Those Who Grant Pardon

Be Praised, my Lord, for those who grant pardon for love of thee…

The world is full of people longing for pardon.  

Hundreds of visitors milled about beneath the watchful gaze of the granite saints, under the great dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica.    Cameras flashed and tourists pointed, and some folks even prayed.  I stepped into a small wooden closet, a confessional, in the eastern wing of the ancient cathedral.  The sign outside the booth said that confessions could be heard in Italian and English at this one.  

Having spent most of my life as a non-Catholic Christian, the practice of confession was one that, since my conversion to the Catholic Church, was still a bit awkward for me.  But I knew my sin, and I knew I needed this.  It hung over me like a dark cloud, raining shame down upon me, sometimes in a gloomy shower, sometimes in a hurricane of guilt.  They come without warning, these storms, and the best a man can do is take shelter or be torn to pieces by the relentless winds.  And the world is full of people who’ve been torn to pieces.

I took a breath, and began my quiet confession.  “Bless me, father, for I have sinned….”

— 

I have always had a tender place in my heart for winos, and hopeless drunks.  They are men caught stranded and alone in a perpetual hurricane.  In my mind I can see three winos in the midst of the tempest, four drunks in the middle of a storm.

n my mind some moments that will remain with me for a long time to come.

He was drunk again.  It was a summer day, in that last California summer before my year of exile.  It hurt me deeply to see him like this, because this was not the man he was anymore.  Grace and friendship and the Spirit had long been at work, but it seemed they were working their way into the frightening places, the places in his heart and soul that shamed him most.  So here he was, weeping and pathetic as he was the first day I met him, wallowing in the remorse that had sent him to drink so many years ago.  Anger and tears poured out of him, and like a cornered animal, he fought in his fear to keep us away.

He was drunk again.  It was a warm spring day, a year and a half into my year of exile.  He didn’t like the apartment he was staying in; he said they did crack there.  He didn’t do crack.  But where else can a man go if he wants to be free to drink?  We were parked outside the apartment, and he sat in the passenger’s seat of my borrowed car.  I put my hand on his shoulder, as his tears fell perfectly onto the seatbelt strap.  “I’m just upset,” he said.  “I’m just upset.”

He was drunk again.  It was a cool autumn night in California, two years before my year of exile.  I held his hand on the small kitchen table.  “Everybody’s been so nice to me,” he said.  “I don’t know why everyone’s been so nice to me.”  He loved people deeply.  He poured much love into the people around him, but kept it from the one person he had deemed unworthy of receiving it: himself.  “I don’t know why everyone’s been so nice to me.”

I was drunk again.  It was a late night, less than a year before my year of exile.  I told myself it was just to help me get to sleep, and I wasn’t very drunk, and I’d always had trouble sleeping.  But of course it was more than that, even if I couldn’t admit it.  If I could fall asleep more quickly, I would have less time to lay there and think of my regrets.  I’d failed in my relationships.  I’d betrayed my closest friends for the sake of my own disfunction, even while working and praying with them every day .  And all while living as a missionary.  Of course, I told myself, this was in the past, and I’d accepted forgiveness.  Maybe everyone else had forgiven me, but I’d never left the shame of my failures very far behind.  Sometimes they felt as close as the dark of my room.

The past is a thing that somehow gets away with disobeying the laws of time and space:  The past is always present.  Oh, the good things, the sweet and lovely things, stay in their place in the greys far behind you, and take on the shape of mist-covered mountains.  But the bad things, the broken and shameful things, they move with you.  They follow at your feet like a sick dog, tripping you up and sending you facedown in the dirt.  That, of course, is when the storm breaks, and the rain comes, and that sick dog becomes your closest friend.

–

He was weeping again.  He lay on his back that night, staring at the curtain of the sky, and the night seemed to press upon him with the weight of a thousand sins.  Brother Leo slept on the ground not far from him, and Francis did his best to stifle the groans that rose from his throat.  The wretchedness of his heart seemed to cut through his chest like a knife.  When the world acclaims you as a living saint, the weight of your failings becomes unbearable, and you find yourself beating your breast all the harder for living such a lie.

The morning brought no relief, when Brother Leo arose to begin their morning prayers.  

“Brother Leo,” he said quietly, “we have no breviary for our matins, so I want to pray, and I want you to repeat something to me exactly as I tell you.  And please, don’t change a word.”

Leo, unsettled but ever obedient, agreed.

“I will say this: ‘Francis, you have done so much evil, committed so many sins, that you’re only worthy of hell.’  And you, Brother Leo, will answer like this: ‘It is very true that you are worthy of the nethermost hell.’” 

So Francis began with his self-accusation.  “Francis,” he told himself, “you’ve done so much evil, committed so many sins, that you are only worthy of hell.”

But a strange thing happened when Brother Leo meant to answer as he was instructed.  All that came out was this: “God will work so much good through you that you will certainly go to heaven.”

