a powerful spiritual connection and I am acutely aware of the presence of God. Not just God being, but God listening. And then the moment passes.

Assisi is a wonderful walking town. Andrew and I put in several miles and then we swing by the Church of St. Francis again on the way back to the hotel. There in the outer courtyard several hundred people have gathered for mass. We pause to watch for a few minutes, just peripheral participants in the simple celebration but it feels fitting – as if all those people are co-conspirators in the prayers I have offered and the candles I have lit.

The folk in the square are pilgrims to this place. I guess I am a pilgrim too today, even if I am still only a pilgrim-in-progress.

Regardless, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God hears my prayers. And, for today, that is enough – DEREK