Alrighty

So I am back in the states. Specifically I am home in Seattle, though I have come to call many places home in these past five months. Traveling in Italy and France was rewarding, though definitely stressful and challenging at times. Dan and I basically had a spiritual pilgrimage, or at least that is what it felt like. We traveled from Rome to Pisa after a few days getting to know Rome. We spent the night in the Pisa train station with other homeless people; it would not be the truth if I recounted that I slept. We walked from there up the coast until Dan's foot began troubling him. We were also walking along a main highway, stupid Google Maps, so we decided to ditch the road. We trained it up to the Cinque Terre and spent a day exploring that beautiful region, partly by boat. After that, we abandoned our tourist bearings and found our way by train to the middle of France, near Lyon and Macon, to a monastic community called Taize where we spent two weeks. They pray three times a day with all their guests and it was awesome. The first week we just acclimated ourselves to the monastic life and acquainted ourselves with the other guests, including many Germans and Swedes. The second week we both went into silence. They moved us from our tent into a nice house where we each got personal rooms to facilitate reflection, meditation and outer silence to better adopt inner silence. I read the Bible, met with an elder Scottish brother and got to know the Burgundy countryside. I am not sure what I learned, but I know I learned a lot. Plus the Taize songs still run through my head. After that, we headed back to Rome, camped for a few more days and tried to process what we experienced in Taize and also on our trip. We continually encountered God's providential grace on the road. It was humbling, but also amazing to experience the fullness of life that comes with presenting empty hands (or jars like in the Cana of old) to the Giver of life. That sounds a little bit overly spiritual, but we certainly benefited from other people all those times we were lost, hungry, at wit's end and without any place to lay our heads.
All in all, it was quite the adventure.