I love the raw, uninhibited honesty of children.
Nov 17, 2010
Nov 15, 2010
anticipation
My favorite thing about Autumn is the anticipation that is in the air, falling from the trees, filling my nostrils. I love the changing colors and even those trees who have lost their foliage and have become naked too soon are quickly covered by white lights. In the city, there is a bustling about. The excitement of Christmas fills us all. Too soon, yes. Perhaps for the wrong reasons. But before the snow and before the commercialized red and green, one can't help but blink while taking in the colors that nature has shown off. The juxtaposition of man-made roads covered in yellow and orange and red. The crushing of the leaves beneath my feet while walking to get a cappuccino. The backdrop, on a clear day, of Alps that go for miles. It may not be an Indiana Fall, complete with pumpkin pie and warm family dinners. But for today....for today, it's enough.
Aug 3, 2010
How He Loves (part II)
As I was walking around the block this morning, enjoying silence and trying to appreciate the antithesis of the exciting urban environment I ventured about just twenty-four hours ago, in Cincinnati, before returning to a land of huge manicured lawns, four car garages and electric dog fences, I realized that the background of all of my strange thoughts was the song "How He Loves Us." In fact, I find those words coming to me at the most random moments these days. "He is jealous for me...loves like a hurricane, I am the tree, bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy..." And the lyrics drift through my flesh, my soul, my heart and penetrate the desperate parts of me that question His love... the parts of my that aren't afraid to lay it out to Jesus, to drop the f-bomb while screaming, "Why is this life so *%$#-ing hard?"
We had the crazy privelege of being a part of two communities this past weekend. One is on the outskirts of Cincinnati in a pretty rough neighborhood. They meet in an old Catholic Church and it's beautiful in all of its undressed glory. One of the crosses on the top of the building has fallen apart and there was something about this when we first pulled up that made me know that this was just the place for me. The stained glass was old and beautiful and made me long to be back in Italy...in Florence.
The pastor is in his late fifties I'm guessing...and was wearing a pink shirt...and sounded like a former California surfer. He was simple in the way that I like simple. And he interacted with the community as he spoke. The group was small and I'm sure would be looked upon as a failing community by many large churches... but what I saw in the misfit bunch was life, passion, and a pursuance of true Kingdom living.
I found out later that this community was birthed when three families intentionally moved to Norwood, a desolate and seemingly condemned neighborhood. They constantly met to pray and did a prayer walk and asked God for a large piece of property owned by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. It was all but given to them for pennies compared to its worth. And they all lived in one house for months until they began buying more properties on the block. I was told they even had a shared purse.
The "church" is comprised of a network of house churches and a gathering in the aforementioned building once a month. They have a coffee shop across from the deteriorating church building where people can meet to do art together, pray together, knit together and so on. And people are pretty open that it's not easy living within a few feet of one another, but the value of friendship, love and accountability outweighs any of it. At one point, as I was sitting outside the building, watching my kids chase each other, an overweight, toothless white man walked up. My senses were heightened as, having lived in Chicago, home of scam artists, I awaited the outcome of our dear friend Laura's interaction with him. She is an Occupational Therapist and works with psych patients and so I figured this was right up her alley.
But what I heard come out of his mouth didn't match his appearance. He opened up to her, sharing that he drank too much the night before. He said he's been trying to get it together and even had a job. Laura encouraged this component and the conversation ensued. He never asked for money, hit on her, or insinuated a self-centered reason for approaching her.
I later found out that he is a part of their home church. This man, familiar with addiction and so willing to admit his faults, is in community. I was challenged by him...by his willingness to be vulnerable. And I was floored at the compassionate and kind response of Laura. She sees value in every human, despite what label modern-day Psychologists have placed on him or her.
Later that evening, after having the privelege of sharing with Laura's home church what we are doing in Italy, we gathered our bags and our tired kids and travelled further into the city, to a neighborhood called "Over the Rhine." I knew we would love it, for our favorite band named themselves after this very district.
