The View from the Top of the World

This place, Firenze (as the locals say, Florence to you), is the cradle of the Renaissance. During its heyday, it was considered the center of the world to those thinkers and wonderers who blazed new trails with their discoveries and innovations. Today we had the chance to climb to the top of the famous Duomo and look across the whole city. It was marvelous. But before I get to that, let me describe, inadequately but to the best of my ability, how fundamentally amazing il Duomo actually is. I don't know what the original façade looked like, but sometime in the Romantic Era (sorry, that's just how I think about history—I think our audio tour said around 1860), a new façade of white, green, and pink marble was added, with attention to preserving the Renaissance spirit of il Duomo. The façade is beautiful; elegant in the extreme, stretching out across the square like it owns the place (which it totally does). The sprawling basilica was actually designed and built before the Renaissance began, but left unfinished. Though the fourteenth century architects who designed the chiesa didn't have the skills to build a dome, they just knew, the way you sometimes know, that someday, somebody would. Il Duomo was actually a labor of love over generations, the place where, from the beginning, it was expected that people would gather to meet and to worship and learn and grow. Some people say, in fact, that it was the competition to create the bronze doors of the baptistery, just across from Il Duomo in the late fourteenth century, that really kicked the Renaissance off. Of course, the short version of the story is that Ghiberti beat out Brunelleschi in that completion, freeing Brunelleschi up to work on the majestic dome.

However you look at it, the building of this monumental chiesa brought together Italy's best minds and artists. And today, we climbed to the top of it. Let me tell you, that climb is no laughing matter. Four hundred sixty three butt-busting steps through the dark, winding tunnels fixed within the inner walls of the church gave me the twin thrills of claustrophobia and vertigo. Even lighted with small bare bulbs, it was dark. The walls were lined with graffiti going back fifty years. It was strange and sort of sad to compare the scribbled names of all these people who decided to leave their mark on the world in black sharpie, to the Renaissance masters, who left their mark in fine marble, paint and architecture. Of so many who live on the earth, how few really change it and make it a better, more uplifting place for the rest of us? The journey was long, with nothing but glimpses through tiny, recessed windows through the thick walls for probably thirty minutes. There was one exhilarating interlude, as we stepped out onto the one-foot-wide balcony that overlooked the entire church from the inside of the dome, which gave us the opportunity to get a good look at the stunning frescoes (they're not the Sistine chapel or anything, but those last judgment scenes have a fiery power of their own, what with freakish demons and fiery dragons and naked people being sodomized by fire-tipped sticks. I'm just going to assume that the Duomo ceiling did its job and kept those Florentines (even if they were a bit heretical from time to time) in line. But after our break, it was back into the wall-space to climb some more. When we finally emerged into a glorious gust of fresh air and daylight, it was like seeing the sun for the first time.

The world is a different place when viewed from above. It's easy to see the way everything works together; how the puzzle pieces fit. I think this trip is a little bit like that for me. When I'm entrenched in the daily routines of our life, I sometimes lose perspective, and can't quite see the point of rituals like books and baths and meals together and piano practice. They just happen, and sometimes I'm a miserable grouch all the way through them. But from a distance, I can see a little bit better how all the little things make up the really lovely tapestry of our lives. Our family sometimes seems imperfect from the inside. There are children who think obedience is a great idea for everyone else, meals of subpar quality consumed at a table of subpar size, appointments not written down and therefore forgotten, homework forgotten or sometimes just ignored or by the mother (yup, I knew it was there, I just didn't want to supervise it), quarrels with Aaron over any detail of any schedule (however loosely observed) that might get modified, because I'm just like that, or better yet, another battle in the unwinnable war to get each other to see the world in exactly the same colors. But you know what? Those colors are part of our own special tapestry, different from any other tapestry out there. And it's our job to make it into the best tapestry it can be!

Okay, I think we can agree that this post is a little rambly. Sorry about that. I always seem to get distracted by the moral of the story. But I have to say, Florence is a beautiful city, and three days weren't quite enough to do it justice. Almost, but not quite. Over and out.