“No, no, no!” said Francis.  “Don’t say that.  When I say, ‘Francis, you have committed so many crimes against God that you are only worthy to be cursed by him,’ you will say, ‘Yes indeed!  You will be counted among the cursed!’  Understand?”

“Yes, my Father,” said Leo.

And Francis began again, with many tears and great sadness.  “O Lord of heaven and earth, I’ve done so much wrong, I’ve committed so much iniquity, I deserve only to be cursed by thee!”

And Brother Leo said, “O Brother Francis, among all the blessed, the Lord will cause you to be especially blessed.”

“No, no, no!” cried Francis.  “Why do you answer me like that?!  I command you under holy obedience to say as I tell you.  I want you to say, ‘You aren’t worthy of finding mercy’.  Got it?”

“Yes, my Father,” said Leo.

And Francis began a third time, with many tears and great sadness.  “O wicked Brother Francis, do you really think God will have mercy on you? You who have sinned so much against the Father of mercies that you’re not even worthy of finding mercy?”  And his weeping rose to the morning sky.

And Brother Leo said, “God the Father, whose mercy is infinitely greater than your sin, will show you great mercy and grant you many graces.”

“NO, NO, NO!!” cried Francis, exasperated.  “How can you presume against holy obedience?  Why won’t you answer me as I’ve told you??”

Brother Leo choked a little as he spoke.  “God knows, Father Francis, that I resolved in my heart to answer you each time just as you told me!  But the Lord made me to speak as it pleased him!”  Tears now flowed freely from Leo’s eyes as he pressed on more boldly.  “And not only will he have mercy on you, but you’ll receive from him beautiful graces, and he will raise you up and glorify you to all eternity!  For he that humbles himself shall be exalted, and I can’t say otherwise, because it’s God that speaks by my lips!”

Francis was silent.  His tears glistened in the rising sun, and the morning’s new mercies dried them.  

“Alright,” he said quietly.  “Alright.  Then I suppose there’s nothing left to do but sing.”

–

The world is full of people longing for pardon.  Francis knew this longing, and he knew that he was unworthy of such grace.  He also knew the sweetness, that graceful weightlessness, of pardon and forgiveness.  In one of his letters, he wrote of this sweetness:

By this I wish to know if you love God, and me His servant and your servant: that there be no brother in the world who has sinned, no matter how great his sin may be, who after he has seen your face shall ever go away without your mercy….  And even if he does not seek mercy, ask him if he would like to receive it.

— 

He was eating again.  It’s a year and a half into my year in exile, and I’m looking at a photo my friend emailed to me.  It’s his birthday in this picture, and he’s working on a pile of chicken wings at the Golden Corral.  Friends surround him, and I miss him.  But at least he’s wearing the t-shirt I sent.  I long to see him again, to embrace him.  I know he still fights, quite hard sometimes, against grace and pardon, I know he’s afraid, but he’s losing.  

He was drunk again.  I saw him today, a year and a half into my year of exile, his head lolling into his lap, a cigarette nearly forgotten and dangling precariously from his fingers.  I said a prayer, and reminded myself of the persistence of hope.  Grace is still telling his story, and it’s not finished yet.

He was singing again.  I listened from 2600 miles away, a year and three months into my year of exile.  Tears came to my eyes.  He stood before his church, telling his story of grace and forgiveness, laughing, and singing a song of the mercy of God.  The Father was telling him just what he was worth.  He had been very nice to him.

I’m confessing again.  The shame of my failures pours out in stammering words.  The priest listens carefully, and as he offers the words of absolution, tears roll down my cheeks and into my beard.  I’ve gotten a little better at this confession thing since that day in Rome.  That little confession, so many months ago in the little wooden shack in St. Peter’s Basilica, was good practice.  

Speaking of which, I really liked that one.  The priest, who I’m sure had heard about a hundred confessions already that day, spoke the words of absolution in a thick Italian accent.  “May God give you uh-pardon and uh-peace,” he said, “and I absolve uh-you from uh-your sins in-a-the name ofuh the Father, and ofuh the Son, and ofuh the Holy Spirit.  And… uh-bye-bye.”

“Bye-bye,” I said, smiling.  I chuckled to myself, for God the Father, whose mercy is infinitely greater than my sin, had shown me great mercy and granted me many graces.

Our Sister, Mother Earth

Praised be my Lord for our sister, Mother Earth,

who keeps us and feeds us,

and brings forth fruits of many kinds,

 with grass and flowers bright.

Bless and praise my Lord,

thank Him, and serve Him in all humility

There is something inexpressible about the heart of Nature and the heart of Man.  It is right and well that Francis called her “our sister, Mother Earth”.  We are made of the same stuff, as siblings, and we are born from her dust as children, formed from her clay by the hands of God.  Indeed, when we are in communion with her, it is also a communion with the Father himself.  To see this communion at play (often quite literally “at play”) is lovely.

