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It was a busy week with many demands from distant corners of my life. Time at times seemed to implode, then scatter my psyche into a thousand pieces.

So Church today was an especially great blessing, pulling me out of the week of flurry, lists, appointments, schedules, and welcoming me inside to beauty, chant, color, peace. It was a window on Heaven, and I glimpsed through the glass another world, a glorious world.

We had many reasons to celebrate today in our parish church.

A baby girl arrived six weeks ago, from Heaven of course, and she came to church today, fitting perfectly into the cleft of the thick arm of her proud father. His strong fingers held her gently and we marveled at the delicate features of this tiny child, her perfect fingers, her curly hair.

One of the boys in Sunday School (nearly ten) graduated to Acolyte today, and for the first time we watched as he processed with the clergy and other acolytes, carrying his flaming candle, up the red-carpeted aisle. He took his place in the sanctuary, following the instructions of the older boys, his face serious and proud.

We sang boisterous hymns today, celebrating our nation and our freedoms, in anticipation of the Fourth of July, and it was good to hear our many voices joined together, the booming organ leading us, as the fiery stained glass of Pentecost glowed over the choir loft. The nave was warm and the sanctuary glowed on this cool foggy first day of July in the Bay Area, and we rode together in the ark of the Church, rolling on the undulating tide of our culture, protected from the drowning undertows.

I wondered about the recent events in our nation that threatened ships such as ours, knocking holes in the hull and allowing the sea to pour in.

Our nation was founded on religious freedom, freedom now threatened. As we approach July 4, our National Independence Day, I think about these freedoms, often taken for granted. The desire for religious freedom brought pilgrims and dissenters and believers of all sorts to our shores, escaping persecution in Europe. We had the right, they said, to worship as as we pleased, to follow our conscience. The government had no right to dictate our conscience. I prayed these protections would not be lost.

So today we celebrated our freedom of religion in this great country, and we also celebrated our parish’s patronal festival, St. Peter’s Parish’ ninety-ninth birthday here in Rockridge, North Oakland, California. Our Anglo-Catholic parish has sailed through the years, at times battered by the currents, at times joyously hoisting its flag into the blue heavens.  St. Peter was a fisherman who knew the currents and the seas.  He too was persecuted, but he set and reset his course in the first years of the Early Church, creating a course for this Body of Christ on earth.

The liturgy danced, and soon we as the People of God once again completed the offering and sacrifice of the Mass on this Sunday, July 1, in the year 2012. Once again we received God into our bodies and souls. The angels would record this event in the book of Heaven. It all counted, I was sure. Nothing was lost.

The last notes of the organ thundered from beneath the flaming stained glass and our young acolyte in his red cassock and white cotta, gripping his torch, recessed down the aisle with the other clergy.

Downstairs in the parish hall there would be a barbecue. There would be champagne and margaritas. There would be Sunday School Awards. And we would shower our new tiny member of the Body of Christ with little pink sleepers and ballerina shoes and diapers and hand-knit blankets and booties. She would be passed from grandmother to grandmother, her new adopted family. When is the baptism? we all cried, grinning hopefully for another opportunity to buy baby gifts.

Later, as we headed to our cars to return to our weekday lives with their often frenzied pace, I gave thanks for each window on Heaven, for I glimpsed again God’s burning love for us, in His Body, the Church. The thousand pieces of my scattered mind had been reunited. I was once again made whole.

Today is the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist.

The last few months have been as though a hurricane was ripping through my life. The winds keep pounding. I keep trudging on, asking for direction in my daily prayers. Occasionally I pause and wonder, where am I going? Did I make a wrong turn? So it was a great comfort to consider John the Baptist’s life today in church.

John the Baptizer prepared the world for the coming of Christ. Like baptism itself, his life opened mankind to a new conversation with God.

When John was born and his mother Elizabeth announced that the boy’s name would be John, his father Zachariah, having been muted by an angel for nine months because of his unbelief, was given his speech back. His words rang through the air:

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people,
And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David;
As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began:
That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us;
To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant;
The oath which he sware to our father Abraham,
That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear,
In holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life.
And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways;
To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins,
Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,
To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.  (Luke 1:68-79)

We as Anglicans have incorporated this prayer of praise, theBenedictus, into our Morning Prayer Office, and today, as I listened to our preacher speak of John the Baptist I thought how John was always the one going before, preparing the way, tilling the soil so that the seed would fall on good ground. He plays a supporting role, and a brief one at that.

Did he know how it would all turn out… his part in this drama of salvation? Probably not, but from birth he was open to what God would do in his life. He followed the promptings of a prayerful heart; he felt the winds of the Holy Spirit directing him.

He lived in the desert on locusts and honey, wore animal skins, and baptized people in the River Jordan. Did he keep a watch for the promised Messiah?

John must have looked wild as he screamed his fierce warnings. He called for repentance, a turning from the dark to the light. He called for men to love one another, to care for one another. He warned of a coming judgment.  Turn back! Repent! Change! Make your paths straight!

