Sarah Mclachlan sings the words beautifully and flawlessly –
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is discord, unity.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is error, truth.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is sadness, joy.
Where there is darkness, light.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console.
To be understood, as to understand.
To be loved, as to love.
For
It is in giving, that we receive.
It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned.
It is in dying, that we are born to eternal life.”
Entitled “A Simple Prayer”, these words are often attributed to St. Francis, but though the words befit the man, it is unlikely that he actually wrote them. Still, throughout all the shops in Assisi, one could find cards and plaques of all sorts with this prayer printed on them. The commercialization of St. Francis is the blatant irony of Assisi.
We arrived to Assisi on a sunny Sunday afternoon. The narrow streets that curved steeply up and up required a certain expertise to manoeuvre along with a car. After checking in to our somewhat spartan hotel, we set out on foot down the cobblestone streets to the basilica that was built to honour St. Francis. The streets were narrow and twisting and it seemed you were either ascending or descending because Assisi is nestled into a hillside. Terra cotta pots of geraniums hung in round, metal holders and dotted the brick and stone of the walls, their reds warm in the afternoon sunshine. Shops selling their wares, much of it related to St. Francis, lined the main street. The narrow, downward-sloping street gave way to a wide open thoroughfare that led to the basilica, Assisi’s crown jewel. The opulence and grandeur seemed an affront to Francis’ message of simplicity and his decision to turn his back on wealth, nonetheless, I found the larger-than-life frescoes that told his life story to be moving. It left me thinking and wondering about how we remember and honour people and how we seem to be limited to these grand gestures. And yet, if it weren’t for this grand basilica maybe I wouldn’t even have been there remembering..
After our walk through the basilica, we headed back into the narrow cobbled streets, my sister and I poking our heads into the knick-knack filled shops looking for souvenirs. Seeing many depictions of the nativity, we learned that Francis is credited with having recreated the first live reenactment of Jesus’ humble birth story. He wanted to make the story accessible to normal, everyday folk and rid it of the trappings that church so often can encumber it with. And yes, I did buy a Christmas nativity ornament and cards with that “Simple Prayer”.
When darkness fell, the town was enchanted. We wandered into a square outside another old church and I glanced up just as a woman, head covered with her habit, reached out and pulled the shutters of her window closed. And I wondered if we the tourists were an intrusion to her order.
We found a place to drink more wine and eat pizza. The pizza was less than stellar, but our starter of wood-fired, oven-baked ciabatta bun topped with green beans, salmon, and buffalo mozzarella was delectable. After eating, we meandered uphill back to our rooms, briefly following the trio of people 20-30 years our senior as they helped one another along. A vision of the future, perhaps?
The next morning, before pointing the nose of our car northward to the Alps, we detoured to the tiny chapel that was granted to St. Francis around 1200. It is housed inside a vast church that was built in the 18th century in a nearby town. Once again, simplicity and grandeur are juxtaposed. We walked through the nave to where a service was in progress in the tiny chapel and the image of a nun, prayer book in hand while seated on the sparse bench intent on her devotion, stays with me. I also was intrigued with the diminutive nun who deftly wiped out the cup, put away the books, and did the general tidying up at the front after the rituals of the service. Kathleen Norris in her book The Quotidian Mysteries referred to this task as “doing the dishes” when she observed her first mass. Leaving the transept, we went out the back to where a statue of St. Francis stands in a garden. As we peered through the glass into the garden, two white doves flew in the space above our heads in the corridor, feathers floating to the stone walk. It was a fitting symbol to end our Assisi visit.
As the starkly beautiful, sepia-washed days of November wind down and the harvest is prolonged amidst the snow and rain, I think about the invitation to live against the grain by sowing love into formidable landscapes. This is not some airy-fairy, feel-good fluff that’s romanticized by a song or prayer. It’s the beauty and trial of life and living that requires thoughtfulness and mindfulness but also a sense of abandon. All our ordinary lives have this invitation. How will I live it?
“If you live a life of no expectation, then everything is a gift”
~St. Francis
(a favourite quote of another sister of mine)