Bread and Salami, Bread and Cheese, No Bread

My first two visits to Italy in 1992 and 1993 were days rich with stories and experiences. Twenty years later, as I settle in to living here, it's fun when something recalls one of those earlier moments. There was one on one of my last days of Italian school when a funny little word came up, a word with which I had a history: etto.

In the spring of 1993, when I was alleged to be studying philosophy at University College Galway, we had almost a month off around Easter. So, naturally, we Americans all strapped on our backpacks, got on the boat at Rosslare, arrived the next morning in Cherbourg, and wandered into the Continent. My group was three when we started; me, this girl Beth, and this kid Travis who was a student at Marquette. I have no idea what happened to him, but I would be curious to know. Beth got sick of us after a few days and went her way. At one point another girl joined us, Christine of Minnesota, whom we met--if I remember rightly--because I saw her brushing her teeth in the street in Munich and thought that made someone interesting. She was charming and liked to drink strawberry milk, but she also ditched us after a little while.

Towards the end of our wanderings, Travis and I found ourselves in Italy. One day he announced that, being in Italy, he would like to have some Provolone cheese. It was one of his favorite cheeses, he said. We were somewhere, I don't remember where, when we came across a cheese shop. Neither of us, however, spoke any Italian. How were we to know how to ask for some cheese? Travis, I know not how, thought he knew how to ask for a little bit of something. You asked for an etto. So that's what he was going to do, go into the cheese shop and ask for an etto of Provolone.

Now I'm sure the formaggiaio at the cheese stop spent much of his life being asked for an etto. It's short for ettogrammo, meaning 100 grams. It's a common enough word in the realm of food shopping. But it's not the kind of word you learn in language class. As my mother says, after years and years of foreign language study, when you can interpret poetry and discourse on the classics of its literature, you still won't know how to buy a pork chop.

Once you've studied Italian a little bit, it's easy to see right away that etto is how it would render the prefix we have in English as hecta-, from the Greek hekaton, a hundred. Although I don't know why anyone would bother leaving the house to buy 100 grams of cheese, unless virgin elves had made it out of unicorn milk or something. On the other hand, I guess I've seen people buy quarter-pounds of things at the deli counter. That would be just a little more than 100 grams. But still, it seems pretty measly.

Tuscan Pecorino, € 2.55 for an etto. Pricey!

Anyway, all of these etymological reflections were unavailable to Travis and me that day. Neither of us had any idea what an etto was, but he was certain that it was how you asked for a little bit of something. And he was right, more or less. So he went into the cheese shop. I must have gone to do some other errand, because I missed his encounter with the formaggiaio. I don't know what happened in there, but I know this: he did not succeed in getting his etto. He emerged with something much larger. It had to be a kilogram at the very least. Or as they would say here, a chilogrammo, because they don't have the letter 'k.'

So there we were, stuck with this big hunk of Provolone cheese, which was very good, by the way. So we ate it over the next couple of days, buying loaves of bread wherever we were and making sandwiches. Now in Italy it's easy enough to find and buy a loaf of bread. But you have to know the critical difference, obvious to Italians but somewhat lost on us at the time, between the sort of place that sells loaves of bread and the sort of place that only sells bread already made into more complex things like sandwiches.

So it became one of the famous quotes of the trip when we approached some business or other trying to buy bread so that we could work on our block of Provolone. The man looked at us like we were crazy, and, as he gestured toward his array of panini, he said, in English,

"Bread and salami, bread and cheese, no bread!"

Following the Gospel

At supper two friars were discussing the ministry of being guardian of a house. One of them had been a guardian before and the other not.

The one who had never been a guardian said, "It must be great! You can say to one friar 'go' and he goes, and to another 'do this' and he does it." (Cf. Matthew 8:9, Luke 7:8)

The one who had been a guardian said, "Well, you're almost right, but for a small change in point of view. It's more like you say to one friar, 'why did you go there?' and to another, 'why did you do that?'"

Most In Need Of Thy Mercy

Lex orandi, lex credendi. The law of praying is the law of believing. So goes the old Christian axiom on the relation between faith and prayer. One of the truths that comes from this rule is that we can examine our prayer and discover what we believe. Most interesting to me, on a personal level, is to notice in prayer how my sense of God and of faith has changed over time. I think, for example, of how my punctuation of the Act of Contrition has shifted over time. Today I'm also thinking of the 'Fatima prayer.'

During the months of May and October here at the general curia, the common meditation period between vespers and supper is given to the rosary. It seems to be the custom here to use the prayer at the end of the decades: O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of Thy mercy. Amen. Of course here we say it in Italian: Gesù mio, perdona le nostre colpe, preservaci dal fuoco dell'inferno, porta in cielo tutte le anime, specialmente le più bisognose della tua misericordia. Amen.

I remember encountering this prayer for the first time when I was a catechumen and I went to a rosary at the parish where I was going to be baptized. It wasn't, however, present in the little booklet from which I first learned to pray the rosary, and so I've never really adopted its use. Besides, I'll admit it, when I was younger  it seemed to me a little patronizing the part about the souls in most need of Jesus' mercy. Here we were, righteous rosary-saying folks (and we all know that praying the rosary is one of the marks of an extra-good Catholic) praying for those poor souls in most need of mercy.

Over time, though, I've come to realize that it's not that way at all. Why? Because when I pray for Jesus' mercy on the souls most in need of it, I'm praying for myself. That's me, Jesus, the soul most in need of thy mercy. Even if someday I get to the point where my sins aren't as objectively grave as some of my brother and sister sinners in this world, I will be still a worse sinner because I persist in my sins and spiritual laziness even with everything God has given me.