He waited and watched in the desert. Then the promised Messiah appeared.

As John baptized Jesus in the Jordan, the Holy Spirit descended as a dove and God the Father spoke from the heavens saying, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.”

John’s birth and life had led to this moment, and as Jesus walked away, John told his own disciples, “Behold the lamb of God…follow him.” And they did.

I could see the scene vividly this morning as I listened to our preacher. It was a stunning moment in man’s history and it struck me that I didn’t have to see the whole plan either. I knew, as I left the quiet, safe, sweet-smelling sanctuary to re-enter the windy world, that all I had to worry about was my daily prayers and being open to the winds of the Holy Spirit to direct me.

I doubt that John knew the outcome of his life in the desert, but I’m sure he had moments of encouragement, moments in his solitary life of fasting and burning sun when God spoke to him from the parting heavens. I too have had had such moments, even in the midst of my hurricanes.

In fact, I received an email on Friday from a British lord whose writing I greatly admire and to whom I owe a huge debt. What a surprise and a delight for me to receive a thank you note from him.

I could not have written my third novel, Inheritance, without the writings of this man over fifty years ago. He wrote the biography of Raymond Raynes, an Anglican monk, former Superior of the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield, England. Some consider Father Raynes a saint. This biography, along with other works, formed the link that would bring Father Raynes into the present day. It only took one man to do it, and he did it. He was prompted and chosen by God.

Lord R loved my novel, Inheritance, which I had sent to him as a thank you for his work. He was complimentary and encouraging, saying it happily brought him back to those days.

So on Friday morning, in the middle of my tempestuous life,  the heavens opened up. I knew once again that God was guiding me, and all I needed to do was be faithful, say my daily prayers, and worship God.

Just like John the Baptist.

I eyed the stack of dusty, yellowed books leaning haphazardly against a wall in my mother’s former home. I’ve been cleaning out the rooms, sorting, tagging, imagining earlier days, now that she is settled in an assisted living complex.

The covers were a faded burgundy, textured. I opened one and the musty aroma took me immediately to a green lawn fifty-fifty five years ago. I was ten and it was summer, and I sprawled in the shade of our fir tree in the front yard. My chosen volume was David Copperfield and I was determined to read it all.

The print was tiny, and the tissue-like pages were yellowing even then. But I persevered, at times engrossed, at times plugging through long sentences and longer paragraphs. My first Dickens.

There were other books in those Orinda summers, easier books, girl books, library books, but I recall that slim volume of Dickens with tenderness and concern. It was a mountain challenging me to climb it. And I did.

The books came from a series called the Harvard  Classics, Dr. Eliot’s Five-Foot Shelf of Books, and they had once lined a glassed-in case in our living room. I don’t recall why I chose that particular book or how I went about pulling it down from the bookcase. Perhaps it caught my eye when my sister and I were building forts in the front room.

My parents must have been pretty obliging, or they didn’t care how we used this set of books. At any rate, these Harvard books in our house (as I recall) were mostly used to build forts in the living room. We stacked them, forming walls, and draped blankets over them, creating hidden, secret rooms. Inside our special space we served imaginary tea to one another, sometimes along with imaginary cakes.

So now I eyed the books in my mother’s former home. Could I fit them into a cherished space in my own home? They represented doors opening in my childhood. They were challenges met and rewards reaped. I learned on those ten-year-old summer afternoons, crunching apples and following the words  ever so slowly across and down the faded page, not only patience and endurance, but the reward of deep and slow reading, hearing the words in my head.  One long chapter at a time I progressed slowly, savoring the pleasure of a complex and richly textured story, discovering the surprise delight of meeting  the remarkable characters who lived there.

Just as I built forts with the books, so I built worlds with the words. Both were imaginary, but both carved cities and countries and universes in my mind, places to which I would return again and again, in both my reading and, much later, my writing life. I also think that I created or imprinted a pattern, a way to work through difficulty, as though the process of reading over time mapped my mental growth, in the same way that exercise might build muscle memory.

I eyed the books, and began to pack them into boxes.  I would find a place for these treasures somewhere.

Would she like it? Would she like her new place?

“And here is the fish tank in the center, kind of as a focal point for each hallway,” our guide said as we shuffled to Mother’s new studio in the assisted living development.

I gazed at the giant glass octagon with the large orange fish flapping through clear water. Four halls radiated out from this central point, rather like the arms of a cross, I thought. My mother, leaning into her walker, paused in her shuffle and nodded.

We turned left and continued down the hall, past colorful art (”Oh, I like those,” Mother said, seeing an oil painting of Tuscany, a red farm house cresting golden hills), past the dining area, tables set for lunch, and to the elevator. On the second floor we emerged and soon opened the door to Mother’s new studio.

Would she like it? She and I had chosen the furniture to be moved here from her former home, before the fall. During the weeks of skilled nursing we looked at photos I had taken of of dressers and beds and desks and lamps and paintings.

