Feeling whole.

I have yet to say much about Italy. I need to. As I watch Britney and Heather and Joe and everybody around me on this study abroad, I can see Italy making impressions on them. Joe gets all worked up about Bernini. Britney covers herself in stone shavings and clay every single day, finding a sort of comfort in working on something deeply enough that she no longer cares about how dirty or uncomfortable she may be. Heather seems like sometimes she is barely scraping by, but she handles it such grace that I can't help but love watching everything fall apart on her. Haha. Sorry Heather....

Italy is...moments....all strung together into a tapestry more ornate than any I have ever seen. It is bright morning light streaming through pale blue shutters. Hundreds of swallows circling freely overhead in deep blue dusk. Cobblestones. Terra cotta. The crunch of gravel underneath leather sandals. The stone city wall as the sun sets over cypress trees. Italy is the music of guitars and accordions drifting up the hill through our open bedroom windows. Katy flitting around my room singing old jazz and Portuguese lullabies. Three course meals and late night roommate snacks of Nutella and toast. Clotheslines. Baggy jeans. One euro cappuccino. Getting to smile at the same old man and his dog during each morning run through the park. Italy is...comparing sketches instead of photographs. Voices blending flawlessly in the studio early Sunday morning. Plastic chairs grouped together on the fifth terrace. Italy is linen dresses twirling in the wind outside shop windows. Ancient Italian architecture. Layers of stone plaster, and marble. Fifteen hours of sunlight. Concerts in the piazza with gelato and a long journey home uphill. Italy is....mostly moments, which can't be captured in photos even though we desperately try.

Cortona may be the most beautiful place I ever visit. But I still miss home, and I love that (and hate it...). There is something about home that I have been trying to figure out -why is there "no place like home?" What is so desirable about finding a place of home?

I think that home is a feeling of security. And I don't have to be home to feel it - I need only feel safe. But there is a intricate depth to that safety. Maybe home for me is the last place I felt wholly loved. It is kind of like when a girl feels beautiful. Every girl can remember the last time she felt beautiful, if you ask her. And if she hasn't felt it recently enough it is almost like something is missing in her. Not something she can't live without, but something. That's like home.

I think we need the feeling of home at constant intervals or else we get drained. And no matter how wonderful a place it is, or how happy we are there, we still need the home fix. Home is a comfortable simplicity. Simplicity! That's it. And rest. And can you really rest unless you feel wholly loved? Well dang. That right there has been a major theme of my summer- finding a place of rest, and finding out what I need to believe about God, the world, and myself in order to find that rest. Feeling whole. Maybe not even being whole...because as Paige pointed out to me today, maybe we will never be whole here. But I think we can feel it...I think.