il Pellegrinaggio

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il Pellegrinaggio: The Pilgrimage
(not the most unique of all possible titles, but I think it makes the most sense, quite frankly).

Wow! Words and pictures together in chronological order to explain what we did! What an incredible concept that I have, until this point, been unable to accomplish in my blog! As to the placement of the pictures in the overall description of the journey, here is my explanation: If the entire journey was a dollar bill (not in size, but in worth-which is starting to sound like a worse and worse example because I'm not talking about it's actual WORTH, just an example... maybe I should write this AFTER I sleep, eh?), then not the amount of pictures, but the PIECES of the whole trip that I took pictures of is like one, maybe two pennies. What I mean to say is that we were walking all night long and I did not start taking pictures until about the last few hours of it, for the most part. So if we walked a mile, these pictures represent the last 1\8 or 1\16 of a mile. I think you get the idea. I'll stop with the metaphors. I think it will either make you glad or very overwhelmed that there are so many pictures and so much to explain, so I hope that you are able to just brows in your own time and enjoy what you see :)

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(This photo also goes at the very end but I accidentally deleted it, so here it is)
"La suona di festa!" Ringing bells: the sound (according to Stefano, and I quite agree) of PARTY! (but party really isn't a very good translation of festa, which is really more like celebration, which it was! -way to spoil the ending :\ )


Here we go...
We arrived in Macerata on busses after about a six hour drive. The entire Movement (Communion and Liberation) community in the town of Bergamo went, so it took us two coach buses all together! There were about four other girls my age (I still remember their names, I think! Maria, Anna, Margarite, and Sylvia! sweet!); everyone else were adults.

Someon in our group made two signs with the name of the city we had come from on it to try to keep the group together.

Nearly every group did this, so it was really cool and interesting to see the names of so many different cities as we walked- "Rome," "Firenze," "Milan," and other smaller ones I had never even heard of! It was amazing to realize first-hand that people had really come from all over Italy for this event! Stefano said that because i was there, people had come from all over the world! :)

Stefano said the estimated number that he had overhear was 80,000 people altogether! Hard to imagine and I was even THERE! This picture is only one piece of the HUGE stadium completely filled with pilgrimagers! We all met here first for an opening mass before heading out.

The choir was wonderful!

Again, this is the main phrase\motto of the Movement, translated: "The true progagonis of history is the beggar," which signifies Christ begging for the hearts of men, and men begging for the heart of Christ (which I think is a really beautiful way of describing the human condition).

The whole purpose of this pilgrimage is for La Madonna, who according to traditional legend, was physically flown through the sky after recieving the announciation from the angel that she would give birth to the Christ, to a house in the city of Loreto, which was the destination of the journey.

During the mass a special ceremony took place where a flame was brought in by runners and used to light a larger fire, very similar to the Olympic flame. My picture of this is not very good but I'll include it at the top so you can have some idea (*). They also took communion (this seems to be something they do every mass), and I longed to partake in it with them more than ever, because I, too, had been reflecting on the incredible gift Jesus gave to us, of His blood and body, and I wanted to share in thanks and remembrance. I kneeled on the ground and used the opporunity to thank God for accepting me into His family. That's the cool thing about being an "outsider" in something like this, because it causes me to remember that my true acceptance and pardon in God's sight is the finnished work of the cross that (ironically) is symbolized in that communion meal. Also, for some reason, the thought came into my head (and continued to later on), of what this would be like if it were, instead, a Jewish pilgrimage. Part of the reason I thought of the Isrealites often during the journey was because it made me think of them walking out of captivity in Egypt and all those years in the desert! I thanked God for providing them with manna, because they sure would need some restoration after all of that walking! Anyway, I figured that if this had been Jewish, there would also be things that, not being an Isrealite or a Jew, I would not be able to partake in. The whole idea to me was of such thankfulness (especially thinking about it from the Jewish standpoint of the accepted children of Abraham), that God, though grace, has extended his blessing to the outsiders, like me. Because of what He has chosen to do -bringing salvation to the gentiles as well as to the Jews- we have been invited to the dinner meal with the King that we did not deserve to be able to attend. I guess that just the simple state of not being allowed to do something such as take communion always gets me thinking about this idea of God's acceptance of us, and of that joy and grace of being allowed in, though i\we do not deserve it! Also with this is the joy of heaven, when all of God's children will be together and dine and worship as equals, as children, and as the undeservedly accepted who are there only because of God's incredible mercy! Sorry for going off on that for so long...

Towards the end of the mass they did this sort of version of "meet and greet," except everyone shakes hands with those around them and says "La pace lei con te" which I think means, "Peace be with you." As I was embraced in this way and also said it back, to each of Stefano's friends -those wonderfully kind ladies from the memmorial service the other day, including Elena (I had it wrong when I said Helena)!- I truly did feel peace. I felt it from each of them as they looked in my eyes, and from the reassurance of God's acceptance because of Jesus, and from God's wonderful plan of bringing me here. I had been reading "Traveling Light," on the bus ride there, and it was simply, absolutely wonderful (thank you SO much!). The entire book is about letting go of your burdens, and it is allì based on Psalm 23. I bring this up because as I read that book I felt very strongly that I should memmorize this Pslam because I have not ever done so before. So I wrote it out and put it in my pocket to pull out and work out as we walked.

"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside still waters. He restors my soul..." This is all to say that the feeling I had as we departed slowly and with much singing, the huge crowd pouring forth into the narrow street, truly was PEACE.

(I do not have pictures of this part).

It was 8:30 PM when we left the stadium (and now I realize, it was 8:30 AM when we left Loreta this morning). It was already dark and so, though we worked very hard to gather our group (Stefano and his friends) together, in a moment when I was trying to get something from my bag or turn on the cell phone I had been given incase of emergency, Stefano and I suddenly lost everyone and though we looked everywhere, their faces had completely dissapeared in the waves of people. It was a scary feeling and I felt very bad, but I just held Stefano's hand and we walked together for the first 10 kilometers or so.

As I said, I do not have any pictures of this part, so it is very difficult to describe now. From the very start and ever after, most of our way was lit by small white Christmas lights that had been strung up along fences and outside windows, and the roads were lined by onlookers who watched us as we passed by, in folding chairs and through house windows. The way this whole thing worked was that all along the road that had been marked out for us to follow, there were volunteers holding stands with loudspeakers on the tops of them. Through the spekers everyone listened to the live prayers, songs, and testimonys that were being "broadcasted" from some main center, either at the end or at the beginning- I think at the end. It was in this way that all of the pilgrims (pellegrini) were all united\connected\ at the same spot in what they heard, spoke, and sang, though Stefano estimated the gap between the beginning of the line and the end (towards the end of the journey, anyway) to be about an hour and a half. There were moments when you could hear the slight time laps of the sound comming from the speaker you were passing, and the sound from speakers long down the road from you. Mostly this happened on hills when descending into a valley, which happened mostly at the end. When this happened during a song, especially the slow, perhaps latin songs whose notes were high and clear, the echo-like reverberation from the long strand of spread-out speakers created an earily beautiful tone that made it seem as if the singer were there before you in a large marble hall or something.

The music was wonderfully beautiful in many ways other than this, from the upliftingly upbeat to the holy-sounding cantations and chants, to the words of those that I could understand, and the utterly lovely sound of thousands of voices singing softly in Italan. The music filled the night and sustained me in many ways. Mostly this was because it was songs that broke up the long and seemingly endless strands of rosary prayers. The voice in the loud speaker would say the first part, describing the Virgin Mother, and everyone (who knew it, which did not include me), would say out-loud the second part, in sets of ten, as it goes, on and on through the night, the same prayer each time, repeated at least a hundred times throught those long hours. I almost got the hang of one of the sets of responses: "Santa Maria, Madre di Dio, praga per no peccatori, adesso e... nostra morte." Saint Maria, Mother of God, prayfor us sinners, now and... (there was always this one part that, no matter how many times I heard it, always sounded slurred to me, and I could never quite pick it out. I think it must mean "until") our death." The repetition got to be very wearying, but at the same time, it was also a rhythm, like the rhythm of our steps or our breathing, a lulling motion that could be completed without breaking out of the pattern of the walk. In some ways, it was the reppetition and the memmorization that kept them going. I thank God because I, too, was able to keep going by falling into a rhythm of my own memmorization. Because I obviously couldn't sing out loud during the prayrs, Iwould say the words of worship songs that I knew, saying them in my head and often whispering them outloud, only to myself (except that the people around me noticed that my lips were not moving in the same way as the prayer. But it was ok). I said my own prayers, praying for everyone and everything that came into my head and quoting any scripture I had learned on purpose or without trying to just by reading it so many times, whenever it related to my thoughts or prayers. And that Psalm 23 because my hearbeat for the journey. All through the night I said it over and over, each time with different meaning. It seemed that for each thing, person, or situation I prayed for, the words and meanings that I had learned from reading the book related perfectly. This "reppetition" of my own helped me to make it through.

