Dear friends and family,

I've felt myself growing more inward since this sabbatical has entered its last month. I expect that this will be my last newsy email for a while. I may not write again except perhaps to send a brief Christmas greeting until I'm by myself again after New Years in Spain, where I'll spend the last 12 days of this exceptional sabbatical leave.

Robin and I are in Siena for a few days, having left Venice and then Florence. Friday we rendezvous with the kids in Prague and will be there for Christmas.

A bit of catching up, then an Advent thought or two.

Friendly exchanges

In our last few days in Venice, Robin and I felt like we'd rubbed off a layer of the shiny patina that makes tourists so glaringly obvious. At a couple of places we'd returned to a second or third time for cappuccinos or spritzes, they'd started to recognize us and charged us less than when we'd gone in for the first time. At one place the price for 2 cappuccinos dropped from 5 euros to 3. And on one of our last days, while walking through the warren of streets, we passed a slow-moving old man; Robin and he exchanged smiles. Soon we were 30 yards or so ahead of him, had unwittingly just missed a turn, and were headed into a cul de sac dead ending at the Grand Canal. A voice called to us from behind--"No no no no!" We turned and saw the old man beckoning, telling us that the way we were headed led only to the water. Staying more than a few days in one place does make it more of a friend, and we have wanted to be friends to the places we've been.

Still, unless you're spending months (at least) in a place, you're a tourist nonetheless, and as tourists, we do rely on that chipper Rick Steves. I think it was in his Venice book that I came across a phrase that could describe much of the city. In his floor-plan of the Accademia museum, a large off-limits section is simply labeled "Elegant Decay." A similar label could be written over the city as a whole, whether seen from a waterbus, the walkways and piazzas, or a gondola (a trip we took on Robin's birthday--and no, Lilly won't be paying for that one). It's definitely elegant, and often a bit shabby in the way that parts of pre-Katrina New Orleans near the French Quarter were. Only medievally so.

Venice does have its glorious corners. Robin and I were in the Basilica di San Marco, in the museum, which gains you access to the walkways high in the back and on part of the side. The lights were shining as they do for an hour each day on the golden mosaics that are the ceilings, and in one of the chapels below and around a corner, out of sight, a priest was leading Mass in his timeless monotone. The small congregation, which sounded like they were all women, recited their antiphonal responses right on cue, as if having done so their whole lives long. We stood and listened for a long long time.

Being in these Italian churches, first in Venice and Ravenna, then in Florence and now Siena, I'm often struck by how they seem to keep upping the ante on images of Mary and Jesus and saints and angels and prophets and God, too, on and on and on. After having spent so much time in stately mosques without any images of God or people--and after having listened anew to liturgies that happen to be Anglican but could be from most any other Christian communion--it's no surprise that Muslims think Christians went way overboard and lost the simplicity of a basic monotheism. Christianity is confusing. And, truth be told, sometimes it's simply confused. But still there's something...

Art and artists, Christianity and Islam

Next we spent a few days in Florence, a city of bicycles and vespas and traffic that stops for nothing. Quite a change from Venice, where the only way you can get hit by a bus is if you're treading water. If Florence can be summed up in one image it might be the woman in a mink coat who passed us on her bike.

Robin and I spent hours in the Uffizi Galleries (go during the week in December and there's no line at all). Years ago I would have walked right by the Giottos and other 13th- and 14th-century paintings, but they hold a special mute mystery for me now. I'm still not quite sure what that says, but I'm pondering it. The late medieval period was the time when paintings started to get more portrait-like, but they still have a stylized, timeless quality.

While in Istanbul I read Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red. It's a novel with a bit of a maguffin about a murder mystery, but most of it has to do with a philosophical dispute about painting--Ottoman miniaturists (in the 16th century, I think it was) debating whether art should seek to portray individuals in a recognizable way as "the Venetians" were doing at the time, or whether paintings (and painters) should seek to show the essences of their subjects, as was the Ottoman tradition. I won't go into more explanation than that, but I'm guessing that the 13th/14th centuries were when a version of that same struggle was going on in Western painting.

In the Uffizi we saw several Madonna-and-child paintings (15th century and later) in which Jesus is holding a colorful bird, clearly not a dove. The brief explanatory notes and audioguide said nothing about it, but I wonder if there's some Islamic influence there. The Qur'an contains a story in which young Jesus makes or takes a clay bird and breathes life into it, transforming it from a clay object into a feathered, breathing, singing bird. The Islamic world and Christian world (forgive the shorthand) certainly had a lot of contact with each other throughout those centuries. I assume stories flowed back and forth as much as trade did.