The city is a hard place to live, and for those who live there with little to no opportunity to escape from it from time to time, it can be downright deadening.  The noise of incessant traffic, the glint of steel, the hardness of concrete beneath your feet.  The “F” word is as common as the clamour of construction as the drama of dysfunction plays out constantly before your eyes;  the hardened heart of the city seeps into your own, calcifying tenderness and petrifying love.  These things work a terrible, cacophonous song into the soul of a person whose life is already marked by seclusion, by pain, by isolation.

But it’s a strange and wonderful magic when that discordant tune gives way to the song of sister Mother Earth.  Noise gives way to silence, confusion gives way to clarity, and callousness gives way to tenderness as you are swept into the arms and cradled in her maternal embrace.

My friend has been to prison more than once.  His life has been hard in more ways than I will ever know.  He has lived the life of a criminal, a working man, a hobo and a wino.  It was the wino that I first met, so many years ago.  His story, which is still being told, is a novel in itself; let it be enough to say here that it is a story of friendship and redemption.  It was a redeemed man that we brought that day to Knight’s Ferry, a beautiful conservation area that’s just a 40 minute drive from downtown Modesto.  A redeemed man, to be sure, but one (like all of us) still prone to the temptation of living in old patterns of hardness and isolation.  Sometimes such a man needs to rip off his shirt and dive into the ice-cold waters of a mountain-fed river.  Sometimes such a man needs to be baptized again.

I wish I could adequately describe the picture I still see in my mind of that moment, the unexpectedness of the moment when three friends standing by the riverside became two friends watching and laughing while the third is throwing off his clothes and jumping with abandon into the frigid waters.  I wish I could share without words the picture of that man floating on his back, eyes to the sky, his face the very picture of a hobo’s peace.  That day the river held him like a newborn son, and the old drunk was like a weened child with his mother.

—

Richard is a man I’m still coming to know, someone I’ve met on the streets of the Canadian town I’ve been tentatively calling ‘home’ since my return from my Italian adventures.  His eyes are soft and kind, his fingers stained with nicotine, his heart carrying a terrible burden.  He’s lived on the street for a very long time, and has rarely had the opportunity to leave the city.  But he has the soul of a truck driver, a profession he held for over thirty years, and his heart still longs for the open road.  I asked him, one blustery January day, if he’d like to take a drive.

“Where are we goin’?” he asked.

“Away from the things of man,” I said.

He threw his backpack in the back seat, and wobbled into my borrowed black PT Cruiser.

We drove.

It’s amazing to see where you’ll go when you have no particular place to be.  We listened to Dark Side of the Moon and Led Zeppelin.  We stopped by a bridge in a small village and looked out at the rushing river below.  Again I saw the familiar look of a man finding his soul.

A few weeks later, when good friends with boarding stables invited us out for a visit, I saw that soul kissed by the whiskers of a mare named Molly.  They would be friends for a long time to come.  We still make it out for a visit every other week or so, and at every visit he stands by Molly’s gate, and she saunters over to say Hello.  There is a mothering magic at work here, a whispering of the Kingdom into Richard’s soul as he nuzzles the nose of his favourite horse, for her horse breath is as the breath of God in Adam’s nostrils.

When I see his face clouded with confusion and cheap sherry, his eyes darkened by a lonesome gloom, I need only mention Molly and light breaks through.

“She sees me and youknowwhat?  She knows.”  And he smiles, and his soul remembers its source.


—

On the western side of the mountain of La Verna, Italy, there is a cliff.  At the top of the cliff is the Chapel of the Stigmata, built on the site of Francis’s vision of Christ’s Passion.  From here there is a small walkway that leads outside, built for visiting the small hole in the wall where Francis was known to seclude himself in prayer.  Here you can visit the small stone womb where he would restore himself as he watched the sun’s gold light fall down upon the hills around him.  This place is known as the Precipizio, the Precipice, and from Francis’s hollow, it is a long, shear drop down into the tree-spotted meadow below. (Once, the devil himself tried to throw Francis down to his death from this cliff, but as Francis fell, the face of the rock turned to putty and...  well, that’s another story.)

I stood on the Precipice, and watched the sun — that same ever-blessed sun that Francis saw — crown sister Mother Earth with another golden diadem.  If I had the words to describe every sunset I’ve seen, I don’t think the world could contain the books that would be written.  This one, this particular, never-to-be-repeated sunset, was of course unlike any I’d seen before.  My cane — that ever-blessed cane — lay atop the stone wall overlooking the golden green trees below, the blue-grey mountains in the near distance.  Birds chattered and sang songs about the close of the day, and I drank up all the sights and sounds in slow, savouring draughts.

The birds, the sun, the trees below, were beautiful of course, but not a surprise.  What did surprise me were the maple seeds, falling upward from the trees below into the sky above.  I watched in wonder as one by one, every few minutes, “helicopter seeds” ascended the face of the cliff, up, up and over the roof of the chapel above.  I noticed more helicopter seeds on the walkway around me.  Like a kid, I gathered them up, set them carefully on the stone wall, and flicked them one by one into the sky in front of me.  They would descend for a moment, only to be caught by the graceful wind and carried up and away.  With great joy I found that I was, like these seeds, caught up in something unexpected, carried along and brought back to a place of giggling wonder.