Ironically though, the neighborhood is not something off of a CD cover. Its borders house drug deals, abuse, addictions and seemingly orphaned children. One walk to the park had me near tears as I watched two older siblings, responsible for their three year-old brothers, forcing these "babies" to fight. One of the little guys didn't want to fight. I could see he was a peace-maker. His eyes welled up as his brother shouted in his ear, "Hit him back." My heart was breaking. And I wanted to grab him and bring him to safety... but I felt hopeless. Because right next to this scene was another...and another like it. I knew at that moment that the urban nastalgia of a neighborhood with a cool name like "Over the Rhine" wouldn't last a day if it weren't for people heeding God's call in their lives that He wanted them there for such a time as this.
They say Cincinnati has the most amount of racially segregated neighborhoods in the country. And I felt it as we walked through a few different communities. At one point, in broad daylight mind you (meaning that mom, if you are reading this, no need to freak out), a man started following Liz and I, along with our kids. He talked and talked, opening up the conversation on a heavy note: "I just got out of prison..."
I didn't know what to say as I was just waiting for him to get to his line that usually goes something like "I went to Harvard. I just fell on hard times. I almost got drafted for the NBA and I know Michael Jordan.... Hey, can I ask you a question? I am wanting to get to Chicago for a job conference and I don't have money for the train... it's fifty bucks to get there...."
Can you sense I'm a little jaded? I would like to say I have been ignorant or patient enough to hear them all... but just when I say that, I find myself sucked into someone's story and handing them a couple of bucks.
So anyway...the guy never got to that part. And I don't really think he was heading there. I mean, you don't normally start off asking for money by mentioning your bail. Just when I was getting nervous, he found some "friends" and stopped to chat. I had the feeling though that he wasn't going to go past "his" block. That is the feel of the city. People know their "place" and stay there.
And yet, that evening, during a house concert at Liz and John's house, serenely nestled and juxtaposed in the ghetto of sorts, after listening to Liz sing these amazing poetic and heart-entrancing songs, we met some other couples who were also living in the neighborhood. These couples all had something way beyond themselves living just beneath their smiles. They all had moved to this area, very intentionally, and like us in terms of Torino, pictured a garden in the desert. One woman, after I had shared about my park experience, said, "I can't make a difference with all of them. But I can love on one."
Ahhhh. Hope alas.
I left Cincinnati with gut-filled peace, the kind you can't fake or forge...the kind that is only found when I'm surrounded by people who are living out community and usher me in, not because of what I do but because of the same Spirit we have within. It was love in its raw and freeing form, like the ocean at sunrise. Like a child dancing. Like Laura's compassion...Liz's voice.
Still, the words from "How He Loves" are drifting through my being. I have so many questions...so many worries and obsessions and lalalala... but those words, like the feeling I drove out of Cincinnati with just last night, wash my insides...and "I don't have time to maintain these regrets, when I think about the way....
"He loves us.... Oh how he loves us. How he loves us so...."
We had the crazy privelege of being a part of two communities this past weekend. One is on the outskirts of Cincinnati in a pretty rough neighborhood. They meet in an old Catholic Church and it's beautiful in all of its undressed glory. One of the crosses on the top of the building has fallen apart and there was something about this when we first pulled up that made me know that this was just the place for me. The stained glass was old and beautiful and made me long to be back in Italy...in Florence.
The pastor is in his late fifties I'm guessing...and was wearing a pink shirt...and sounded like a former California surfer. He was simple in the way that I like simple. And he interacted with the community as he spoke. The group was small and I'm sure would be looked upon as a failing community by many large churches... but what I saw in the misfit bunch was life, passion, and a pursuance of true Kingdom living.
I found out later that this community was birthed when three families intentionally moved to Norwood, a desolate and seemingly condemned neighborhood. They constantly met to pray and did a prayer walk and asked God for a large piece of property owned by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. It was all but given to them for pennies compared to its worth. And they all lived in one house for months until they began buying more properties on the block. I was told they even had a shared purse.
The "church" is comprised of a network of house churches and a gathering in the aforementioned building once a month. They have a coffee shop across from the deteriorating church building where people can meet to do art together, pray together, knit together and so on. And people are pretty open that it's not easy living within a few feet of one another, but the value of friendship, love and accountability outweighs any of it. At one point, as I was sitting outside the building, watching my kids chase each other, an overweight, toothless white man walked up. My senses were heightened as, having lived in Chicago, home of scam artists, I awaited the outcome of our dear friend Laura's interaction with him. She is an Occupational Therapist and works with psych patients and so I figured this was right up her alley.