“Oh…,” she said, giggling slightly and taking it all in.

I was encouraged by the giggle. It came from somewhere deep, like a surprise burst of quiet pleasure. I almost didn’t hear it.

The bed from her old home was covered in a familiar spread with familiar pillows, and her old French Provincial night tables banked either side, holding painted ceramic lamps from her living room, carefully chosen long ago. Two aqua wing chairs, in which, in her former life, she had curled into to read and watch movies or perhaps the evening news, grouped near a large picture window which looked out on leafy shade trees. My father’s old roll top desk hugged an opposite wall, near two treasured dressers. Photos of their wedding (1945), photos of my sister and me as toddlers, as graduates, photos of earlier generations, photos of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren (who called her “GG” for Great Grandma) hung on the walls. Her TV/DVD player on another familiar night stand, angled toward the two easy chairs.

I watched her as she took it all in, stepping to one of the chairs. “All my old things…”

Relieved by her tone of relief, I absorbed the room.

It was remarkable, I thought, how memory works. In this small space we had condensed her life. We had pulled pieces, carefully chosen, into a few square feet. These objects were like threads woven from memories of other generations, woven to make a new – but familiar – fabric. Each object represented whole worlds of memory and experience. The richness of the room was nearly tangible.

Since her moving in, we have chatted about things to take away that were unneeded, things to add to the room, snacks for the mini fridge, more paintings and more photos. In the next few months she will sort boxes of photos. She will travel in her mind with her sisters once again on the three sisters cruise some years ago. She will revisit Ireland. Alaska, all carefully documented. And farther back, she will see again in her memory the Holy Land with my father, my sister, and me, and perhaps recall the barbed wire bundles running through Jerusalem, the rose tea in a hut in Beirut with the flies buzzing in the heat. There were times at Tahoe swimming and playing tennis. Masquerade parties in the seventies. My father preaching in the early days of his ministry. Breaking the ground with a shovel on the new church property. All a jumble.

With each visit I pass the fish tank with its orange gilled swimmers, the glassy eyes glancing as they race around.

We have condensed Mother’s life, but somehow enriched it with memory. Somehow the enclosed space, the necessary borders, helped us do that.

Man is an intricate creature with infinite depths, for after all he is made in the image of his Creator. Such a marvelous mystery. Such a miracle, this miracle of memory.

I once thought that I would never wear a cross on a chain around my neck. Maybe on Sundays in church, especially today, Trinity Sunday when we sing my favorite hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy….

I love being a Christian. I love the Church and I love God. My life since becoming a Christian (forty-five years ago) has been increasingly joyous and full of meaning (words cannot describe this).  But what if people saw a cross around my neck and judged Christianity by my behavior? What if I wore the cross, and I said something uncharitable, or did something thoughtless, and my behavior turned them against Christianity, turned them against belief, faith in the astounding resurrection of Jesus Christ and all that that implies, demands, promises?  For I knew I would make mistakes, being a daughter of Adam and Eve.  Would I be a poor witness, give a false testimony to what it means to be a Christian?

But since my mother fell (see the last two posts), I have been increasingly humbled by the overwhelming tasks that continue to fill my days. I have been increasingly aware of my dependence upon God, that I cannot meet this challenge on my own.

I read that Pope Benedict asked Christians to wear their crosses, a timely suggestion. So I started wearing my cross, a simple plain one, around my neck, mostly to encourage me as I went through the day.

I wore my cross when visiting my mother in skilled nursing, checking on her bandaged legs, watching her try to walk again at the age of ninety-two.

I wore my cross when I searched for a suitable place for her to live with appropriate care.

I wore my cross sorting and packing her things in her old apartment and moving them in bulging shopping bags and boxes into the new studio, and when interviewing counselors and agents and nurses.

I often forgot it was there and considered later all that I had done and said (a good habit in itself). Had I been a poor witness, I wondered, with wrenching doubt as I examined my day. On the other hand, as I moved through the hours, I would suddenly recall the bit of shaped metal resting on my heart and touch it, and God reminded me He was with me, that His Son was with me, that the Holy Spirit was there to lead me. Wearing the cross allowed God to help. Feather light on my aging skin, the cross spoke for me: God, I want you near. And, amazingly, He was and is.

I said my daily prayers, morning and evening, an Our Father, Psalm 95 (The Venite), The Te Deum Laudamus, Psalm 100 (The Jubilate Deo), “The Collect for Grace,” taken from Morning Prayer in our Anglican Book of Common Prayer, knowing that in adoration my heart would open to God. He would guide me. He would strengthen me. And He gave me a little piece of metal, often called a sacramental, to remind me of this during the day.

But I was surprised at what else happened.

I found that most folks responded favorably to the cross I wore around my neck. I found more and more people smiling as though in recognition, more were eager to help. I found my own vision slowly changing too. I began to see each person with new eyes, loved by God. The twisted limbs in the wheelchairs, the groans from darkened rooms, the brittle bones, the vacant eyes.  Each person was precious.  The cross yoked me to Christ, and at the end of the day I thought what a hopeful day it had been, in spite of everything.