Once, 1200-or-so years before Francis sat here in the womb of the Precipice (undoubtedly watching with the same kind of wonder at the ascendent maple seeds), a pharisee named Nicodemus asked Jesus, “How can a person once grown old be born again?”  Jesus told him that no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.  “Do not be amazed,” he told the pharisee, “that I told you, ‘You must be born from above.’  The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

And here is a key, a secret, to life in the Kingdom, to rebirth, to life in the Spirit: the holy, holy Earth that God has given us; this sacred older sister who sustains us.  By her silent witness have countless souls been caught up like helicopter seeds into the Spirit of God.  She keeps us, and feeds us, and washes us in rivers.  She puts her fingers (which are soft and strong and smell like earth; like a china doll working in a garden) to our drooping chin, lifting our eyes to the golden sky and the miracle of seeds in flight.  And she sings, oh she sings so sweetly, songs of the Father into the hearts of hardened men.  She blesses Him, and praises Him, and serves him with all humility.  The Lord bids her send winds as whispers to carry us where the Spirit wills, that we who were born from sister Mother Earth, we who have sinned and grown old, may be born again of the Spirit, and born from above.

Brother Fire, Boisterous and Strong

Be praised, my Lord, for Brother Fire,

through whom you light up the night for us;

and he is beautiful and jolly,

boisterous and strong.

The men on fire danced, and the flames rose high and exuberant into the night air.  Crowds of people watched and clapped and snapped digital pictures from an unsafe distance.  Burning embers fell from the giant flames, scattering across the ground at our feet.

I had walked here to the Basilica Di Maria Di Angelus from the church of the Rivotorto.  The words of Francis lingered from my time at the chapel by the river, and they were sinking slowly into my soul. “The Lord has given me brothers.”  As I arrived, the sun was still bright on the gathering crowds, but getting low and taking on a distinctly golden hue.

Angels hovered above, as children on floats, with sturdy rigging and seraphic costumes, stood levitating gracefully in the air.  Next to the little cherubs, men dressed in trilby hats and expansive cloaks carried on their shoulders what looked like giant sets of brooms, bound together and splayed in rows of four.  Along with the angel children, it was one of the strangest things I’d yet seen, and I wondered for what in the world these contraptions would be used.

I wandered into the cathedral amid the crowds of people, who were milling about and settling in.  They lined the pews, and stood against the pillars, and sat on the floor.  And the Porziuncola, the tiny church of the Little Portion, stood in the midst of it, silently testifying to the life of the saint we had all come to honour.  Tonight was the anniversary of the Transitus: the night that Father Francis was at last welcomed into the embrace of the Saviour; the night that the saint at last was caught up into the ultimate fire of Divine Love.  It was right here, 785 short years ago, close by to his beloved Little Portion and in the company of his closest friends, that Francis had died. 

As the service began, a great stream of brown robes of every shade came flowing in through the great doors of the basilica, as Franciscans of every variety processed into the cathedral.  The service itself was simple, and mostly unintelligible to my North American ears, but I made friends with an undercover Capuchin at the back of the church.  He was dressed in his civvies, and had the kind, round Brazilian face.  He spoke almost no english, but between my broken amounts of spanish and italian, his broken amounts of english and italian, and an iPhone translation app, we became quick friends.  I told him of my life in California, my love for Francis, and about my small, strange, and wonderful community of brothers and sisters.  I told him of my desire to live out the vows of Francis in poverty, chastity, and obedience.  He was fascinated.  In portuguese, italian, english and spanish, we figured out a way to meet again.

After the service, we shook hands and parted ways.  I felt the glow of friendship in my chest, and smiled at the strange way in which two people who could not speak each other’s language could share such a heartfelt conversation.  The darkness of night was now creeping in, and I followed my nose toward the savoury scents of street food.  

My budget was tight, but when I saw a sign on a small food cart which read, “Crepes alla Nutella”, I knew it was meant to be.  I held my finger up and said, “Uno!”  The Crepe Lady deftly swatted the pancake-like dough on the portable griddle, generously applied the chocolatey, hazelnutty goodness, and folded it all up in a triangle of sweet loveliness.  I took a bite, crepe crumbs and Nutella spread baptizing my beard.  It was good.  It was very good.

I turned to admire the basilica, now lit up against a darkening sky with floodlights and filaments, and I noticed a great crowd in front of the church.  I heard music and clapping, and saw what seemed to be several gigantic fires rising into the sky.  But the fires were not stationary bonfires.  They seemed to be moving and twirling.

What in the…?

I approached the crowd, winding my way slowly through the mass of smiling, picture-taking people.  There in the open area of the square were several men, the men with the cloaks and the trilby hats I’d seen earlier, dancing around, engulfed flames.  I saw now the purpose of the giant brooms.  They were worn on the necks of these men (who were, clearly, quite insane), and set ablaze.  The music played and the men danced, red-hot embers falling all about the square, as they began to make their way through the piazza.  The crowd followed, clapping and walking circumspectly through the multitude of still-burning coals.  