But what I heard come out of his mouth didn't match his appearance. He opened up to her, sharing that he drank too much the night before. He said he's been trying to get it together and even had a job. Laura encouraged this component and the conversation ensued. He never asked for money, hit on her, or insinuated a self-centered reason for approaching her.
I later found out that he is a part of their home church. This man, familiar with addiction and so willing to admit his faults, is in community. I was challenged by him...by his willingness to be vulnerable. And I was floored at the compassionate and kind response of Laura. She sees value in every human, despite what label modern-day Psychologists have placed on him or her.
Later that evening, after having the privelege of sharing with Laura's home church what we are doing in Italy, we gathered our bags and our tired kids and travelled further into the city, to a neighborhood called "Over the Rhine." I knew we would love it, for our favorite band named themselves after this very district.
Ironically though, the neighborhood is not something off of a CD cover. Its borders house drug deals, abuse, addictions and seemingly orphaned children. One walk to the park had me near tears as I watched two older siblings, responsible for their three year-old brothers, forcing these "babies" to fight. One of the little guys didn't want to fight. I could see he was a peace-maker. His eyes welled up as his brother shouted in his ear, "Hit him back." My heart was breaking. And I wanted to grab him and bring him to safety... but I felt hopeless. Because right next to this scene was another...and another like it. I knew at that moment that the urban nastalgia of a neighborhood with a cool name like "Over the Rhine" wouldn't last a day if it weren't for people heeding God's call in their lives that He wanted them there for such a time as this.
They say Cincinnati has the most amount of racially segregated neighborhoods in the country. And I felt it as we walked through a few different communities. At one point, in broad daylight mind you (meaning that mom, if you are reading this, no need to freak out), a man started following Liz and I, along with our kids. He talked and talked, opening up the conversation on a heavy note: "I just got out of prison..."
I didn't know what to say as I was just waiting for him to get to his line that usually goes something like "I went to Harvard. I just fell on hard times. I almost got drafted for the NBA and I know Michael Jordan.... Hey, can I ask you a question? I am wanting to get to Chicago for a job conference and I don't have money for the train... it's fifty bucks to get there...."
Can you sense I'm a little jaded? I would like to say I have been ignorant or patient enough to hear them all... but just when I say that, I find myself sucked into someone's story and handing them a couple of bucks.
So anyway...the guy never got to that part. And I don't really think he was heading there. I mean, you don't normally start off asking for money by mentioning your bail. Just when I was getting nervous, he found some "friends" and stopped to chat. I had the feeling though that he wasn't going to go past "his" block. That is the feel of the city. People know their "place" and stay there.
And yet, that evening, during a house concert at Liz and John's house, serenely nestled and juxtaposed in the ghetto of sorts, after listening to Liz sing these amazing poetic and heart-entrancing songs, we met some other couples who were also living in the neighborhood. These couples all had something way beyond themselves living just beneath their smiles. They all had moved to this area, very intentionally, and like us in terms of Torino, pictured a garden in the desert. One woman, after I had shared about my park experience, said, "I can't make a difference with all of them. But I can love on one."
Ahhhh. Hope alas.
I left Cincinnati with gut-filled peace, the kind you can't fake or forge...the kind that is only found when I'm surrounded by people who are living out community and usher me in, not because of what I do but because of the same Spirit we have within. It was love in its raw and freeing form, like the ocean at sunrise. Like a child dancing. Like Laura's compassion...Liz's voice.
Still, the words from "How He Loves" are drifting through my being. I have so many questions...so many worries and obsessions and lalalala... but those words, like the feeling I drove out of Cincinnati with just last night, wash my insides...and "I don't have time to maintain these regrets, when I think about the way....
"He loves us.... Oh how he loves us. How he loves us so...."
Jul 10, 2010
How He Loves
I have been thinking and thinking about Mary Magdalene lately. Thinking about she and Jesus…about how he loved her. About how her presence made him feel. About the special bond, that although perverted by modern-day scholars, gives us a glimpse into the flesh of Jesus, as her name floats in and out of the Gospels, like a pale colored butterfly, blending with the sky, tempting us not to notice, and yet drawn to her by her restrained and delicate scent.
