As I perused the written and photographic materials for my gifted trip of a lifetime, my imagination was ignited when I saw the ariel image of an extensive, hedged driveway. All of a sudden my dream had focused from the macro of being in Italy, to the micro of walking of walking this massive pathway.
On my seventh day at the Tenuta Bichi Borghesi estate I finally stepped into the over one hundred and fifty meters of expertly trimmed hedge avenue.
I am not sure why it took me so long! Perhaps, in the deep recesses of my heart, I was afraid that my desires had built up this dream, beyond what it would be like, to wander this private oasis. Perhaps I was simply postponing this personal gift, so as to extend that anticipation. Or, perhaps, I was just too busy taking in all of the preliminary events and pleasures of the estate, it’s fruits, it’s people.
So, on that hot afternoon, I took my first steps into the cool avenue, protected from the glare of the sun.
And I felt it …
bubbling up inside of me,
causing goose bumps to form on my humid skin,
causing my heart to flutter,
causing my legs, my feet, to want to skip,
like a child, inhibited by societies norms and expectations.
Child-like joy.
I spent fifteen minutes walking, skipping, sitting on a marble bench, snapping photos and pausing to breath in the fresh, heady scent of the air, the dirt, the greenery.
I reached the end to find an enormous dual swinging metal gate, that must have been ten feet tall. I felt it’s cool, smooth rungs, and wondered at the hands that formed it with the heat of fire, heavy, pounding tools, and workmanship and skill rarely seen today.
On my return, to where I began, I walked slowly, reverently, uttering only words of thanks for all that I was able to see, to hear, to smell, taste and touch on my gifted opportunity to wander.
Praise makes holy, hallowed, everything in it’s presence.
It was a pilgrimage of praise, on holy (hallowed) ground.
Hallowed by thy Name
“There’s something in the sound of the word hallow;
A haunting sense of everything we’ve lost
Amidst the trite, the trivial, the shallow,
Where nothing lingers, nothing seems to last.
But Hallowed, summons up our fear and wonder,
And summons us to stand on holy ground.
To sense the mystery that stands just under
Familiar things we’ll never understand.
Hallowed be thy name: the name unspoken,
The name from which all other names arise,
The name that heals the sick and binds the broken,
Whose living glory calls the dead to rise.
You make this prayer my rising and my rest
That I might bless the name by which I’m blessed.”
Malcolm Guite
itsawonderfilledlife 