Allora. This is the Italian word we have heard over and over again in our daily walk. It can mean a myriad of things….so…well…therefore…let’s see….and seems to be tacked on the beginning of a sentence or in conversation to buy time, to wait for the right words to arrive, to hold another’s attention while you figure something out. It is even more charming if you have the ability to roll your ‘r’s’.

Allora. So…it is time to take our leave of this amazing country and this captivating landscape. We have seen mountains and valleys, fields full of olive trees and vineyards, the sun shining on the green and golds creating fully alive works of art. We have traveled to enough churches and cathedrals and basilicas to have us all trying for weeks to sort them out. Many were over the top in gold-gilt, frescoes and paintings with marble statues lining the walls. Others were simple, plain with only the sunlight shining through windows and incense to create an art of a different form. All to make a sacred place where people might encounter the Holy. When you travel with a group, you get to experience those things with which you felt only a small connection through the eyes of another whose world was moved by it. What a gift.

Last night as we gathered on the rooftop garden of our hotel only blocks away from the Vatican, we shared those things which had been blessing, those experiences we would take away from this pilgrimage. Like the art we had seen and the sacred places we had visited, people’s comments represented the fullness of form. Many will take a sense of simplicity while others will be bathed for days to come in the magnificence of the art and its opulence.

When it was my time to share what came to me was the realization that the majority of the architects and artists began a work they would never live to see competed. One dome in a church we visited took 140 years to complete. Several lifetimes in those days. I thought of how often I want to see results. Now. Not in a week, a day, a year. Now. What does it mean to come fully to the knowledge that what we create, what we work for, what we hope for, may never be seen by our eyes, in our lifetime?

One gift of travel is that your eyes are opened to the longevity of the world, its places, its people. Being surrounded as we have been by the ancient and lasting, I have once again been confronted with how often I make my living small. With the minute details and worries I fashion for myself. With my way of forgetting the vastness of the Universe and the beauty and complexity of its people. With the many ways I pretend as if I am not connected to the fullness of it all. Has this ever been your experience?

Allora. So….then….it is time to move on and take the gifts of being a pilgrim at this time, in these days, in this one particular and precious life with me into the next days. The fullness of it all may not be realized for some time. It may take hours and days of reflection. But each day is a beginning toward something I may or may not see come to fruition. I feel as if I am in good company in that.

Allora………