My teacher tells me the heart is so big. So big that if we allowed it to feel the many kinds of love that it is able to feel, it may explode. And as I’ve been reading about those African men, namely Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela, who led South Africa out of the apartheid, I keep thinking about that kind of love. The kind of love that revolutionizes people’s hearts and ends civil wars. The kind of love that stands in between enemies, risking its life, in order to demonstrate its power, its pervasive kindness and its gravitational pull to Father God’s heart.
As I lay in bed tonight, rubbing my little sister’s back and holding her, I kept thinking about all that we as humans miss out on out of fear. My stream of consciousness flickered about, like a movie, seeing the faces of those people I love in my mind, as I spoke aloud to my sister, trying to make sense of the heartache she was feeling from a failed relationship. And as it so often does, my thoughts took me to the tender, vulnerable parts of my heart where the image of my father still remains. I have tried to push those parts away, have tried to bury them, psycho-analyze them, mend them…and yet there the broken pieces of our relationship rest on the mantle of my mind, like a vase that is waiting to be glued together so that it can function once again. I am familiar with this broken vessel but I am never sure I want to sort through the glass, as the pieces are sharp and I always end up with eyes full of suppressed tears.
It was no different tonight. Holding my sister, I felt one tear slide slowly down my cheek and land in her hair. And then another. I swallowed hard. I didn’t want this moment to become about me. After all, I am twelve years older than my sister. And this was her moment. She needed me.
I spoke one phrase: “I don’t know why I always start to cry whenever I talk about dad…” and then I lost it. The tears came out of a familiar component of my heart and they always feel the same. The release of the emotions and the sorrow over the loss, or perhaps the non-existence, of a relationship united again like summer and winter, assuring me that there is much unresolved. I continued to fight the tears, all the while allowing my baby sister to love on me, to hold me and speak life into me.
And I received. Perhaps one of the powerful elements of love.
And she gave. And she kissed my dreadlock-covered forehead and told me how much she loved me. How much her dad loved me.
We talked about the differences in our earthly father’s love toward his girls and I talked about how I fear rejection from him and how even though I try so desperately to keep my dad at a safe distance from my heart, there is always this lingering pain any time I realize how much I still need a daddy.
And I know that Father God is referred to as Abba. But like my husband says, “Sometimes we just need Jesus with skin on.” And on occasion it just seems natural that this flesh-covered spirit would come in the form of my earthly father.
And I do have hope that someday it will…on either side of eternity.
In the meantime, I pray to love well. To be loved well. To understand the danger of loving and embrace it, for it is the power of God in motion. I should not find it ironic that this same sweet sister, while hurting herself, was able to comfort me in an unexpected moment of angst this night. Her pain makes her real. And enables her to love deeply. And I should not think it ironic that she will get a tattoo on her wrist tomorrow, a constant reminder, of this deep love. It will read:
“How He loves.”
And that is really the bottom line. He loves us so deeply, so madly, so dangerously and without boundaries or borders, despite our inward and outward crap.
Oh that I would love how He loves us…
And receive love because
He loves us.
Apr 23, 2010
Happenings of Spring
Thomas...because he was feeling left out.
"Lettuce Crudo"... my kids have an obsession with plane ole' iceberg lettuce. This one is for all the doctors who have told me that one of my child's digestion problems is due to a lack of vegetables!!!
Lots of time at the park...
Ali comes to visit
I wear a dress...for the first time in long time...
The morning. Diet Coke and my groggy boy. But my groggy boy doesn't drink Diet Coke...in the morning at least
Striking a pose...
Keziah learns to ride a bike
Boy meets (Italian) car
"Lettuce Crudo"... my kids have an obsession with plane ole' iceberg lettuce. This one is for all the doctors who have told me that one of my child's digestion problems is due to a lack of vegetables!!!
Lots of time at the park...
Ali comes to visit
I wear a dress...for the first time in long time...
The morning. Diet Coke and my groggy boy. But my groggy boy doesn't drink Diet Coke...in the morning at least
Striking a pose...
Keziah learns to ride a bike
Boy meets (Italian) car
Apr 20, 2010
Inch by Inch
I found mascara on the white pillow in the kids' room today. Stains from my eyes, from crying last night.
It all fell apart around the dinner table, which is actually quite typical. Elias was in trouble for complaining about his school work, Keziah was in trouble for telling her brother he wasn't in trouble. Ezra was painting the table with milk. Thomas was in a mood. I was exhausted. Completely exhausted. Which is where I find myself every night these days. I made an incredible vegetarian lasagna (if I do say so myself...) and I just wanted us to sit and be a family...for twenty minutes at best. Is this too much to ask? Apparently it is.
