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Among Friends |
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| Home is where we make it As with most miracles, this one began with "yes." Making plans for a long-anticipated first trip to Italy, we were overwhelmed by Internet options that became a blur of Web sites without insight. Coincidentally (is there really such a thing?), I'd been receiving for several years "The Almost-Daily eMo" of the Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, a spiritual director and author who'd just moved to Florence as interim rector of St. James Episcopal Church, the "American" church. Long an admirer of her user-friendly, "we're all in this together" meditations on life and faith, I'd come to view her as a faraway friend I'd never actually met who was a more faithful correspondent than I was. Great, I thought: I'll e-mail Barbara and ask her for lodging suggestions. I am constantly wracked by anxiety. If the cat has a weepy eye, I rush her to the vet instead of wiping it with a tissue. I insist my husband take his cell phone when he goes for a walk. I never let the gas tank get below half full. To make sure I got my point across, I wrote a much-too-detailed letter. Within an hour, despite our 12-hour time difference, Barbara replied: "Stay with us." Certainly not, I responded. How could we? Yes, we have a mutual friend, but like the life of the party who wakes up the next morning with a chagrined hangover, I realized I'd overreached. "You will surely be booked up all year with friends and relatives," I e-mailed. "We can't possibly impose." "Stay with us," she shot back again fewer than 15 minutes later, even though it was past midnight in Florence. After months of to-ing and fro-ing, of repeatedly assuring her it would be fine if she changed her mind (and her assuring us we were welcome), we piled off a train and onto her doorstep at 10 p.m. on a starry autumn night in the ancient city of the Medici. "Tea or wine?" she asked, introducing us to "Q," as she referred to her husband both in life and her eMos, and to a New Jersey friend who'd arrived the day before for a week's stay. American cats Ben and Sante, already well-adjusted to the Florentine couches, settled into our laps. In mere minutes, we were "home." My presumption sank in the next day, when I learned Barbara's almost-daily meditations on life and faith from her virtual Geranium Farm (www.geraniumfarm.org) are read by hundreds of thousands of people in 67 countries. Too late: We were already swept up in St. James' vibrant secular and spiritual life, segueing through a whirlwind of events manifesting from the needs and wants of a church community that embraces many denominations, backgrounds and cultures. A confession: I am not a traditionally religious person. I have a spiritual life, but I shy away from the dogma, political infighting and one-upmanship I experienced in the church of my childhood. Half a life down the road, I realized St. James has a wide embrace based on its century-old traditions of welcoming everyone without judgment. Barely awake the next day, we crashed a Bible-study class to hear a parishioner from Malawi detail the AIDS crisis in his native country; several American women long-married to Italian men explained the formal protocols of their relationship with their in-laws, and Barbara skillfully steered the discussion around to how ancient scripture informs our 21st-century lives. That evening, we joined nearly 40 American college students studying in Florence who come weekly to the church basement for a $7 Italian feast and insights from a local speaker. Begun 20 years ago, the student dinners give kids from the nearly 50 U.S. universities and colleges a chance to meet one another and longtime ex-patriot residents. Many wind up coming to Sunday services and participating in church life during their months in Florence. Upstairs in the chancery after dinner, one of two gospel choirs was starting rehearsal at 9:30 p.m., everybody speaking in Italian and singing in English. My normally reserved husband eagerly joined the tenor section, swaying and clapping until the last singers drifted out into the night singing "Oh Happy Day!" as we tiptoed into the sleeping rectory. We had been in Florence barely 24 hours, but it felt like weeks. And so our days passed in a blur of history, art, music and monuments. We were present at the christening of identical twin baby girls, a concert commemorating the 10th anniversary of the death of an African bishop, a Cameroon luncheon, a Filipino study group and a blessing by Barbara at the Sunday service of barking dogs, meowing cats and all other animals in honor of St. Francis of Assisi's special day. As one young American student in Florence put it, "This isn't like any church I've ever been in before." No, indeed. We were on sensory overload, our synapses firing fast, our overworked feet feeling ready to fall off, our taste buds in heaven, our souls filling up. We thought we'd come to see the Florence of history and the Renaissance. We got that, but we also experienced the energy, community and fellowship of the "American" church in a foreign country where all strangers are welcomed and embraced. What we found in Florence, thanks to Barbara's generosity, was the universality of fellow travelers. There is no way to thank her and Q for such kindness, but we can pass it on. |
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