Pleasures from the Page

Friday, May 3, 2019

Spiritual Journey First Thursday: Spirit of Spring

Carol at Beyond Literacy Link created this lovely logo for our

Spiritual Journey First Thursday gathering. Head over to Carol's

blog to check out the poems she was inspired to write and

to be inspired by words from other members of our community.

My favorite season of the year is autumn, but it's followed closely by spring. In the Pacific Northwest, we enjoy an extended spring. with the daffodils often appearing in February (but not this year), followed by gorgeous blossoms on trees, and then the flowering shrubs.

Last night as I was pondering how to approach this topic of the Spirit of Spring, I began humming a favorite hymn, "God Is Love," Click on the hymn title for a link to a performance I found on You Tube.

Mary Oliver in her book Upstream shares these words about this time of year: "Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I don't keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stay forever in the stream. May I look down upon the wildflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect."

I love to walk and as I walk . . . I look around, I look down, I look up, and . . . I snap pictures. My friends complain that my constant stopping to look and savor spring impedes our aerobic progress. Please join me on my walks of this past week as I share the spirit of spring which truly points me to our Creator. My heart sings with gratitude for the miraculous beauty of our world, for the blue sky, for every flower, blossom, and bee that remind me of His love.

The words of Robert Frost from "A Prayer in Spring" provide an appropriate benediction:

"... keep us here

All simply in the springing of the year."

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

SOL: San Gimignano & Monteriggioni, Day 7

Friday, February 15, 2019

Another "from a moving bus" shot taken as we left Florence for a day in the hills of Tuscany.

First stop: Florence American Cemetery and Memorial

"The 4,398 servicemen and four women interred in the cemetery represent 39 percent of the temporary burials originally made between Rome and the Alps. Most died in the fighting which occurred after the capture of Rome in June 1944. Included among them are casualties of the heavy fighting in the Apenninnes Mountains shortly before the war's end."

- Florence American Cemetery Memorial Visitor Booklet

Second Stop: San Gimignano

San Gimignano is characterized by its towers. The towers give the city a unique appearance and show us what most of Tuscany looked like during the Middle Ages. Many of the original towers survive, but the 14 we see today is only a small sample; there were once more than 70 of them. Those huge structures are fine examples of medieval engineering, but also emphasized security, prestige, and neighborhood dominance for the families who built them.

Church of San Francesco

Piazza del Duomo,

the town's Romanesque cathedral

Piazza della Cisterna, built in 1273, showing the stone imprints of ropes that were lowered into the well more than 700 years ago.

San Gimignano was a natural stop for pilgrims traveling to or from Rome on the Via Francigena. Today it's a natural stop for tourists complete with the medieval towers, the well in the town center, shopping, views of the Tuscan countryside, and of course gelato.