I had feared that my cross would alienate others, but instead it drew them closer. Is there a secret club of Christians afraid to witness publicly to their faith?  Fellow Christians that delight in other Christians wearing their crosses, that want to encourage and support one another?

I think there may be.

I do not know if my mother will walk again. I hope that soon she will move to her new studio next door to her old friend Ginny (see previous post). What I do know, this Trinity Sunday, is that our triune God – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit – all of Him, is with me – us – but only if we ask Him. His gift of free will demands that He be invited.

I came to know that the cross of Christ Jesus, the cross of suffering love, was my only way through these hours of challenge. Wearing His cross made, makes, all the difference.

I promised I would tell about my angels and this remarkable story.

When my mother (Helen), age 92, fell and was sent to Emergency (see earlier post), I realized that she would need to go to Assisted Living. While she had lived on her own terms, independently, for over thirty years, I could not trust that she would survive another six months without direct oversight. Such supervision was not something I could provide, nor could my sister.

I also realized I could not make these huge decisions for my mother on my own. I felt overwhelmed. So I doubled my morning and evening prayers, with an emphasis on worship and adoration, recently having read that this kind of prayer allows God to work within me, guiding my choices.

I sensed the clock was ticking. The skilled nursing facility could only look after her for a limited number of days, and I would need to provide a place for my mother to live with assistance. I was told that they would give me only two days’ notice of her discharge. I wondered how to go about this, and in spite of my prayers, which became nearly ongoing, I tried not to panic.

I met with several eldercare counselors and they helped me with a list of facilities close to my home. I soon began tours – three local Assisted Care facilities, all excellent, but each having  some kind of drawback. I decided that the third residence was the best and I was ready to sign papers to secure a studio for Mother.

Then I tracked down Ginny, Mother’s best friend.

After checking on Mother in the nursing facility the first day, I went to her home to listen to phone messages and look over her apartment. The only personal message was from Ginny, a longtime friend. They had lost touch when she had moved to Assisted Living over a year earlier. “I guess,” my mother often said with great sadness as though accepting fate, “that’s the last I’ll see of Ginny.”

So, when I heard Ginny’s crackly humorous voice on Mother’s voicemail, I thought, what a time to be calling. It appeared from the date on the answering machine she called soon after my mother fell. She could not have known about the accident. She said something like this:

“Well, you probably wonder why the hell I’m calling after all this time, but I just wanted to know how you are… would  you please call me, I have the same number…”

She sure sounded like Ginny (whom I have had the great joy of meeting over the years).

I made a mental note to contact her, but continued with my search for a facility, all the time thinking about the call. Finally, I dialed the number.

“Where are you?” I asked, curious.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Something to do with Pleasant Hill.”

“That’s okay, I’ll find you.”

As I was touring the other residences I kept thinking of Ginny. Eventually I tracked her to a place in Pleasant Hill, Chateau III, about fifteen minutes from my home.

I was nearly ready to sign papers on the third residence I had toured, but as I reported to Mother in the nursing home the latest turn of events, the phone rang. Mother looked confused, and I searched for the phone, buried in a drawer. I grabbed it and pressed the red button. It was Ginny. I handed the phone to Mother. Her face lit up.  It had been, after all, over a year, I thought.

So Ginny had called two times out of the blue. The coincidence was too much to ignore. I decided that I should at least see where Ginny lived before settling on the other residence. So I scheduled a tour for the following day.

In the morning I met with one of the staff, Lisa, who informed me, her eyes wide, that the only studio available was next door to Ginny. (I had told her the story.)

As I absorbed this third great coincidence, I figured the angels were batting me with their wings. This had to be the place for Mother. Two oddly timed calls, and now the only studio available was next door to my mother’s best friend, whom she hadn’t seen in over a year.

Angels or coincidence? My prayer life had not ceased, and this clearly seemed to be a heaven-sent message.

“Would you like to see the studio?” Lisa asked.

I nodded, stunned.  I can’t believe this, I thought.

It was a lovely spacious room, looking out on leafy shade trees. I couldn’t decide, it was so amazing.

As Lisa led me back to the lobby to sit down and give me all the information about the residence, I asked, “Could I visit Ginny?”

“Of course! She doesn’t take part in anything, you know, she stays in her room, even for meals.”

I wondered about that as we knocked on her door.

Soon I was standing by her bed. It was noon and she had not gotten up, but had chosen to spend the morning reading. She recognized me, and was delighted, as was I. We chatted a bit and I said what did she think about my mother moving in next door?

Her face lit up just like Mother’s.

“You know,” she said with a wink, “I don’t like to go downstairs for meals, but I just might with Helen here!”

“Good,” I said. “She’s moving in.”

We’ve sinced move some furniture in and await Mother’s discharge from skilled nursing. One big decision behind me.