I tried to imagine an event anything like this ever happening in North America, and instead imagined an insurance agent having an aneurism.  Kids ran freely through the scattered coals, as grown-ups, less mindful than the children, singed their leather soles.

I had no idea how such a thing ever came to be associated with the foolish little saint, but it was reckless and beautiful, dangerous and jolly.  A perfect fit for a man like Francis, for what is holier than fire, and what is more foolish than dancing?  

And what a dangerous thing it is to burn.

Fire is a strange thing: utterly destructive and completely fascinating.  Perhaps a key to understanding Francis is in understanding Francis as “Brother Fire” himself.  That flame that so engulfed his life, and set him dancing across the Umbrian countryside like ball lightning, was fed by something.  Francis became fire because he let himself be consumed.  

But this was no disembodied, metaphysical flame of mere enlightenment, or some kind of self-perpetuating (and self-extinguishing) fire of youthful exuberance.  This was nothing less than the burning love of a Holy God.

After centuries of stories and religious art, we may see pictures of Francis tending to the poor and the lame in some merely symbolic or vaguely spiritual sense.  But the truth is that love is never merely symbolic, and never vaguely spiritual, for real spiritual love is manifested in the flesh.  Francis did not serve lepers because it was a spiritual thing to do.  He served lepers because he loved them.  He knew their names.  And Francis’s real hands washed real feet.  And as he did this, the fire burned and the fire grew, and his heart felt the sweet, almost physical pain of selfless love.  The kind of love that, at the thought of the beloved in any kind of pain, constricts the muscles in your chest and gives birth to the purest of prayers:  “Oh, Lord… Have mercy!”

This was the fire that consumed Francis.  And with it, everything unworthy of such a pure and blazing love was torn away from his heart, from his mind, from his flesh.  Here, in the face of such holiness, Francis was made aware of the limits of his humanity.  There are stories of Francis abusing himself verbally, even physically, but it’s important to kneel down and inspect closely the source of these actions before we shake our heads and dismiss them.  These were not just a commendable but ultimately misdirected bits of self-deprecation, nor were they some kind of severe case of “Catholic Guilt”.  These words and actions came from a profound knowledge of the human condition, an unveiling of the heart that happens when we attempt great acts of love.  When we strive to come close to the holy heart of Jesus, the paper-thin covering that hides the darkness of our heart goes up in a flash of smoking embers, and our truest, most selfish selves, are revealed.  And it’s here that God can truly begin to heal us.

Finally, in this healing, in this release of the self, in this letting go of pride, of protection, in this embrace of holiness, there is joy.  Deep, tears-to-your-eyes joy, and perfect freedom.  Unfortunately for us, these things don’t happen in stages, like the ascent of a mountain.  No, God is not so easily captured as Everest.  If we set ourselves upon his love, if we commit ourselves to the burning, it happens all at once in an ever-swirling, roiling fire of tears and laughter, of longing and crying and singing with joy, and it goes on and on for the rest of our lives.  We spin, we twirl, we dance, we burn.  We light up the night with the light of God.  

And we are beautiful, and jolly, and boisterous and strong.  

Brother Fire, Beautiful and Jolly

Be praised, my Lord, for Brother Fire,

through whom you light up the night for us;

and he is beautiful and jolly,

boisterous and strong.

Grizzo lay close to the fire.  It was warm and inviting on a cool night, and like every campfire, it bore an invitation to mystery, and to communion.  That Giovanni’s little dog was aware of this was no surprise.  Giovanni, like every 12 year old boy at a campfire, practiced his fire twirling skills with the biggest stick he could find, much to his mother’s concern.  I must confess, it was I who had gotten him started.  I’d taken a twig and gotten its end glowing in the fire, and began to write my name and make golden glowing circles in the dark.  Of course, the boy had to take it to the next level, and soon he held the biggest stick he could manage, both ends glowing in ember and spinning through his hands like a Samoan fire dancer.

Mariella prepared the water she had fetched and set the small metal pot next to the fire to boil.  Some time in the next hour or so it would be bubbling.  Armando gathered more wood from among the trees lining the hill on which we sat.  Their camp rested in the field on a gentle slope, just off the path to the church of San Damiano, and their tent stood a few metres away.  A clothes line stretched between the nearby row of trees, and a few shirts bounced in the breeze and glowed gold from the fire’s light.  As Armando returned with another armful of wood, Grizzo pricked up his ears.  I scratched those ears and petted his neck.  Giovanni took a break from his stick twirling, and hunkered down to poke at the fire. The plastic rosary around his neck caught the firelight, the cross swaying thoughtfully and glowing faintly.

The sky was quiet, and the moon was hidden somewhere among the trees, and every now and then a fruit bat swooped past the edges of the firelight.  To my left, and in the back of my mind, Francis sat with his closest friends, their faces smiling and lit with the same holy glow our own fire bestowed.  No city lights lit the plains at the foot of their hill, but the same small city rested above the both of us, and the same small church sat at our feet.

