Out of place, out of time

 There is a palm tree outside my window here in Rome - a big one reaching onto my second story and up into the third. The hard tangled knot that sprouts it's leaves is at eye level and the branches sway in tonight's wind. 

No one associates palm trees with Italy. This is hardly the tropics. It feels like they don't belong but because tonight is one of those that won't let me sleep simply for the sake of fomo, I'm watching the tree. And of course, I haven't missed it. The broad Atlantic Ocean was like that. Just there and perfectly itself. 

No one associates rain with Italy either, but we got that tonight, too. Hard short rain so bright that it fizzled from my street lamp like electric current in accompaniment to thunderclap that rattled against the coliseum stones and made it sound like God was not only bowling, but was doing it on marble.

I didn't get much sleep tonight, but in turn didn't miss any of the life that happens while we're checked out. Some nights are just magic. Oh Rome, you can be a hard-edged mistress, but tonight you danced for me, twirling your bright bangles against the dark.

Ah, the birds are singing. The world still turns and I'm still alive. Was starting to wonder if I'd run out of time. Not yet.

Perfectly Round

 

The pantheon in Rome, Italy.

It's the oldest intact house of worship on the planet. Really. Even for people who don't care about history much, and there are a lot of you, that's kind of a thing. 

Anyway, I went to church there today. And  I learned something. Not about history, but about the nature of  God. The thing is, the pantheon was first built in 600-something BC. At the time, it was dedicated to all the known gods at that time. All of them. And the Romans weren't just hedging their bets with their own gods. They had a shrine there for the Unknown God (check your Bible. It's there) just in case they'd missed anyone. Turns out that the one they  missed was the One that hadn't quite come yet.

Well, the pantheon is a church now. A Roman Catholic Christian church. And all the statues of Roman gods and goddesses inside are gone, replaced by Jesus and Peter and Mary, but it turns out that the remodelers haven't forgotten their pantheistic roots. You see, the pantheon is one of the most famous buildings in the world, even in Rome, where famous buildings literally line many streets and the rubble from them sits in piles in alleyways and out of the way corners. There is just something about this place.

Some of it has to do with the building itself - the way it's designed. There's that open oculus in the top - literally an open hole - that makes you feel like God always has a birds' eye view of what's going on inside. And then the shape of it is perfect. It's  not only a two dimensional perfect circle. It's a three dimensional one - the same size top to bottom as it is side to side.  The acoustics are beautiful and the symmetry gives an occupant a feeling of things being just right: God saying He had created it to be Very Good.

Then there are the people. Every color, every shape, every nationality. The building calls them to worship there together as one people. They may no longer be worshiping a pantheon of various gods, but they worshiip together a God who brought them all together conceptually. They are all in Him: every facet of man and life and nature. The hush there has little to do wtih priests or ritual. It has more to do with continuity in a line that extends from the first days of creation through the dawn and maturation of mankind to today. 

And it is beautiful. 

There are familiar places where we join familar faces in worship. But then there are places where we knjow no one, where nearly everyone speaks a language we don't understand, and yet that is where God drives home His point. Come to me. Everyone. Love one another. 

The family of God is bigger than we ever imagined and it takes flying to the other side of the world to begin to understand. It is possible to share the kiss of peace with people who would otherwise be foreign and strangers but, in this context, are brothers and sisters. When God says He brings all people together, He isn't kidding. He gathers people from disparate times and geographies and worldviews under one perfectly round roof and says, "Follow Me."  

I can do that.

This is what it sounded like: