In these less structured days of mine, after my self-motivated daytime studies of Italian language, art and and various other subjects, I take my evening walk. Actually it is more of a walk-about Florence, for I have no time-frame, agenda or destination.  I just walk wherever my feet take me. At times, in these wanderings, I find myself entering a church to take a break and a bit of reprieve. It seems that every time I think that I have perhaps stumbled into just about every church in this city,  I stumble upon another. And that is just what happened yesterday evening. However this particular “stumbling upon a church” turned out to be, in fact, a rather magical moment.

I was off in a non-tourist area just doing my wandering and I looked upon a door.  The door had a simple entrance and exit side (push/pull)  and there were hours of opening posted upon it.  It was obviously a church and since my experience in Italy is that if  church doors are open, one is welcome to enter.  I did enter and what I found was a very small church–more like a chapel–with a rib-vaulted gothic ceiling, but a very modern stylised cross in the apse.  Seated amongst the pews were five elderly nuns dressed in full habits of varying shades of pale blues and greys. They were not seated together, but rather randomly dispersed among the pews. Between this section of pews and the smaller section of pews in the back, where I was seated, there was a gate.  I won’t go into too many details here, but I will mention that it was typical to delineate the worshipping masses (in this case just me) from the clergy in the front of the nave with a type of screen or gate. So I quietly took a seat in one of the back pews.  There was only one other woman in this back section of pews. She was on the opposite side of the aisle from me and a few pews back.  She wore a nun’s cloak, but no head cover as did the other nuns in the front pews. Those nuns were chanting the Ave Maria, but then suddenly the woman on my left began leading them in the chants.  Her voice was crystal clear and there was so much beauty in it and in the responses of the other nuns to each phrase that she chanted.

I felt somewhat out of place, so I just folded my hands and bowed my head.  After awhile though, I started to feel more awkward–as though I had intruded upon a private devotional moment.  I had sat for perhaps a half an hour savouring the  peace, but finally I decided it was time to get up and leave this place of  humble devotion.  As I stood and went toward the door to exit, I briefly turned back and the nun who was leading the chants bestowed upon me the most beautiful smile-the smile that gives peace and tells you that all is right, that you are blessed and forgiven.

I was actually a bit unhinged by the power of the experience, and I continued down the street in a bit of a haze for a few moments.  Then I thought to myself “I should remember this church so that I can return.” I wrote down the name of the piazza in which I was and then I turned around to find the door that so welcomed me and to write down the name of the church.  But the door that I had originally approached and entered with the hours posted and the welcoming feeling was no longer there.  There was only a solid wooden double door with so sign, no hours and no church name. In the brief time since I had exited, the door had been closed…or perhaps it was simply gone?

I find it a bit difficult to know where to begin writing my little blog again after so long. It has been an amazing year of studying, traveling, researching, writing my thesis and graduating with my Masters in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italian Art History (always the practical one!).

An old corporate sales colleague of mine made a comment on Facebook about this particular photo from my graduation; he wrote ,”so perfect for sales”. I know that he meant it tongue-in-cheek, but I immediately reacted with the reply “I am SO done with sales.” I think it was the first time I truly wrapped my head around that. I know to never say never, and that I might just wind up in some sales related position in the future, but I cannot ever imagine going back to a high pressure commission-based selling environment. I paid my dues there and fortunately that world was good to me for a long time and has given me the freedom that I have now. But I have traded for this freedom with much and now live a simpler life; I own no car, I own no house or condo–but I do own my life–and that is freedom for me.

I often tell people, when they ask about how I came to be here, that perhaps I would find it more difficult to be here and to have arrived here if I had not experienced a different life in the past. It was a blessed life in many ways, and this one is also blessed, but in many different ways. I once had beautiful cars, enjoyed expensive trips and big houses;  I entertained with holiday and birthday parties for which I prepared food for days, I presented lovely dinner parties, I shopped without much worry as to what I spent, and I worked for days decorating my houses for Christmas with trees that were at times a dozen or more feet tall and loaded with beautiful ornaments. That life was good, but it simply no longer exists for me. And yes, at times I do miss that life-don’t get me wrong. However, what I have come to realize is that having had that life at one time has helped me to arrive to the place in which I now find myself. If I had not been blessed to have experienced that life, I would perhaps always long for it. Although now at times I miss those luxuries, it is more with a nostalgia and appreciation, and sometimes a bit of disbelief that my life has changed so very much, as well as a touch of surrealism that I once lived such a different life. For this is the life that I have chosen and the life that in many ways has chosen me. It has been a long journey and a journey not yet come to closure, but here I am…at least for now.