This is why Francis loved Brother Fire so much, I thought.  It’s inherently holy, and calms the spirit, and draws us together.  And truly, of all the elements for which Saint Francis gave praise and thanks to God, it may be fire that best describes him.  Boisterous and beautiful, playful and dangerous.  Maybe this is why there are as many stories about Francis and fire as there are stories about birds and lepers and unexpected converts.  (There was even that time when Francis himself seemed to be consumed and not burned, like the burning bush of Moses, by a fire that floated down from heaven.  But that’s another story.)

Armando stretched out a small blanket that would eventually serve both as Mariella’s kitchen and our dinner table, and she began preparing tomatoes and other garnishes I couldn’t quite see in the dim light of the fire.  At long last, the small pot of water had come to a boil, and Mariella began mixing it with cornmeal.  Armando offered me wine.  I gratefully accepted, and he poured it into a small plastic cup, and offered me a disposable chalice of deep, red joy.

“This wine is, ah, ‘Barberesco’,” he said.

“Ah,” I said.  I recalled the photo we’d taken together earlier in the evening, of our little group of bearded tramps.  If I could milk a joke a little further, especially one in a foreign language, I had to.  “You mean ‘Barbosco’,”  I mused, stroking my chin and recalling the term for a beard and a vagrant.

To my delight, Armando laughed loudly.  “Barbosco!” And he repeated the bad pun for Mariella.  “Italianitalianitalian, ‘Barbarosco’!” he said, and laughed again.  Clearly, I’d struck gold with this one.  I glanced over at the other campfire.  Francis and the brothers were laughing, too.

Eventually Mariella’s meal was ready, and we bowed our heads and joined hands for a simple prayer of thanks, and four hands made the sign of the cross over four hearts, in common reverence.  “Amen,” we said.  (It works in every language.)

I tasted the cornmeal and tomato concoction.  It was perhaps the best thing I’d tasted since I’d come to Italy.  “This is very good,” I said, almost enraptured.  “Um… Delizioso!  What is this called?”

Armando translated my question for his wife.  “Polenta,” she replied.

“Very old, Northern Italian meal,” Armando added.

“Polenta,” I repeated.  “So good!”

Armando refilled my small cup of wine.  Mine and Mariella’s and his own, and a little for Giovanni, too.

—

We sat back, satisfied, and enjoyed the night air.  Armando arose and said, “One moment,” and disappeared into their tent.  He returned, and in his hands was an old guitar, and an even older songbook full of folk songs.  He opened the book, and found his glasses, and began to strum the chords to Blowin’ in the Wind.  We stumbled through the words, his thick accent flavouring the lyrics like oregano.  

I took the guitar and clumsily strummed through the one song I know, I Still Miss Someone.  After some singular applause, I returned the guitar to Armando.  He strained his eyes at the songbook and his mouth at the English words as I held the book for him, and we sang Kumbayah (yes, Kumbayah) and Down by the Riverside and the fragments of half a dozen other old songs.

As this small group of poverellos sang into the night under the Umbrian stars, I glanced again to my left.  Francis and the brothers were singing, too.

Il Barboni

I had hiked the long, steep trail, cane in hand, from old Assisi to Mount Subasio.  

I visited Francis’s favourite hole in the wall (literally), and walked the paths around the sanctuary of the ‘Eremo delle Carceri.’   After several hours of walking and contemplating on an increasingly sore ankle, I hitchhiked the road back to town.  It's amazing how a hike up a mountain can take hours, and a car ride down a mountain can take 10 minutes.  I descended the steps to San Damiano, and sang vespers with the gathered faithful.  I ascended those steps again, cane still in hand, and I was approaching the familiar gelato shop where I had first met Armando and Mariella and Giovanni.  It was about 9 o’clock, and it had been a very good day, and a very long day.  I was ready to return to my room and call it a night, but the gelato seemed to whisper my name, and I made my way toward the glowing street sign for one last creamy treat to finish the day.  As I approached, I saw a familiar face.

“Ahron!  Ciao!” Armando called.  He stood on the street with Mariella and Giovanni, talking with a large friend with a long, white beard. 

“Armando!  Mariella!  Ciao!” I said.  I shook Giovanni’s hand vigorously enough to get a laugh.  “And Giovanni!”  (Violently shaking a kids hand for a ludicrously extended time is quickly becoming my old-guy, standby kid joke.  It’s a good one!)

They introduced me to their friend, who could easily pass for either an Italian hippy or an American biker.  “This is Nuli,” Armando told me, “He own the, ah, the field.  Where we camp.”

I shook his hand.  “I don’t see too many Italians with beards like ours,”  I said as I greeted him.  It didn’t take long for the three of us to start talking and joking about beards.  

I recalled a conversation I’d had in Rome about my beard.  “You looka like barboni!” he’d said.  “‘Barba’ is beard.  ‘Barboni’.  Man who have no home.  Tramp.  You look like that movie… ah… ‘Into The Wild’!  Ha ha ha!”  Since the man was formerly homeless himself, I’d taken it as a compliment.

