He is one of my favorite Saints, and the Prayer of St. Francis is one of my favorite prayers of all time. I have very special memories of visiting Assisi in College, the beautiful Basilica di San Francesco, San Damiano, "storming" the castle ruins at night, and spending an afternoon by myself walking around the city in search of a statue of St. Francis. I finally found the one pictured in the photo and drew the pencil drawing above. The watercolor sketch postcard was from another afternoon when Robbie, Matt Garrison, Miriam and I met a dog, "Buddy" or "Boudier" who started to follow us around. At one point he was across the road from us and we were trying to get him to come, so we were yelling,"Come here! Come, Buddy!" but he didn't budge. Finally, I had what I thought was a great insight- this dog didn't know English, he only knew Italian! We were just thrilled when we called out, "Vieni qui!" instead and he came running up! :) I will never forget the peaceful beauty of that little town, which was so in keeping with the spirit of St. Francis. We were lucky to see it that year, as it was ravaged by an earthquake a year or two later and had to be rebuilt I believe... I hope I can bring my children there some day!! That would be amazing. Meanwhile, I have the prayer of St. Francis laminated on a page with my "shower prayers" that I say daily, and I hope to read the kids some of the books we have about him later this afternoon. Oh, and when the kids were younger, we had 3 videos of a series called "Francesco's Friendly World" They LOVED them!! I'll bet Sammy might enjoy it too...
2 comments:
Saint Francis is one of my very favorite saints too! How wonderful it was, I'm sure, to visit Assisi! When were you there?
When I was in college, I spent some time in Europe. I had the chance to go to both Fatima and to Assisi but didn't know as much as I know now. Oh, how I kick myself for not going to both!!
Kim, it was in college for me too- at the University of Dallas they have a "Rome Program" where they have a campus just outside of ROme and they make it financially feasible so that pretty much all the sophomores are able to go there for a semester- half in Fall and half in Spring. There was lots of travel time built in. I have some of the most wonderful memories from that semester abroad, and was lucky enough to be able to visit not only Assisi but Fatima and Lourdes as well! I'll never forget those experiences. Did you go to Madjugorje (sp?)? I've seen you have several posts on that subject...
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