First Glimpses of the Mediterranean

Yes­ter­day morn­ing we headed out of Aulla, this time with Jed, Andrew’s older brother, keep­ing us com­pany. It was an induc­tion into the pil­grim­age life not for the faint of heart, or faint of calf mus­cle! We did nearly half of our day’s 660 m in the first hour, eas­ily our steep­est ascent yet. Jed came through with great aplomb, and it was great fun to talk to him. Once we were up we stayed mostly up with gen­tler ups and downs, curv­ing our way around the last ridges of the Apennines.

Not long after lunch we finally saw the sight we’d been wait­ing for all day: the beau­ti­ful blue Mediter­ranean. It was about the most gor­geous weather we’ve had yet, bril­liant white light all around us from the sun­shine bounces off the water. Lit­tle stone vil­lages capped low round hills, each with a few houses painted in yel­low or red. We met a don­key and her foal, and star­tled a flock of creamy white pigeons. We’ve left fall behind and ducked back into the sum­mer we never had in August—the change in cli­mate and ter­rain was imme­di­ately notice­able com­ing out of the moun­tains and down to the coast. We are now very briefly out of Tus­cany for a short stint in Lig­uria, the rocky coast of Italy’s north­west arc­ing from here up to the French border.

Midafter­noon we met up with Roger and Ginny and Zeke in the camper at the train sta­tion in Sarzana. It is fit­ting to men­tion that along­side Andrew’s and my pil­grim­age there has been another jour­ney, fre­quently just as chal­leng­ing, on the part of our road crew. They’ve been with us for 10 days now in the camper. It seemed like the eas­i­est and best solu­tion to keep Zeke near us once we got out of reach of week­end vis­its like in Ger­many, and to give them a chance to see a bit of Italy in the process. So far that has not been so. It turns out that nearly all camp­ing facil­i­ties in Italy shut down on Sep­tem­ber 30. Why this should be so in a nation that has gor­geous weather through much of the win­ter and a pop­u­la­tion of avid campers I can’t imag­ine. Tak­ing care of, um, cer­tain basic san­i­ta­tion issues has come to pre­oc­cupy all of our minds. My poor in-laws have seen more boarded-up camp­grounds and nonex­is­tent dump sites than charm­ing Ital­ian towns by now.

All of this is to say that, as soon as we fin­ished our short day’s walk on Fri­day, the three of us were col­lected and shut­tled off to the next prospec­tive camper van sta­tion. En route there was fer­vent prayer for this one to be a suc­cess, and even more fer­vent praise when it turned out to be exactly what was needed. And may God ever bless and pros­per the Asso­ci­azione Camperisti.

After that we drove into the coastal town of La Spezia, found a safe place to park the camper—another task that occu­pies way more time than we hoped it would—found a place for me and Andrew to stay (no room in the camper with Jed here, and we thought Zeke needed a change of scenery), and then all of us went out to din­ner at a cute local joint to cel­e­brate the sur­vival of ten days on the road in the camper. We were all kind of glad that the camper wasn’t there to cel­e­brate with us.

Today was the des­ig­nated rest day, which meant catch­ing up on gro­ceries, laun­dry, and pho­tos for the gen­tle­men, while the ladies took a day trip up the coast. If you’re a fan of the movie “Enchanted April,” you’ll know exactly where we went and what we saw. It required a few km of walk­ing even on my day off, but it was worth every step for the refresh­ment of spirit.

Russel Murray, OFM says:
October 10, 2010 at 12:27 am
Hav­ing caught your first glimpse of the beau­ti­ful Mediter­ranean, I’d image you feel as though your in the home stretch. At any rate, I cer­tainly would. In a sense, it’s all down hill from here!
Again, thank you so much for your fidelity to your daily posts & pic­tures. I’m sure that there have been days (and plenty of days) when the last thing you wanted to do was sit down at a com­puter. Yet your ded­i­ca­tion has per­mit­ted desk-pilgrims like me to feel quite con­nected with you, and so in spirit — as you had hoped — make the jour­ney with you.
If I may, I’d like to add some­thing to your excerpts from, & com­ments on, “Uni­tatis red­in­te­gra­tio.” I’ll begin with one of my favorite pas­sages from the decree: “Nev­er­the­less, the divi­sions among Chris­tians pre­vent the Church from attain­ing the full­ness of catholic­ity proper to her, in those of her sons [and daugh­ters] who, though attached to her by Bap­tism, are yet sep­a­rated from full com­mu­nion with her. Fur­ther­more, the Church her­self finds it more dif­fi­cult to express in actual life her full catholic­ity in all her bear­ings. (art. 4)”
Given the sharp anti-ecumenical spirit that had pre­vailed in the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) since the pro­mul­ga­tion of “Mor­tal­ium ani­mos,” the above pas­sage makes an astound­ing state­ment: in light of the vis­i­ble divi­sions among Chris­tians, no eccle­sial com­mu­nity — includ­ing the RCC — is capa­ble of liv­ing fully the mys­tery of the Church. In short, Chris­tians need one another in order to be pre­cisely whom their Lord has called them to be: His Body, His Church. From this van­tage, then, ecu­menism isn’t a “nice idea.” It’s an exis­ten­tial neces­sity that shoves back into the mouths of those who make it any claim to their being the “True Church.”
Many bless­ings on your way, to you & your entire fam­ily! You remain in my prayers.
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Sarah Wilson says:
October 10, 2010 at 6:08 pm
Dear Rus­sell, we have so much enjoyed your com­ments (and gen­eros­ity!). Thank you for shar­ing your insights on this. I’m glad you lifted up this pas­sage par­tic­u­larly. Keep those prayers coming!
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