I pulled out the reference.  “We are like barboni!” I said.  They loved that one.  

“Ha!  Si, si!  Barboni!” Armando laughed.  It felt pretty good to communicate a joke in Italian.

We had a good laugh, and I lit my pipe, and Armando rolled a cigarette.

Then Saint Francis came along.

I’d seen this man around Assisi a couple of times.  I was not sure if he was devout, or crazy.  He dressed in a habit or tunic that seemed to have come straight out of the 13^th century, carried a staff, and walked barefoot.  I’d even snapped his picture on the sly, a bit awed by someone who was so clearly either a saint, a badass, or a crazy guy.  As it turned out, he may have been a bit of each.

“Masseo!” Armando called.  “Vieni qui!  This is Brother Masseo.”

I shook his hand.  “Ciao,” I said.  “Mi nomé Aaron.”  He nodded and smiled briefly, and quickly became entwined in serious conversation with Mariella.

“I’ve seen him around town,” I told Armando.  “Is he Franciscan?”

“Mmm… Yes.  But his own.  He has been dressing like this for just a few years now.  For a while, he was…mmm…come si dice...  ex, ah…. No communion.  But now, yes.”

I noted his beard, and this began another exchange of hardy laughs.   I would not have guessed that a cross-cultural pun about beards would have gotten this much mileage, but that was just fine with me.  A few minutes later, we were standing together for a group photo of the “quattro barboni”, the four tramps in a row, while Giovanni took my dying camera and its feeble flash and attempted to get a picture.  

Giovanni snapped a few blurry shots before my camera finally died.  There was plenty of back-slapping and smiles, and just as I was getting ready to bid everyone a buono notte, Armando asked me a question.

“Have you eat?”

“Uhm… No,” I answered.

“Would you like to come to our camp for food?  For dinner?”

In an instant, I reviewed the itinerary I’d kept that day, my palm a little cramped from gripping that blessed cane.  Armando’s camp was half way back down the hill to San Damiano.  It was nearing 10 o’clock.  My legs were tired.  My feet were tired.  My injured ankle needed rest.  And I knew the wisest answer to Armando’s question.

“Si.”

Cigarettes & Opera

I almost walked right past him.  

Providing the standard “Sorry, dude” shrug of a person unwilling or unable to provide a beggar with a little change while not wishing to be unkind, I almost kept walking.  I was, after all, on a budget, and Rome is not a cheap place to be.  But as I tucked my hands into my pockets, I paused.  I did have something to offer.  I turned to him and asked, “You smoke?” along with the universal charades action for smoking.  He nodded.  I pulled my shoulder bag around, fished out a few cigarettes, and handed them to the man and his younger friend.  The small black puppy that sat between them declined.  I asked his name.

“Franco,” he replied.  

He was, I would have guessed, in his early sixties, slim and relatively clean-shaven for someone living on the street, keeping himself as clean as he could, combing back his black hair neatly.  He had thoughtful eyes that seemed to inspect the world from an acquiescent distance.  His friend, Antonio, was much younger, probably in his early 30s.  He had a round Roman face, a brief moustache and goatee, and a serious look accentuated by dark hair.  He spoke no English.

Franco, however, asked where I was from.

“Canada,” I said, “but I usually live in California.”

“Oh,” he said, “I live in San Jose for almost 20 years.  I have family there.”

We chatted a little longer, and I learned that he was from Sicily, and that he had a daughter that he had raised in California who remained there.  Finally I shook his hand.

“It was good to meet you, Franco.  Ciao,” I said, and smiled.

“Ciao,” he said, and I walked on.

—

Jaspar was around the corner.

He lay in front of the little cove in the wall that held a small collection of vending machines which sold everything from bland biscuits to bad espresso.  He thoroughly looked the part of a homeless man.  His pants drooped from his waist.  His dark hair fell messily from the sides of his cap.  And he muttered in Italian something that seemed to have no connection with his outstretched, begging hand.  His eyes scanned the world around him, a world which may have had little to do with the world of the passersby.

I held up a cigarette, and raised my eyebrows in offering.  He smiled and continued his inspection of his world as if to say, “What’s this guy up to?  Yeah, I’ll take a cigarette, you weirdo!”  I gave him two, and offered my hand.

“Uh… Mi nomé ‘Aaron’,” I said in my best accent.

He smiled again in an oh-what-the-hell way and shook my hand.  “Jaspar.”

“ ‘Jaspar’?”

“Jaspar.”

“Mucho…” I almost said, ‘Mucho gusto’, which would have been the wrong latin-based language.  “Nice… Nice to meet you.”

He shook his head and smiled, and I walked on.

—

I came out of my hostel in the morning, and made my way toward what was quickly becoming “my” little coffee shop, for what had become my morning routine: a cafe latté, a Bible, a journal, and a pen.  My coffee shop stood on the bend in the corner, just beyond Jaspar’s Cove, with a lovely view of the Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore that stood across the street.