As the world was falling apart in our home, which included a pouting husband and, at this point, an angry, bitter wife... Elias, who had finally gotten his teeth brushed and V E R Y S L O W L Y slipped his pajamas on (seriously, this kid moves slow... he tries my patience on every level... and I have to admit, I have a lot to learn from him...) turned to me, with huge blue eyes and a face so sad you would have thought someone had died. With big round tears he says, falling to his knees, "I just want to change... I just want a new life."
I melted into the floor, grabbing his little skinny body, holding him tight, remembering the night he was born. I began sobbing. Keziah had many questions. Before we knew it, we sat in a pile on the floor, holding one another and crying. It was a hopeless, yet beautiful moment. A moment where my boy's words went somewhere deep within me. A moment of truth, if you will. "I want to change too..." I cried.
There are those minutes, hours, days, or weeks in life, when I feel so incredibly desperate for Jesus...like a seven year old begging for his punishment to be taken away... And I can't help but run to Him. He was familiar with grief, with suffering... but does he understand my guilt? Does he understand how I daily feel that I am never and WILL never be enough...not to all the many people who are counting on me. And I hear the band-aids of people's well-intended words haunting my subconscious, cramming me further into the cave...further into desperation.
And somehow, He meets me there. With a kiss from my child, with a kind word from my husband...with shared tears that remind me of how needy I am...how needy WE are...and how we WILL make it as a family.
The questions of doubt quickly follow. The mirror of my soul leaves me with questions. And alas, I begin comparing my life. A hopeless trap. One that leaves me unsatisfied every time.
Later that night in bed, as I held Elias' shaking, sniffling body, I watched as he slowly went through a pile of photos. Photos from all the people he loves in Indianapolis. I noticed as he stopped at one photo. The shaking got worse. The sniffling unbearable. My heart hurt so bad. I couldn't make it better and I wasn't about to try. I knew he needed this moment. I asked him who the photo was of, and he said, through sobs, "Katie." It was his Aunt "Katie." He held the picture to his face...stroked her face as if it was an ex-girlfriend. It was so dramatic, but so real in his little being. He kept putting the picture on the bed and then taking it in his hands, gently, like he was holding a seashell, and bringing it to his face.
"You miss her, huh?" I asked.
"I just feel like I'll never see her again. I want to go back to Indianapolis." He bawled.
"We'll be going back soon..." I offered.
"No, it's more than 60 days and that's a long time."
I didn't have much to say to that. How do you compare adult time with child time? Sixty days IS a long time to a seven year-old.
"I just don't like how I act here. I'm mean. I am in trouble all the time." He continued sobbing.
It always makes me laugh a bit when he pulls this one out of his hat. He really thinks this is true, not realizing that if I was over 30, I'd probably be completely gray because of him. He is so strong-willed and stubborn and has been this way since he was a toddler.
I lay silent. Holding him.
"Do you want to call Aunt Katie?"
He perks up and we reach for the computer, searching for her number.
We dial. She picks up. She asks all the right questions.
And I hear him in the other room, and I know he's smiling. And I can see his dimples in my mind and I know that when I can see his dimples he is happy....from his gut happy. And I feel relieved.
Today I have heard his words over and over... "I just want to change." There's a song that he sings for school that goes "Little by little, inch by inch, by the yard it is hard but the inch what a sinch..." And I reminded him that change happens little bits at a time.
But how can I tell my child this and believe it for him if I am not believing it for myself? I grow desperate again. And I hear the words of Isaiah running from my mind to my heart, leaving their footprints all over, so that I will again have hope.
He was "a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering." (Isaiah 53:3)
I know that my child's sadness... my sadness is familiar to Him.
And I know, inch by inch, we'll make it.
It all fell apart around the dinner table, which is actually quite typical. Elias was in trouble for complaining about his school work, Keziah was in trouble for telling her brother he wasn't in trouble. Ezra was painting the table with milk. Thomas was in a mood. I was exhausted. Completely exhausted. Which is where I find myself every night these days. I made an incredible vegetarian lasagna (if I do say so myself...) and I just wanted us to sit and be a family...for twenty minutes at best. Is this too much to ask? Apparently it is.