There also seem to be exhibits about Leonardo da Vinci everywhere this year--in Istanbul, in Venice, in Florence--about his inventions, his art, his genius. One exhibit in the Uffizi went on and on about his fascination with design--domes, floral patterns, and the like--without any recognition that he lived at a building point on the high arc of Islamic culture, when much of the same kind of interest was flourishing among Muslims artists and architects. I can't imagine that Leonardo was uninfluenced by that, again, especially since so much of the commercial exchange between the Ottoman empire and western Europe came through cities in which Leonardo worked. We in the West are so acculturated to singing the praises of European accomplishments in art and science--many of which are indeed truly remarkable, da Vinci's being a prime example--but often at the expense of our having even an awareness of the high culture of Islam. It was sad to see that the Uffizi's tribute to Leonardo bore no mention of the larger Mediterranean context in which he lived and worked.

Christianity and Islam, part 2:Some thoughts on Advent

I mentioned several emails ago how fortunate I was to have been in Istanbul during Ramadan. It was a great blessing, and I will be forever grateful to so many people, both at home and in that amazing city, for the things that that time opened up for me. I also need to say how deeply moving it is now to be able to reflect on that experience in the context of Advent and (soon) Christmas. Robin and I have been to two Lessons and Carols services in Anglican churches, one in Venice and the other in Florence. The latter was in an intimate old church, the air fragrant with incense and the low ceilings darkened by years and years of its accumulation. Maybe it's simply being away from home and friends and our community that we miss so much, but I think it also has to do with having been a visitor in a Muslim country for two months--something is giving the familiar hymns and readings a new emotional power for me this year.

Islam is so insistent that there's grave danger in associating anything with God, and thus the parting of ways with Christianity over the idea that Jesus is/was the son of God (whatever that means), or calling Jesus Lord (a title that Islam reserves for God alone, but also a phrase that's conventionally identified as the basic Christian statement of faith). It seems to me that Islam is a very philosophical religion, and many Muslims insist that it's the most rational one. That may well be true, theologically. The more I hear Christian readings and hymnody in light of what I've learned about Islam, the more I'm convinced that Christianity is not a rational religion. The ancient councils like Nicea that produced the famous creeds tried to make it one and operated as if it were, though it stretches credulity and intellectual integrity to try to explain the Trinity in any detailed way. No, it seems to me, now more than ever: Christian language is the language of art rather than of science, of poetry and not of logic.

Did God really become man (become human), as we so easily say at Christmas? If that leads to arguments about the rationality of it all, then frankly I don't care. In comparison with Islam, it seems to me, Christianity is inherently subjective, which must be for Muslims a source of everlasting confusion and frustration. But there's something deeply moving about the ... what--metaphor? poetic image? inspiration?--of the God and essence of all creation being sought, found, and adored in an infant, in the child of promise in whom "the hopes and fears of all the years are met," that the response it calls forth, in me at least, gives it the substance of truth. It all builds from there, of course--that God, whatever he or she or that is, knows us so intimately as to know the joys and sufferings of the lives we live, and that there is indeed something at least in essence so exceptional in our kind as to touch on being divine. Or maybe it's that even with all the stupid and bad things we're capable of (and do), the gap between us and the ultimate for which we yearn is not unbridgeable. Either one. Yes, some of that leads to confused thinking when we try to make the whole thing into some kind of science, but the birth of a Christ child is the seed from which it all sprouts, the cornerstone on which it's all built, the germ of the idea, the source of the whole inspiration, the who in the big kahuna (whatever, take your pick). There's time later to deal with Jesus as a person, with his ministry, his teaching, his own great compassion and all the other themes and ideas that bring Christianity from infancy to some kind of adulthood. But for this season, too often swamped in other things, the birth is indeed the focus and we're all gathered around it like poor shepherds and rich kings, unaware of our own faces, slack-jawed and tear-brimmed in the gift and wonder of it all.

(It occurs to me, now and in writing some of my previous emails, that for those of you from church who are reading these musings, I'll have absolutely nothing new to say to you after I get back!)

OK, enough for now. One thing that traveling at this time of year brings home for Robin and me is how much of Advent and Christmas is being with our friends and families. We're so used to sharing this month with our church community that being away is a bit like the phantom itch that amputees are said to feel.

Know that we do miss all of you, whether from church or from other circles and years of our lives. We think of you more than you may know, and we miss you all. Some of you we will see within weeks, some we look forward to reuniting with at times we can only guess at further down the road. Blessings to you all, now and in these coming days and months.

Love,