Today, on the Feast of Pentecost, when we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, giving them power to proclaim the love of God to everyone, I am again stunned by how very much God loves us, and how active He is among us. He watches every moment in our lives. As long as we are open to Him. As long as we are faithful in our prayers and give Him a chance to enter our lives. As long as we worship and adore, as His Body the Church.

And I give thanks to the angels who keep brushing me with their wings.

I haven’t posted recently because my mother fell.

My mother, ninety-two with little skin on her athletic bones, lay on the rug in her home for four days before she was found, sucking on a towel she dipped in the toilet for water.  She survived, amazingly, at the age of ninety-two, with no broken bones, but many bruises. What did she think about, we asked, during this ordeal?  Earthquake survivors, she said, all those people who managed to hold on.

She was found by her housekeeper who called 911.

I was out of town, in Rome, when I got the call. It was four days before we could return home, and I monitored the hospital progress, then the skilled nursing progress. My sister helped from LA.

My mother was and is an independent woman, who refused to wear her MedAlert and to take the daily check-up phone call offered. But she lived as she demanded to live. It was her choice.

So now I oversee her healing, checking daily on her needs, and arranging for an assisted living situation for her.

We returned from Rome and after checking on her and holding her and comforting her as best I could, I went to her apartment. I was overwhelmed. Here, I knew, is where she lay, her legs torn and bloody, waiting for help, and I was so far away. Was it my fault? I walked through the rooms, saw the blood on the carpet. Others had bundled the soiled linens they found wrapped about her, others had taken her on a stretcher in the ambulance. Her neighbor had watched her go, placing a hat over her eyes to shade her face. She was alert. I was not there.

I moved through the rooms, through the space that held furniture from my past, surrounded by the photos of my childhood, my father and mother’s early life, those black and white hopeful images. He wore his Navy uniform, just discharged, having served in World War II in the South Pacific. She wore a tailored blouse, her hair curled, her young face hopeful. They were married soon, and I was born two years later. They had met through friends in college, but courted through the vagary of wartime letters, and the wedding when he arrived on shore was hasty, my grandmother preparing them a special wedding breakfast. They wanted to marry, begin their life together, to forget war.

They did live their life together, a life of joy and suffering, of happiness and sorrow, of peace and turbulence. They moved through the perfect fifties into the tumultuous sixties and on into the liberating seventies. Families were torn apart in those days, but my parents managed to stay married until my father died in 1981 of ALS.

So my mother lived alone for thirty-one years. That’s a long time, I think, but she managed with style and verve. She liked her independence and she liked living alone, choosing her society, keeping life on her terms. But now, she says, she is ready to be cared for, ready to retreat a bit.

So I walked the rooms of her home and absorbed the voices from the walls, the memories of times spent with her here over the years, the conversations, the laughter, the photos of my sister and her growing family, the photos of my son and his growing family, the older photos of me with crooked teeth and a strange haircut in fifth grade.

London, Paris and Rome receded from my memory, but the glorious visions of God in the churches returned occasionally to comfort me. The angels were near, but I did not know it then. The angels since that day have guided me, hovering close, and they want me to tell you about it.

So, soon I will.

The last few days in Rome sped by in a whirl of color, image and song:

Finding Santa Croce closed (we were too late), after visiting Maria Maggiore, we continued up the wide park-path to the St. John Lateran and soon found the road barricaded by police. Loudspeakers blared. As we approached, we recalled it was May 1, May Day, the national day of strikes and union demonstrations for much of Europe. This year the demonstrations were held in front of the Lateran where an amphitheater had been erected to the left of the basilica. The throng was thick, boisterous but orderly, with a strong police presence. I recalled that the church has been named “the Roman people’s church” so it was appropriate that such a gathering took place here. But we could see it was not a day to visit St. John Lateran, so we worked our way through the light rain back to our hotel, stopping for lunch at Le Caveau, a charming neighborhood restaurant serving a reasonable daily menu.

We did eventually revisit San Giovanni Laterano, with the wonderful leaping apostles along the sides of the nave and the heads of Saints John and Paul in the canopy over the high altar. The church is a feast for the senses and a joy for the lover of history, as well as a setting for my new novel, The Magdalene Mystery. As part of my research we visited the cloisters, making more historical discoveries, solving more puzzles.

Another day we visited Il Gesu, the first church of the Jesuits. St. Ignatius of Loyola lived in the rooms next door and his remains are in an urn in a side chapel. There is a stunning chapel off the north transept with a street Madonna brought inside for protection, the Madonna della Strada, who comforts me each time I visit, and I have read that she comforted St. Ignatius as well.  Like Maria Maggiore, this Madonna is a humble one, glorified in this golden church. I love the glorification of humility.

