A friend and I were talking the other day about what the greatest theme or lesson was that we had learned from a recent trip to Italy. I could probably ramble about practical lessons like dividing a check quickly, converting dirhams to dollars to euros, to drinking my first taste of wine and trying on the shoes of my 21st year of life, but the overwhelming sentiment that I feel has been the discovery of freedom. This isn’t the flippant and sometimes radical freedom of escape from authority or responsibility, but rather the freedom that’s described in the above quote. I feel like this experience so far, Morocco, Italy, wherever, has been an exercise in discovering the freedom of self.
Last week I had to opportunity to travel to Italy for ten days to spend spring vacation with 4 people that I only met a couple of months ago. We bunkered down in hostels, woke up entirely too early to walk to mass at the Vatican and braved long long lines full of fanny packs and guide-maps but what we were met with was beyond what I could have dreamed for those ten days. We found a blessing by the Pope, the glean of paint from paintings we had only read about in textbooks, corners and vistas and gelato that took your breath away.
It was exhilarating, and I could ramble on and on about the glorious details of it all, but the ultimate theme that I took from it all was an intoxicating breath of freedom. Maybe it was our small, unimposing group of five ragged American kids giving ourselves a tour of Pompeii with terribly inaccurate Italian-English translations, contrasted with the countless groups of school children and white-haired retirees filing past in lines donning headsets. Maybe it was the sense of panic that a handful of us felt when we realized that we had basked too long in the Mediterranean sun and were, in fact, stranded on the exotic Island of Capri.
Regardless, I feel that this experience showed me how to dance in freedom- not only the freedom of exploration or age- but the freedom that my faith allots me and in turn I feel that I have been refined by this discovery.
“For Freedom Christ has set us free”- Galatians 5:1