Jaspar saw me coming, and started smiling and shaking his head.  I gave him two more cigarettes.

—

That night, , along with Antonio and his puppy, I saw Franco again.  He was in one of his two usual spots.  I greeted him with a handshake, and asked him if he and Antonio wanted a coffee.

“Sure, yes,” he said.  He asked Antonio, who looked at me seriously and nodded.

Espressos, with cream and sugar.  I strolled over to my coffee shop and ordered two coffees.  I returned, hot espresso in thin plastic cups, and hunkered down next to Franco.

“Grazi,” he said, taking a first tentative sip.

“De…”  And I almost said, ‘De nada.’  “Um… Prego.”

Small cars whirred through the street in front of us.  Open-roofed tour buses drove back and forth, shuttling people with sunglasses, large cameras, and larger hats.  I sat with him there for a while, sipping on espresso and watching the cars and the people.  Business men with a Very Important stride, smoking cigarettes, having Very Important conversations on Very Expensive cell phones.  Teenagers with the same giggles as the ones in North America, smoking cigarettes and being boisterous.  Hip young lovers, joined at the hip.  They were smoking, too.  A few priests (some of these also smoking).  Nuns.  Even a monkly robe or two.  And a lot of chubby middle-aged people in socked sandals, holding tourist maps and having a tendency to pointing.  One or two of those people smoked cigars.  

Some people, usually girls, smiled apologetically toward Franco’s begging cup.  A few, both men and women, stopped and gave change.  One or two even stopped a moment and talked and laughed, as if they knew each other (Of course, I couldn’t understand enough to tell).  A few looked disgusted.  Most, however, walked past at a high speed, somehow aware of everything on the street but the outstretched hand below them.  Their world had little to do with the world at their feet.

Franco and I talked a little.  I learned that he was 70 years old, and had no family here.  

Only his daughter in California.  

—

I spent the day at the Vatican.  I waved hello to the Pope.  I was blessed by a bishop.  I ate the most delicious sandwich in history.  I climbed to the top of St. Peter’s Basilica.  And at the end of that day, I sat down with Franco.  People strolled past, and a man stooped to drop some coins in Franco’s cup.

As the man went on his way, Franco inspected the change.  He took a coin and held it between his fingers.

“Where is this from?” he asked.

I looked at it closely.  “I think that’s from… Australia.”

“Australia?”  And he looked at it with some interest.  He reached behind him for his bag, and pulled out a small plastic container that once held butter.  “I collect these.”  

He opened the plastic lid and handed me the collection.  I smiled as I inspected coins from all over the world.

“Ah, this is from Thailand!” I said, holding up a coin with an image of the beloved king of Siam.  “I think I have some change from Canada,” I told him, “back in my room.  I will bring you some coins next time.”

“Si?  Thank-you.  Grazi.”

And the cars rolled by, and the people walked past.

—

I walked into my coffee shop, and pointed at a pack of cigarettes on the wall behind the counter.

Around the corner, Jaspar sat, back against the wall, legs outstretched and crossed and owning his little piece of the sidewalk.  He saw me coming.  He chucklemuttered under his breath, and shook his head, and smiled.  I handed him a pack of cigarettes.

“boyohboywhoisthiscrazysumbitchAmerican,” he said as we shook hands.  At least, I think that’s the translation.

“Pacé e bené, Jaspar,” I said.  I saluted a casual goodbye, and he smiled and shook his head, and I walked on.

—

I came back later that evening to Franco’s spot by the wall.  I handed him a small collection of Canadian change.  He smiled and inspected the goods with curiosity.  He held up the coin with the stag’s head.

“A quarter,” I said.  “Twenty-five cents.”

He held up a silver coin with a small rodent emblazoned upon it.

“A nickel.  Five cents,” I told him.  “These here are pennies.  One cent.  And this is a dime.  Ten cents.”

He nodded thoughtfully, and placed them in the container with the rest of his collection.  We sat quietly for a while.

“Franco, do you play music?  Do you…?” and I mimed a guitar.

“No, no.”  And he shook his head, and shook his cup for a passerby.

“Do you like music?  You have a….  A favourite music?”

The corners of his mouth went up just a little.  “Opera,” he said as his eyes met mine.  “I love opera.”

“Opera?  Really?  Wow.  Do you have a favourite opera?”

His eyes showed a spark.  “La Traviata.” And he smiled a smile of rapture and memory.  “Placido Domingo.  Teresa Stratas.  Very beautiful.”

And he began to tell me the story of La Traviata, of the nobleman who fell in love with the woman who strayed.  I don’t know if there is any music that could sing the story better than his eyes.  They were alive with the sadness and the joy of the telling.  He held the story like his first love’s hand, like a child in his arms, and spoke it with abiding affection, with great tenderness.  I felt each moment of love, each moment of heartbreak, like a song; I was present at the lovers’ first kiss, and their last embrace.  When the story came to its end, my own eyes were as misty as the storyteller’s.

And Franco smiled, and the song stayed in his eyes for a while, and he shook his cup of change to the passersby.