I didn't bring a watch, which was absolutely necessary (necessary NOT to have). The one picture I deeply regret not having been able to make was the first sign that marked the distance: 1 km. One. When I saw that I realized how long it took to walk a kilometer. There were times when I really didn't know how my muscles would find it in them to do it. I had the will to do it, but what if my body was physically incapable? Sometimes my feet would cramp and I thought silently, "what if it doesn't go away? What will I do, when we have only passed the 7 kilometer sign?" But I prayed each time. "You lead me along the paths of righteousness FOR YOUR NAME'S SAKE." "I'm here for a reason; you will provide me with what I need to do it." And He did :) I loved that the focus was not on us, and even as I thought about my body as it began to tire and grow sore, and my hips began to feel loose walking down long hills, we heard the names of many people to pray for, we heard the testimonys of people who had been missionaries in China, who had been set free from the prison of drugs, or the depression of grief after death. I didn't understand everything, but what I did understand, and what Stefano was able to translate for me (which on the whole wasn't too often because the praying and singing made it in many ways individual, at least as far as talking went). This focus on the world outside of that moment really helped to make it a great time for prayer, really. A lot of good praying got done, and it was more than us just reaching our own personal goal so that we could say we did it; i felt overwhelmed at the thought that all of these thousands of people were all praying for others, and how wonderful to be a part of that!

Appart from the praying and singing and innner contemplation on spoken words that kept up the rhythm of the mind, simply the walk itself was really incredible. We passed in and out of small towns, too many to count, and outside of the towns, we walked through the countryside. In the towns, the city lights lit up the street and we were finally able to meet up with the friends! There were always people and lights and candles waiting, no matter how far into the night it got- i lost track of time (and thankfully so!), because each town seemed as equally awake to watch us as any of the previous ones. It was very strange to see things like shops and store windows, gas stations and car advertisements. As we walked and prayed and thought about God, those things meant absolutely nothing in the whole world; they passed by as something I barely recognized, much less thought about. I don't mean to sound highly or superiorily spiritual, but truly, if you are on a journey with only yourself and the very few, light possetions to help you complete the treck, and all you are thinking about is the God who created you and created the sky you walk under, and as you pass hours and kilometers with indifference, with only contemplation and songs and thankfulness for the smiles of those around you, what would you care for any possetion in the world that you might ever dream of possessing? Why would you care in the least? There was this one place out in the countryside, where we passed a circus, the striped yellow tent lit and emmiting conrasting music to the that comming through the speakers. That is a perfect instance of not having even the slightest inclination in the whole world to possibly want to do something like go to a circus. No, the right place to be was here. You could just feel it. It didn't feel like work, it just felt like a good place to be, the right place to be.

I feel like I should stop because I don't think I am making sense and, what's more, I am going on and on and it must be dreadful to read. I think I am just remembering that sort of stupor of the night, of being glad that you have no idea of the time because to keep going you must only think of the steps that you are taking now. Because it felt endless. This whole part felt endless. That's why the writing drones on and on- because the night felt timeless, endless. It was not that I felt trapped or panicked at the thought of the expanse of it, but it did feel dark and long and difficult; my body hurt, I felt bored with the loudspeaker's prayers, and as I held Stefano's hand my eyes would close as I prayed, not because I was falling asleep, but because the whole state of being was as in a stupor, just going, one sloppy step at a time.

These were the longest parts of the night.

Then, unnexpectedly, after I had completely forgotten that this time would even come, we came to a town entrance where we were given candles. These candles had colored wax covers on them that caught the wax and gave the light color. They lit up the night with light, and with the light, joy and hope.

The faces of our friends were lit with glowing warmth, as was their company. There seemed to be more talking and singing, and less prayers, or at least less often (I felt rather bad, but I came to rather dislike the prayers of the rosary, especially because it was all just about Maria so I could not even really find meaning in it, no matter how many ways I tried- and sometimes successed, but not over and over again).

Holding the lights was a joy to me. This part seems so much brighter in my mind, in everyway. The countryside was so beautiful and now I could see the moon. It had started an amber color, lowin the sky, and now it was high and bright, casting long shadows of us and our candles against the open fields of wheat. There was this one point where there was a cement wall running parallel to our road, through the field. As the shadows passed over this point, they bent, but since the movement of the figures never stopped, they were like the projections of ghosts in Dysneyland or the gracefully waving form of Gaishas in a Japanese cartoon. There were also many stops along this part because the line of people was too dense and the delay from the movement of the front of the line took to long to get the end of the line (where we were), to move. The slow joltiness, like stop-and-go traffic, was rather tiering, but it was also very nice in it's own ways, such as time to relieve the legs and laugh with the friends.

