Vespers, Take One

After a majorly successful yet financially damaging shopping trip this morning, we spent our afternoon trekking to San Damiano.  The area is incredibly peaceful, and the church itself was humble and lovely.   Our walk to this spiritual haven was all downhill, so we knew we had a tough homeward walk ahead of us.  

While we walked around the area outside of the church, we ran into a couple I met at the market last weekend - Anita and Paul, visiting from England.  They informed us that the San Damiano Church holds a vespers service daily at 5:00.  Since it was just 4:15, we stuck around.  

Now in southeastern Ohio, vespers means that an allegedly talented choir sings religious, possibly Christmas music for 30-60 minutes.  But this vespers service was much more like mass than any kind of choral performance.  It was all men singing, but I wouldn't call them trained, exactly.  There were also biblical readings and a le

ngthy sermon.  I enjoyed the calm, Catholic atmosphere, and picking up little bits in Italian like "Go now in peace, to love and serve the Lord."  And since I'm not fluent, I was really able to take whatever I wanted from the sermon.  : )

Of course it was dark by the time we left, with that long walk ahead of us and all.  After trying to take a pitch-black, possibly haunted shortcut that didn't pan out, we headed back to the church to take the long, difficult hike home.  Walking through the parking lot, one departing SUV stopped.  The door opened, and a kindly, older man offered us a ride home.  He works with the brothers at the church (I think - my Italian isn't so great!), and he drove us all the way up to the piazza near our house.  We promptly caught the next bus up the hill, and we barely had to take a step in the cold night air to get home!  

So now we're warm and cozy, safe at home, and feeling pretty lucky to be living in such an amazing place.  More pictures are forthcoming.

ps - Tonight for dinner, I'm having cheese, wine, and pie.  That's right!  And while I type, Kim is putting together some homemade minestrone soup.  Unfortunately (or not, depending on your preferred meal of the day), the orange/yellow squash that we thought would make an excellent addition to the minestrone turned out to be a melon of some kind.  Oops.