As the world was falling apart in our home, which included a pouting husband and, at this point, an angry, bitter wife... Elias, who had finally gotten his teeth brushed and V E R Y S L O W L Y slipped his pajamas on (seriously, this kid moves slow... he tries my patience on every level... and I have to admit, I have a lot to learn from him...) turned to me, with huge blue eyes and a face so sad you would have thought someone had died. With big round tears he says, falling to his knees, "I just want to change... I just want a new life."
I melted into the floor, grabbing his little skinny body, holding him tight, remembering the night he was born. I began sobbing. Keziah had many questions. Before we knew it, we sat in a pile on the floor, holding one another and crying. It was a hopeless, yet beautiful moment. A moment where my boy's words went somewhere deep within me. A moment of truth, if you will. "I want to change too..." I cried.
There are those minutes, hours, days, or weeks in life, when I feel so incredibly desperate for Jesus...like a seven year old begging for his punishment to be taken away... And I can't help but run to Him. He was familiar with grief, with suffering... but does he understand my guilt? Does he understand how I daily feel that I am never and WILL never be enough...not to all the many people who are counting on me. And I hear the band-aids of people's well-intended words haunting my subconscious, cramming me further into the cave...further into desperation.
And somehow, He meets me there. With a kiss from my child, with a kind word from my husband...with shared tears that remind me of how needy I am...how needy WE are...and how we WILL make it as a family.
The questions of doubt quickly follow. The mirror of my soul leaves me with questions. And alas, I begin comparing my life. A hopeless trap. One that leaves me unsatisfied every time.
Later that night in bed, as I held Elias' shaking, sniffling body, I watched as he slowly went through a pile of photos. Photos from all the people he loves in Indianapolis. I noticed as he stopped at one photo. The shaking got worse. The sniffling unbearable. My heart hurt so bad. I couldn't make it better and I wasn't about to try. I knew he needed this moment. I asked him who the photo was of, and he said, through sobs, "Katie." It was his Aunt "Katie." He held the picture to his face...stroked her face as if it was an ex-girlfriend. It was so dramatic, but so real in his little being. He kept putting the picture on the bed and then taking it in his hands, gently, like he was holding a seashell, and bringing it to his face.
"You miss her, huh?" I asked.
"I just feel like I'll never see her again. I want to go back to Indianapolis." He bawled.
"We'll be going back soon..." I offered.
"No, it's more than 60 days and that's a long time."
I didn't have much to say to that. How do you compare adult time with child time? Sixty days IS a long time to a seven year-old.
"I just don't like how I act here. I'm mean. I am in trouble all the time." He continued sobbing.
It always makes me laugh a bit when he pulls this one out of his hat. He really thinks this is true, not realizing that if I was over 30, I'd probably be completely gray because of him. He is so strong-willed and stubborn and has been this way since he was a toddler.
I lay silent. Holding him.
"Do you want to call Aunt Katie?"
He perks up and we reach for the computer, searching for her number.
We dial. She picks up. She asks all the right questions.
And I hear him in the other room, and I know he's smiling. And I can see his dimples in my mind and I know that when I can see his dimples he is happy....from his gut happy. And I feel relieved.
Today I have heard his words over and over... "I just want to change." There's a song that he sings for school that goes "Little by little, inch by inch, by the yard it is hard but the inch what a sinch..." And I reminded him that change happens little bits at a time.
But how can I tell my child this and believe it for him if I am not believing it for myself? I grow desperate again. And I hear the words of Isaiah running from my mind to my heart, leaving their footprints all over, so that I will again have hope.
He was "a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering." (Isaiah 53:3)
I know that my child's sadness... my sadness is familiar to Him.
And I know, inch by inch, we'll make it.
Waiting in line at the Shroud of Turin...
Picture taken by me at the Shroud. I inverted the second one, which is how they originally discovered the detail in the Shroud. Notice the image of his body laying horizontally on the left side and the slight image of his backside on the right. I'm still a skeptic, but the more research I do, the more fascinated I become. While it still takes deep faith to believe in Jesus' life, burial, resurrection and HIS REASON for coming to earth, I find the Shroud to hold an unsolvable mystery in it. The more technology we have, the closer we are to the truth of the Shroud.
Chasing Pigeons at Piazza Castello...
Our wonderful balcony...