Near Il Gesu is Santa Maria sopra Minerva, built over the old Roman Temple to Minerva, another example of the Christianizing of the pagan. Today in this magnificent church of blue domes, it is good to pay a visit to St. Catherine of Sienna, whose relics lie under the high altar. A third order Dominican, she spent her last years here in the convent attached.  The façade of the church may seem austere, but inside the starry domes presage heaven.  Fra Angelico’s tomb is in the north transept, alongside another stunning Madonna and Child. The church holds many other treasures as well.

In the same neighborhood is La Maddalena, at the top of my list, but with opening times only morning and late afternoon, it took some scheduling to visit. (Also true of Il Gesu, but Sant Maria sopra Minerva is open all day, as is Saint John Lateran). This church, of course, is one of the settings of my new novel, The Magdalene Mystery, and it was so good to have the chance to revisit, and check my original impressions for details. The church is a perfect Baroque jewel, and this time most scaffolding was removed, the restorations complete. The glorious golden organ loft, the miraculous crucifix off the south transept (through which Christ spoke to Saint Camillus) and the lovely carved Magdalene to the side are all surprise joys.

It was fitting that we were able to visit Sant’ Agostino on the feast day of Saint Augustine’s mother Monica and pay honor to her relics there. Such a mother, to have so gently converted her son, and such a son to have become one of the great Church Fathers. The church was lovely, and I made sure to say a prayer before the Madonna of Childbirth in the back of the church. In our world there seems to be little respect for the unborn, and even less respect for mothers or their vital vocation in our culture.

A  highlight of many highlights this week was an unexpected delight, as often happens when one enters a church in Rome. We visited the French church near the Piazza Navona, San Luigi dei Francesi (Saint Louis of the French). I recalled that there was a famous painting there – St. Matthew by Caravaggio – in the north transept. But I wasn’t prepared for the organist practising Bach.  The notes filled the space, soared through the gold and white vaults, and we paused, resting in a pew, being restored by the notes filling our ears and senses.  This is one of the pleasures of visiting churches in Rome – the sudden fullness of sound in a glorious and holy place, unbidden, graciously given. We left smiling, a bit teary at such a great and unexpected gift.

We couldn’t leave Rome without heading to the quiet, green Aventino district where palaces became churches in the fifth century. We wanted to revisit the fifth-century basilica of Santa Sabina, built over an earlier house church. Santa Sabina is home to the Dominican College; St. Dominic resided and St. Thomas Aquinas visited.  I included a scene in Pilgrimage where Madeleine describes the profession of young nuns at Santa Sabina:

Tall Corinthian columns lined the bright and airy basilica, towering over the congregation assembled in the long nave. Elena and Cristoforo knelt in the front with others from the convent. We found seats in the back as ten white-robed Dominicans entered from the north aisle and circled the altar.
Parts of the church dated to the fourth century. Like Roman ghosts, the old stones carried into the present that other terrible time, a violent time, a time of torture and execution by crazed emperors, a time of slaughter and pillage by savage tribes.
Today, before the novitiates took their vows, the Eucharist would be offered just as it had been then; the infinite would enter the finite, as God gave us himself in the humble bread and wine. Banning the pagan ghosts of the past, this transformation ensured a new way, a way of redemption. Chants echoed from an upper balcony as today’s light streamed through clerestory windows onto yesterday’s fluted columns. The church danced to the counterpoint of time.
The young women in white blouses and black skirts, their faces partially veiled, sat in the front row, their friends and family behind them. Each girl approached the altar, spoke her vows before the bishop, kissed his ring in obedience and respect, and returned to her seat, glowing. Carlina, tears of joy streaking her face, smiled to us as she rose. Jack took my hand, squeezed it, reached for his handkerchief, and dabbed his eyes. The girls sang a lilting melody, and their song floated high through the upper windows and over Rome. Surely, the angels sang too.
I reached for Jack’s hanky.

(There is also a lovely gift shop off the courtyard).

And nearby is San Allessio, with it’s amazing tale of a boy coming home and living under the stairs (you can see the actual stairs from the Roman times), and also where a haunting Madonna adorned the south transept chapel.

Further up the road in this quiet Aventino district of Rome is San Anselmo, home to Benedictines who sing the offices, and a popular wedding venue.  Tall cypresses and a long drive, a lovely porticoed narthex.  The keyhole through which you can see St. Peters is nearby.

From the high Aventino we descended stairs (to the right of Santa Sabina’s orange garden) to the Tiber, walked along the river to the ancient footbridge, Ponte Fabricio, another setting in The Magdalene Mystery. Crossing over, and passing under another lovely street Madonna, we visited San Bartolomeo, where the relics of the apostle Bartholomew (Nathaniel) rest under the high altar.

San Bartolomeo is home to the young people’s community of San Egidio, who do mission work for the poor. Present now throughout Italy, they have revitalized the young Catholic community with service to the poor and daily evensong. The church is as I recalled – three vaulted aisles, but still intimate and ancient, charming. The relics of the apostle lay in an ark under a slab, creating the altar. Primitive and touching.

And there are great photos from the bridge, up and down the raging current pouring around the island, Isola Tiberina. One of these days we will make it across to the other side, to Santa Cecelia, worth a visit for the mosaics.

