Ego sum resurrectio et vita

Ciao tutti,

If you're wondering why I'm posting again so soon, it's because it's Easter and I have the time to do it. This gives me the chance of describing things more accurately and speaking a bit more about my feelings and thought strains instead of mainly retelling the things that happen to me. As I've already told you in my last post, Joost and Kim visited us this weekend. I was too tired and me-time-craved to spend much time with them on Saturday, but as of Saturday evening I was all right again. One of the reasons I was feeling better was because we were going to La Padellaccia. Big pizzas always make me happy! I wasn't able to finish my pizza completely though, which proved to me that I wasn't entirely well yet. After we had gone for one drink at the Johann Sebastian Bar I had trouble keeping my eyes open and couldn't wait to get into bed, even though I had slept a lot the night before.

So after another long night, I felt even better on Sunday morning. I was very happy about this, as it was Easter Sunday. We had a lovely breakfast prepared by Olaf (compliments to the chef!), which consisted of boiled eggs (obviously), heart-shaped fried eggs, strawberries on Dutch rusks (beschuit) and of course La Colomba. La Colomba is a typical Italian Easter cake which my students had recommended to me and which turned out to be lovely - in fact it's still lovely, since it was too big to finish yesterday morning and I've been eating slices of it ever since (including this very moment). That night we went out to Wasabi, the sushi aperitivo place and gorged on the nearly free food. Apparently, Joost and Kim are just as much sushi fanatics as Olaf is, so I'm pretty sure they enjoyed themselves a lot. The rest of the evening (9pm - 2am) was filled with rounds of Cafe International, as always... I won two out of the six rounds, but was beaten by Olaf who won three. *grrrr*.

Joost and Kim left early this morning and Olaf has gone to work, so I've got the day off again. I've finally decided that it's time to take up running again, because I'm getting too fat and now that the weather's getting better I can't wear layers to conceal that anymore. So, I went for a run and exercised a bit at home. In total, I worked out for about an hour and a half and intend to do this twice a week from now on - although I realise how easy it is to decide that on a day off when you have a lot of time on your hands... Well, vedremo!

There's one thing that happened this weekend which got me thinking a lot and which I would therefore like to discuss here. I joined Olaf, Joost and Kim late in the afternoon on Sunday as they were descending the Duomo. They were planning to go into the Duomo in order to see if they could see part of the Easter mass. Kim is a practising Christian and I hadn't been to a church mass for years and both of us were consequently quite excited by the prospect. We stayed in tourist area in the back of the church (tourists obviously weren't allowed in the space intended for religious worship during the mass) and were only going to stay for a bit, but I could tell Kim really wanted to attend the mass. I knew Olaf didn't want to and probably wanted to leave and I could tell Joost wasn't interested either. I think Kim was just too nice to say she really wanted to even though it was her valid choice to do so. Picking up on that vibe and being quite interested in the mass myself, I offered to go in with her and act as translator. I think this solution made everyone happy and I enjoyed the mass very much.

I'm not a Christian and definitely don't support the views and rules of the Roman Catholic Church, but I see a large distinction between the spiritual experience of a religion such as Christianity and the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is a secular organisation which has imposed rules based on man-made scientific theology and moral philosophy, rules I don't agree with. Religion, however, is about believing. It's about having the idea that there's a higher supernatural force guiding things and possibly looking over you. It's about finding something whether outside or inside yourself that supports, reassures and/or stimulates you. You don't believe based on any kind of proof but because you have a feeling or desire to do so. This makes a hierarchic organisation like the church completely incompatible with religious spirituality. The experience of mass is therefore different for everyone. It can be individual contact with the supernatural if you believe in a god, it can be the simple but so powerful group experience of sharing something, it can be a time and place for reflection and/or organising your thoughts or for relaxation or even sleep. It can be whatever you want or need. You don't have to take communion or pray if you don't want to or believe. And whereas you can't prove the existence of the divine, you can't disprove it either which makes it a valid choice to believe. I sometimes feel tempted to entertain the idea of the existence of something higher and I suppose I'm agnostic rather than atheist.

You can do all these things and have spiritual experiences anywhere you want but it's easier in a place of religious worship. A church is therefore just one of the places where it's easy to have this experience, but it could also be a mosque or Hindu temple. It doesn't matter, all these places are meant to stimulate contact with something higher and for reflection, be it of spiritual or any other kind. I suppose I could feel the same way I felt in that church on the streets, in the park, at home or even on an airplane but I usually just don't take the time to think about it. For me, churches are just the places that are the easiest to reach and the most familiar to me because I was raised in an originally Christian country and as part of an initially Catholic culture.

Unfortunately I can't share any of this with Olaf. His rejection of Catholic Christianity based on some of its views and rules is too rigid for me. The views I mean are obvious, they're the Church's views on homosexuality, the position of women, sexuality, marriage, abortion rights, contraception, tolerance towards other religions et cetera. And I obviously share his opinions, but I know too much about the origins of Christianity and have spent much time investigating it to judge it negatively as a whole and to dismiss it that quickly. Christianity, like every religion I know of, started out as a good thing. It's all about finding the good in the world when you don't feel good. It's about hope and believing in changes for the better. Even if you're not in trouble and don't desperately need to find the good, it's still a nice idea that you could. This is something I admire and therefore I can't convict Christianity as a whole, even if the history of the secular organisation claiming to teach and rule by its founders' laws has given us ample reason to condemn it. Surely, disagreeing with some of the rules and opinions of the church doesn't necessarily mean rejecting it completely. There are too many people finding comfort in its teachings and in just the idea of its existence to make it wholly bad. Most of those rules and opinions are more or less shared by the Italian government and that doesn't make me want to leave or attack the country. There are positive things to be found in Italy, as there are in Christianity. Fortunately, it doesn't matter that I can't share this with Olaf, as it is a personal opinion and if I ever find my religion that will be a personal spiritual experience as well!

And there's another reason I enjoyed this Easter mass a lot. I understood about 75 per cent of what was said, even though most of the mass was in Italian and only some of the hymns were in Latin. Obviously Latin shouldn't have been a problem for me, although church Latin is quite different from the Latin I used to study, but I was quite proud of being able to understand the speeches and readings in Italian. I realise that church language is obviously very slow and repetitive because it's meant for the masses and that the hymns are repetitive because they are meant to be sung all together, but it still made me feel good about my level of Italian!!!

Anyway, ci vediamo, Fe