ABOVE ALL

I have been faithful in going to the Sunday morning service lately (if going there twice in a row could be called faithful, that is). Knowing that my weekends in Italy will be (likely) spent travelling outside Perugia, whenever I found myself ‘trapped’ in this city on Sunday, I woke up early, fought against the drowsiness, to walk alone to the church for about 30 minutes, passing through the empty piazza and walking down inside my favorite place Rocca Paolina, where you can find a mixture of antiquity (the ancient city below the ground), and modernity (lots of escalators inside it).

Though I haven’t known anyone (yet) there, I always enjoyed the service (though sometimes, it felt longer than the ones in Indonesia). It is different, yet felt so familiar, thanks to the songs they usually sing. They have a perfect combination of old hymns and contemporary songs, similar to the ones I used to sing in Indonesia. The difference is, of course, here, they are all translated in Italian. And they’re so beautiful in my ears, that every time I came too early, I was busy copying the text into my notebook, or, while we were worshiping, I secretly recorded their voice with my cell phone.

They have a holy sacrament every week, when the congregation eat bread and drink wine from the same cup. And they don’t have a worship leader, only some musicians and singer in front, and the members of congregation, one by one, call out a song that they want us to sing, adding prayers in between. Once, the sermon was conducted in Romanian and translated in Italian, and I had to really concentrate to understand it all.

But when it is delivered in Italian, I usually can follow quite effortlessly, and manage to learn some new terms every week. Last Sunday, the sermon really struck my heart. I’d never thought that listening to a sermon in another language (especially the third language), would be so moving, but it did. The elderly preacher took the first passage of John 5, about the healing at the pool. He reminded us that too often, we acted in the same manner with the people around the paralyzed, who said to Jesus, “Sir, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” He said, we might be sitting shoulder to shoulder with someone, without realizing that he/she might feel that she had no one. And that we needed to be more caring to the sufferings of others.

And I could relate both to the paralyzed and the people around him. At times, it also happened to me… the feeling of having nobody, or at least, no one around me, that is available when I could use companionship or encouragement. And I also realized that, being absorbed in my own problems and worries, I often acted indifferently towards others, who might be in need of my companion, assurance, encouragement, or even, merely a smile and ears that listen.

I was having a rough time with two of my few real friends here. I had been upset, angry, sad, and afraid of losing them, thinking that they were also mad at me, for some reasons. And sitting there in the back pew of the church, fighting back my tears, I realized that it was not fair to place myself as the paralyzed and them as the indifferent people around. On the contrary, it could have been me who failed to see and understand their problems, their suffering.

I’m never good at confronting people, at saying sorry, or starting a conversation after a ‘cold’ war. I’d rather let it ‘cool’ naturally. Yet that day I was so compelled to make the first move, and despite a fear to be rejected by them, I felt relieved to find my own heart filled with affection and forgiveness to them, leaving no trace of anger and disappointment that I had felt before.

That same day, two ‘almost broken’ friendships were healed. In fact, strengthened. And forgiveness, I think, is essential in loving others. Below is the Italian version of Lenny leBlanc’s ABOVE ALL, one of my favorite songs, that reminds me of how much I have been forgiven.

SEI DI PIU’

Su ogni potenza, sopra ogni re

Più di ogni cosa creata intorno a me

Su ogni sagezza e vie che l’uomo ha

Tu eri qui già nell’eternità

Sopra ogni regno e autorità

E meraviglie che solo il mondo sa

E piu dell’oro che in terra so che c’è

Nulla può valere più di te

Sei di più

Di tutto quel che ho

Vissuto per morire così solo

Fiore che è gettato via

L’hai scelto tu

Pensando a me

Solo tu

just curious

maybe this is the reason the previous note was accidentally posted twice... cos it was automatically imported from my blogspot.
Let's see

EPIPHANY

After over than two months residing in Perugia as a foreign student, last Friday was the first time I toured the city as a student slash tourist, i.e. having a guide slash Italian language teacher explain the historical arches, buildings and streets around Perugia, in the first outing session of our cultural class (after two months learning in a classroom only!).
Knowing more about the stories behind those buildings (dated thousands years ago), I could not help imagining how hard life must have been back then, when people lived in constant fear, of the enemies, of the war, of being killed—so much that it seems to me, all their construction technique was based on security reasons. They had narrow and winding streets to facilitate escaping on foot (and avoid the enemies’ arrows), they had a kind of stairs that they could fold afterwards, to make it harder for the enemies to invade their house, etc. And as I passed those streets and absorbed the historical facts, I wondered if back then, there was also a girl like me, with the same passions and lots of things in common, who could have been my close friend, had we lived in the same period of time.
And my imagination, like always, did not stop there. It went on and on and on. But the thing that struck me most was, I’d never felt so inspired like that before, even since I arrived here in Italy. I have passed those streets and seen those buildings lots of time before, and yet I took them for granted. They have grown familiar and usual for me, to (almost) lose their (historical) meaning, and I am so glad that now I can see them in a different point of view.
Of course, I don’t blame myself for being ‘blind’ for the first two months. Being in an adaptation process in almost every aspect of my life, plus fighting against the loneliness (that every now and then assaults me, esp. when I feel so cut out of the life of my beloved ones in Indonesia—skyping regularly ain’t enough to cover their absence around me) and having to go back and forth to the questura (immigration office) to apply for my stay permit, left no much space for any creativity or curiosity.
And I have been a slug in writing, something that I enjoy a lot and I want to do all my life. I don’t even write my journals faithfully anymore, while there is so much to tell and so many things and feelings I want to remember afterwards.
So, the outing last week was not only improving my knowledge in history, but most of all, it inspired me. It recovered my curiosity and enableb me to (once again) imagine. And despite of our laments of too much sun and being hungry, I think I would love to repeat the tour, maybe by myself, and allow myself to see once again the locks that the lovebirds put in the lamps near the market where you can view Assisi, or pass the Street of Peace, where two arguing people (or families) made peace.
It’s so amazing what an outdoor lesson can do to you after spending so many hours in the classroom. I think we should do it more.