We planned to pack our bags the day before leaving for home on an early morning flight, but I wanted to donate a few more copies of Pilgrimage to the American Church, Santa Susanna, for their library, so we stopped in at the 6:00 anticipated Saturday Mass. Such a beautiful church, but to be there during a mass, with full organ and Easter Alleluia hymns, was a true blessing, so glorious. And Father Greg was most gracious in accepting my little novels.

A magnificent last few days in Rome.

And while we didn’t actually throw coins in the Trevi Fountain, a handsome waiter sang “Three Coins in the Fountain” at our table one balmy evening in a neighborhood trattoria (Vladimir’s near the Via Veneto), so maybe that counts. We now know we will some day return to this magical, mystical, and marvelous Roma!

Ciao, Roma…. only for now.

We arrived in a taxi at breakneck speed as though the driver was practicing for Monte Carlo. Within minutes it seemed we were circling the Coliseum, maneuvering through narrow one-way alleys, cutting in and turning and nearly skimming cars alongside, then up the Via Tritone, pass the Barbarini Piazza, and around to our hotel not far from the Borghese Gardens. The driver sported ear-rings, and manically grasped the wheel with tattooed arms. His biceps were scarred, whether from knife wounds or burns I could not tell.  No seat belts in the car.  I tried not to worry, and in any event, we made it, arriving with screeching breaks.  My husband, usually a cautious man, surprisingly said, “He did an excellent job, going the most direct route.” I just looked at him quizzically as he praised our driver and gave him a hefty tip.  The young man grinned and I was relieved.

Rome is a city of contrasts.  Opinions are heated, loves are joyous, hates are intense. Perhaps it is the colors of the sunshiny days, the energy of the city of scooters and artists, of opera singers in small restaurants singing Three Coins in a Fountain to you at your table. Perhaps it is the deeply religious Catholic life of childhood if not of adulthood and the abundantly sensuous life of adulthood if not childhood. Everything is embraced with gusto.

The Americans left their mark here during and after the war, and American Bars are common in this grateful Italy. For our troops swooped up from the south and freed this country of poets and painters and sculptors from a misleading dictatorship of cruelty. We, in the end, won the war which became theirs as well. So Italians for the most part are friendly to Americans visiting their paradise.

I love the churches in Rome. There are nearly five hundred I am told, but I am so enthralled with the main ones I spend my time devising routes to revisit them all. I shall never get through the five hundred.

Tuesday we visited Santa Maria Maggiore, the international Marian church, housing a piece of Christ’s cradle and an incredible Madonna and Child reputed to have been painted by St. Luke. The ceiling is gilded in gold from the new world of America. the church is a setting for my first novel,Pilgrimage, and my novel in progress, The Magdalene Mystery. InPilgrimage, Madeleine says:

Mary Major stands on a vast square on the Esquilino Hill. Legend says it snowed on the site in August of 352, a rare occurrence. When the Virgin Mary appeared to Pope Liberius, commanding him to build a church within the boundaries of the snowfall, he obeyed. Since then, every August 5 in the Ceremony of the Snow, white petals shower from one of the cupolas onto the congregation.
We crossed a broad parvis and climbed massive stairs. Opening a heavy door, we paused in the narthex. A long straight nave led to a gleaming altar and glittering apse. Forty marble columns ran up the side aisles marking the two hundred feet to the altar.
I stepped into the nave, leaving the dark entrance and turning toward the light apse and its canopied altar. Circular marble tiles covered the floor, and, at the far end, the apsidal mosaic showed Christ crowning his mother. The entire ceiling was coffered in gold—American gold, I recalled, brought back from the New World. Behind me, Jack checked his guidebook as he studied a row of mosaics high on the side walls. Pilgrims and tourists milled about; some sang hymns, some knelt in prayer.
We reached the end of the nave and descended curving stairs to a shrine in the confessio beneath the high altar. Whose relics lay here? Mary’s body was never claimed; many believe she was taken bodily into heaven, a miraculous event called the Assumption.
“It’s the Christmas crib, the manger cradle,” Jack said.
Inside a glass ark topped by a cherub rested a small piece of wood. Behind us was an oversized statue of a pope kneeling.
“Now I understand,” I said, half to myself, “why this church was first on the list.” Here was the beginning of God’s great act for man, his momentous intersection in man’s time, the birth of his Son, the God-man, in a manger. The child became a man, died and rose from the dead, fulfilling ancient Jewish prophecy. My own loss seemed insignificant in comparison, yet just as real. Maybe I was to take my grief seriously and not to overlook the small, the humble, the seemingly little things of our world. Maybe there were no little things.       Pilgrimage (OakTara, 2007)

So we returned to Maria Maggiore, and all was the same – the stunning nave, the Madonna in the side altar. But alas, the Christmas crib had been removed for restoration. Even so, we stepped through the adoring crowds, some singing, some attending masses in side chapels, praying for our world, our parish, our communities, our families, and our friends. There is always a list, I thought, with some more urgent matters moved to the top, and this was true this first day in Rome.