I cannot properly (fully\accurately) describe the role of the friends. They were Stefano's friends, and they became my friends because they had started out by accepting me so warmly, and with such love. They would talk with me, in English and Italian. As the sounds comming from the speakers became more spread out, there were many more conversations and this stretch of the journey, in my mind, is filled with light, love, laughter, color, bubbly voice, and the look of their faces in the candelight. Elena (whose husband had died, and whose joy was just as contageous tonight), held a candle with a white covering, and the light on her face said to me: "Pure." The faces and personalities of the other ladies were just as warm and bright and full of light and love. During the darker parts of that first long stage of the journey, they were the ones, with Stefano, who helped me to make it through. In turns, they each held my hand, so that I would not become lost in the crowd, so that I would always have someone sturdy walking beside me, to keep me walking strait as my steps lost their strength, balance, and direction. I held someone's hand almost all night until we got the candes, and their continual presence and support gave me strength and joy of fellowship and teamwork and community.

And then, as we walked a lovely path beneath trees and amid rolling farmlands, with an unnexpected arrival came the thin white line of dawn on the horizon. Around this time they began to sing a few songs in English- and by this time it was all singing, a truly lovely time. "Swing low sweet chariot, commin' for to carry me home," we sang. And then, to lift my heart so fully and unnexpectedly, "This little light of mine, I'm gonna' let it shine..." and I raised up my green colored candle and waved it back and forth, and I was fully and completely happy.

Breakfast and my first cappuccino (it tasted terrible. I didn't care).

Loud speakers

As the sun rose, it became obvious that we were walking in just about the most beautiful place we could possibly be. Hills of endless rows of farmlandad vinyards. Filds of sunflowers.

The sunrise came "auora," like the aurora borealis- here you get to see the northern lights every new morning. On the left in this picture is the bright pink color of the sunrise. On the right, in the valley, is the sea!

Le Amiche

My two main buddies. Elena is on the left. As I was walking with her, there was one particularly bright star shining in the blue dawn sky. I pointed it out to her and she said with a smile tha tit was her husband. "Con noi sempre," I said, "with us always."

Medical care outposts all allong the way.

The morning sun reflecting off the water of the sea.

The light also revealed to us the hills that we must climb last. Ah, the hills. Like walking from Rio Rancho to Tramway and then setting up the La Luz trail- oh, the hills were fun :D and when I reached the top of one for the third time, boy I smelled- lovely! :D But I actually DID have a wonderful time, now. Oh, I was aching- who wasn't!? But the songs that everyone was singing we so fun, and so joyful! "Tanto gioya dentro core." Bad translation, but "lots of joy in the heart!" and this one where you clap and hold out your hands and say "forza" which I think means strength, and the hold them up higher like giving a gift, "grazia," thanks, and then all the way up to the sky, "e la gloria!" all really fast and then more clapping! I was waling with some very wonderful singers, and I'll tell you what- even climbing up those steep hills we laughed so hard together, clapping and raising up our hands and singing. Oh the joy! I accedentally deleted the picture of the hills and singing, so it's up at the top for you. (§)

Sorry, this is a terribly bad picture, but we MADE IT!

Una pilligra (pilgrim)

Some onlookers in the city, similar to those that we saw all night.

The last kilometer marker!!!

We made it!!!

LORETA :

Feet care!

Like a postcard :')

The wonderful thing was that in the end, I did not even remember the long, hard, dark part- I remembered the laughter and friednship and light!

This journey was life, for though you grew weary, the light and friendship lifted your heart and when you finally saw the light of dawn, hope filled your heart and the new day brought joy.

How thankful I am for this journey!

When we got out of the bus for the bathroom on the way back, we all hobbled in like a bunch of rickety old folks- but that's what was really humbling about it: I came back with a stiff body, swollen ankles, and bursting bladder, but there really WERE rickety old folks who made this journey, and who have probably been making this same journey for years! It is incredible that they feel convicted to do this, and incredible that their bodies are able to support them. The elderly, barefoot man in the picture at the top (°) was faster than all of us!

Thank you God for this journey and thank you now for a full night of sleep!