Where you are and where you would like to be

The Duomo is the center of Florence. Except in a few places where the streets are close together, you can see the dome from just about anywhere. The Church of Santa Maria dei Fiori, St. Mary of the Flowers, is your reference point, with the Campanile, or Bell Tower right beside it. They tell you where you are and how to find where you want to be.

I was wakened this morning by the bells. It was a little before seven, and one of the myriad of churches in the neighborhood was summoning the faithful to early mass. What enthralls me is that these bells spill their beauty and disturb the sleep of the faithful and unfaithful alike. Sundays are the best, with bells going off from every direction all morning long. I wonder how many churches there are within half a mile of us. I imagine a dozen would be a conservative guess. They don't coordinate their bells. They just ring them when it is time to go to church and again at the moment of consecration and some, I suspect, to announce that worship is finished.

As far as I'm concerned, the bells don't need a reason. They are beyond reason. They break into my consciousness and call me to attention. Of course, because I am a Christian and a clergy type at that, they carry with their wild ringing not only the narrative that defines us...stories of creation, incarnation, forgiveness, salvation...but kinship with all the people who have listened to their ringing for all the centuries that people have lived and worshiped here.

There is a church next door to our flat, Santa Felicita. We heard its bells ringing from the little wine bar we like to stop at late in the afternoon. From the outside it is a plain jane parish church. Flat stucco with steps where kids sit and smoke. But then I learned that it was founded in the third century by Syrian Christians. Inside, not only is it exquisite, but it has what may be my favorite painting of the Annunciation I have found so far.



It is a quatroccento fresco painted by Pontormo. The angel and Mary flank the altar. What is fascinating me as much as how each artist has chosen to paint each of the characters is how he has chosen to deal with the space between them. These figures are soft and flowing as if painted in water color. Mary is in motion, as if the greeting of the angel has caused her to pause and turn just as she steps up to go indoors from the garden. There is none of the usual paraphernalia...no candlestick, no lily, no book...just an angel on the other side of the open space. And this angel floats. We don't see his eyes because his head is turned away. He has blond curls and a high forehead. This is not a confrontational angel. I imagine he announced his presence with little more than a whisper. It would be enough.

We know how the story will go. We know that this girl who is barely beyond childhood will say yes. We know she doesn't have time to think it over. In this painting she is wide open. I'm not sure the question has been asked. It is a moment in time interpreted by someone who had to have been touched by that moment, who must have felt the immediate presence of that holy moment in the time it took him to paint the scene. I wonder how long it took. I wonder how his life was touched by it. I cannot imagine that he could have gone home to supper untouched by the grace and generosity of it. I cannot imagine that he was not tinged by its holiness.

There is lots of paradox in this city. I don't know what to do about the beggars, who we are told are pros taking advantage of tourists. Thank God I haven't had a Gypsy mother throw her baby at me, but I am told it is done so they can grab your purse. Old women kneel in the street with scarves over their heads and their faces on the pavement. Young African men sell knock-off designer bags and scatter when a pair of caribinieri appear. The scarf that is thirty euros in a main market is three off the beaten path. I'm not under the illusion that everything is made holy by the presence of the churches or the profligacy of the bells or the legacy of faith that built this city. And, yes, the legacy of power and greed. The Medicis are everywhere as well.

But still the Duomo rises over all of it, an architectural incarnation of faith and human intelligence, which is of course a gift from God, which can be used for good or for evil. And still the bells ring and some of us accept their gift in a full sense of mystery and gratitude. For some of us, at least, they are as profound a call as the sound of an angel whispering your name.