SUNDAY, EIGHTEENTH WEEK
I am sitting on a balcony at Viganj looking at the cypresses shading the restless Dalmatian Sea. One hundred yards to the right there is a medieval church. The bells ring out and I go to mass in Serbo-Croat.
The words I do not understand at all, no matter, the pattern, the form and the essence are the same. I can read the words of the Gospel on Universalis in English and during the long sermon they sink in. It is the feeding of the five-thousand.
The words, many words, float by lost in non-translation. The mind wonders and is still.
MONDAY
We ride across the sun-setting bay to Korčula: this is a medieval walled city and one passes under the winged lion of Venice to enter. Here are stone streets with arched windows reminiscent of the mother city. It is nearly dusk and I come in to the end of Mass, a few old ladies dotted in the aisles, just as the host is raised. Then I climb the belfry and see the sun fall into the sea, the bells of eight o’clock thundering in my ear.
Chesterton:
“This sense of the great gratitude and the sublime dependence was not a phase or even a sentiment, it is the whole point that this was the very look of reality.”
Is a sunset just a beautiful view, or the sun of science, of a rotating earth and the physical laws of the universe or is it an expression, in garish terms, of a sublime dependence on the immediacy of a God given creation.
TUESDAY
It is eight o’clock, again the bells are peeling out the hour. I am tired. After a thirty year break I have tried wind surfing. The young fly across the water like angels, turning, swooping in and flying out again. The old like me falter, glide a few feet and fall.
WEDNESDAY: FEAST OF THE TRANSFIGURATION
We went in Bob’s little boat up the sound from Korčula, its medieval walls fading. The light was brilliant, blending on hill and water. We were grateful when passing hills soothed the eye from the sun’s bright rays. In a quiet village round a bay an old man opened the locked village church for us.
The sun shone in a fierce narrow beam down the length of the dusty aisle.
“There in their presence he was transfigured: his face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as light.” (Matthew 17:1-9)
THURSDAY
We went to the island Melijd where two lakes shone a brilliant blue. In the middle of the larger was a monastery. Monasteries which now are closed and half-ruined the haunt of hot tourists are sad things but in the beauty of the spot an echo remains of the divine. I sat in a quiet corner and tried to sleep, every few moments a new group of people chatter, stare, and walk out. There are terraces and Roman ruins to climb, a café to drink in, the lake to swim in. It is not so bad but the heat is crushing, extinguishing all thought.
FRIDAY
The reading today is from the minor prophet Nahum, he writes in a vivid style about the fall of empire:
“Woe to the city cloaked in blood, full of lies, stuffed with bounty, whose plunderings know no end … Nineveh is a ruin. Could anyone pity her? Where can I find anyone to comfort her?” (Nahum 2:1 3; 3:1, 6-7)
Nineveh is Mosul where now the Christian Assyrians are being held and being martyred.
I went years ago to his tomb at Alqosh in northern Iraq. It is sadly dilapidated. It is a strange echo from the past, standing in a place like that is an experience you cannot forget. In a narrow side street in Korčula is the museum of icons where few people visit attached to small gem of a church. The icons stare out in silent witness.
SATURDAY
We learnt today that our beloved dog William who gave only love and loyalty had to be put down. I was anguished that I could not be with him at the end in Market Rasen. The visit to a broiling Dubrovnik besieged by tourists seemed as barren as dust with the news, but we were on our way now to Medjugorje, turned back at the rather grim Bosnian border because we had no green card. We persevered the next day.