I gazed upon St. Luke’s Madonna and gave thanks, and in the thanks, began to adore her son in the tabernacle beneath, and within the adoration understood my imperfections and unworthiness. I began to love. For it is only in recognition of our smallness, I suddenly realized, our failures, that we can understand what it is to love. For love comes from an emptying, and then a filling, and then an emptying for the beloved.

We left Maria Maggiore and headed up Via Contra Verdi to Santa Croce, to the Basilica of the Holy Cross.

L’Eglise Saints Gervais-Protais is a soaring Gothic jewel of a church in the heart of Paris.

We visited on Saturday for the midday office, sitting on low wooden stools under pale fan vaulting and jeweled stained-glass in the apse. The Sisters and Brothers of Jerusalem, an order of monks and nuns who take simple vows, work regular jobs in the community, care for this stunning sixteenth-century church near Paris’s Town Hall. They entered the sanctuary one at a time, each having covered their pale blue cottas with long white robes. Each carried a small wooden bench and found a place before the altar, then knelt in prayer.  Soon these other-worldly creatures settled like white clouds descending, their robes falling like tents and softly folding upon the rush matting.

They sang the psalms in French, their voices weaving and soaring through the vaults. They read the lessons, one preached a short homily, and another played an ethereal tune on an alto flute.

We prayed too, standing, touching the floor and making the Sign of the Cross, as though our prayers would be given weight by theirs, that the Body was more than the sum of the individuals.

Madeleine and Elena in my novel Offerings visit St. Gervais:

    They stepped inside the soaring Gothic basilica. Massive columns rose to fan vaulting. Far beyond the high altar, in the apse above the ambulatory, stained glass glimmered. Low wooden stools filled the long narrow nave. Unusual, thought Madeleine, no pews or chairs, but stools. Madeleine and Elena joined the congregation of forty or fifty faithful that waited for the next office to begin. Madeleine focused her eyes on the golden icon of Christ on the altar.
Elena shared with Madeleine an English brochure she had found by the door.

The six-century church on this site was dedicated to the Roman martyrs Gervais and Protais, whose relics were brought to Paris by Saint Germaine. Today’s building is seventeenth century. In the Middle Ages, public trials were held in the square in front of the church.
Today the church is home to the Brothers and Sisters of Jerusalem, a monastic order serving the community, founded in 1975 by Fr. Pierre-Marie Delfieux and Cardinal Francois Marty. Their mission is to bring the contemplative spirituality of the desert into the heart of the city.
The brothers and sisters hold part-time jobs and rent housing. They offer daily mass and sing the morning, noon, and evening offices. They follow rules of love, prayer, work, hospitality, and silence as well as chastity, obedience, and poverty. Lay orders, defined by interest, age, and profession, form the Family of Jerusalem. The order has communities at Vézeley, Blois, Strasbourg, and Magdala.
Services are open to the public daily except Mondays. A shop sells books, crafts, icons, honey, and jams.

Madeleine looked up from the glossy leaflet as young monks and nuns processed silently in, their white robes dusting the stone floor. Their hoods were raised, framing expectant faces. They took their places in the choir and began to sing. The notes soared in four-part harmony through the vaulted stone. They sang with purpose and joy, bowing from the waist and touching the ground during the Gloria Patri, as if dancing. Lessons were read and more prayers sung.
As the young people filed out, Madeleine was thankful, for she had been pulled into their worship; she had soared on the wings of their melodies like a bird riding the wind. For the time she had escaped her prison of worry. So this was their desert in the city; this was their peace in God. She would cultivate her own desert garden with her own flowers of prayer. She would learn to fly too.      Offerings (OakTara 2009)

It was good, this last Saturday in April, to return to St. Gervais, to experience once again the joy of these young men and women, to know they are praying for this great city of Paris. They are a witness, a true flowering in the desert, a light in the dark of this urban world.

One of the nuns had placed a large golden icon of Christ on the altar in front of the tabernacle. The Reserved Sacrament was, I knew, in the apsidal chapel behind the ambulatory in the chevet, where Exposition and Adoration is observed for thirty minutes prior to every service. As I rose to leave I could see the red candle flickering in the far distance between the columns and the warm image of Christ on the altar seemed to be alongside, reassuring. Beauty reflecting truth heals and salves as well as saves.  When we find the two together, the harmonies are exquisite.

We stepped outside into the cold wind and headed for a bowl of soupe de poissons on the Isle Saint-Louis and maybe an ice cream sundae. As we meandered through the thickening Saturday crowds, I could still hear the soaring song in my ears. I could still see the white robes rising and falling to the floor like swans or petals and the golden Christ, so pleased. He was, I considered, also in the faces that passed me as we walked. He was in the wind on my face. He held me so very close here in the heart of this city.

http://jerusalem.cef.fr/jerusalem/en/en_index.html