So I've decided that I'm happy to say the prayer. And I'm grateful for everyone else in the world praying it for me and my fellow souls most in need of Jesus' mercy.

Cubicle

I appreciated St. Ambrose in the Office of Readings today, from his treatise on Cain and Abel, as he explicates the Lord's teaching on prayer from Matthew 6:6: "But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret."

Sed intellege non cubiculum conclusum parietibus, quo tua membra claudantur, sed cubiculum quod in te est, in quo includuntur cogitationes tuae, in quo versantur sensus tui. Hoc orationes tuae cubiculum ubique tecum est, et ubique secretum est, cuius arbiter nullus est nisi solus Deus.

"But [by this 'inner room'] do not understand a cubicle bounded by walls in which your body can be enclosed, but the cubicle which is inside you, in which your thoughts are kept and your feelings turn over. This is the cubicle of your prayer. It is with you everywhere, and everywhere it is a secret. In it there is no one to judge you but God."

It's a pity that 'cubicle' in English is such an impoverished word, conjuring up images of drudgery, claustrophobia, and conformity. Because of the way we use it, it's easy to think that it comes from the word 'cube.' In fact, 'cubicle' derives from the Latin verb 'cubo, cubare,' to lie down. The cubicle is the little room where you lie down, your bedroom.

The place of prayer is an inner place, a space in which our spirit can 'lie down' and relax, because no judge but God has any access. Prayer, and indeed any of our attempts to relate our person to another personality, whether divine or human, depend on our awareness and cultivation of this space, of our inner cubicle. If we have forgotten about it or neglected it, we will not experience ourselves as a being separate enough from others in order to relate to them as a distinct person ourselves. Our relationships, including our prayer, become fawning, aggressive, or unchaste because we have ceased to be a self in relationship but only a consciousness reacting to another as another object.

By cultivating our awareness of our own inner cubicle, and the life of relaxation in it we call prayer, we also practice our mindfulness that  the core of the other is also an inner cubicle. This is the root of genuine prayer on the one hand, and of charity and chastity in our human relationships on the other: the awareness of ourselves and each other person as rooted in an irreducible mystery to which only God has access.

Some Thoughts On Italian Cuisine

Over the course of my religious life, during some spells I've had to cook and at other times not. For the most part, even though one always faces with the friars the challenge of a diverse group, I've enjoyed cooking for them. It was a bit of a shock when I first started cooking for friars; what little I know of cooking I had learned during the period between my two times in religious life, when I was either preparing things just for myself or cooking at work in the group home. The folks who lived there, apart from being predictable and somewhat easy to please, were also non-verbal and so delivered few comments.

Over the last few months of living in Italy I've come to notice certain items of wisdom in the culture of preparing and eating meals here, at least with reference to my own experience of cooking for friars. In Italy, of course, one eats well. It has to be admitted that they just have a healthier food culture than we do in the States; lots of fruit and vegetables, a better sense of portion control, etc. Lots of everyday things are just always very good. It also has to be said that they do lack a sense of when a little heat and flavor from some hot sauce or pepper would do wonders, but thanks be to God I live with Indians who feel the same way and usually have some remedy at hand.

First, this business here of having the main meal in the middle of the day. I think of all the afternoons I've spent preparing dinner in a friary. How would those hours and those meals had been different if, instead of the afternoon, I had been cooking in the morning when the mind is sharper and the spirit more optimistic? Perhaps the meals would have turned out better or healthier, more sensible. Just a thought.

Second, the meal structure they have here of the first and second plate. I've cooked pasta for the brothers many times. It's easy, it's a crowd-pleaser, and leftovers tend to get eaten. The only stressful thing is the timing. I can see myself outside the door of a friary chapel listening for just the right moment during vespers when I should run back into the kitchen and put the pasta in the water such that it might be done, sauced, and on the table right when the brothers arrive. In itself that's easy enough. But when you're trying to look after the timing of other stuff in the same moment, the resting and carving of some meat or other for instance, that's when it gets crazy. What happens if the 'just right' moment to carve the roast is the same as the 'just right' moment to take the pasta out of the water and put the sauce on it? There's nothing for it; an imperfection creeps in. And therein I see the wisdom of the Italian cook, who can time these things in different intervals, dealing tranquillamente with the roast or what have you after the pasta dish is already being enjoyed on the table.

Midian, Jerusalem, Hypothetical Wives, Death

Yesterday morning some brothers came to collect me from Garbatella and bring me, at last, here to the General Curia. I'm not quite landed yet, though. The room which is to be mine isn't ready, so I'm in a guest room for the weekend.

I spent the rest of yesterday exploring and just taking it all in. I wandered over to the Collegio Internazionale and found again the English-speaking hang-out room, to which I had been introduced one night back in May when I first arrived in Italy. I wandered outside and found the long, sketchy, lizard-crossed path that leads to the bus stop. I can already tell that this will be a rich environment for 'overheard' posts, which I have always been told are favorites. Here are some from yesterday, and one from this morning:

Wandering around the Collegio, I met some students. In the course of meeting them, one asked how old I was. I told him that I was forty.

"As Moses fled to Midian when he was forty, so you have come to us."


At supper, one of the brothers was--I think--accusing another of feigning ignorance of certain significances of the recently concluded general chapter.

"Are you the only foreigner in Jerusalem who does not know about the things that have happened here in these days?"


Looking forward to this morning, for which the gospel is Jesus' teaching on marriage in Mark 10, one of the brothers quizzed the friar who was scheduled to preach.

"What will you say tomorrow? Are you going to tell us that we may not abandon our wives?"


At breakfast (I missed the context on this one) on the brothers announced:

"We have never been as close to our death as we are right now, this morning."

Go And Show Yourself

If I understood correctly, after four months of living out of my bags here in Italy (and three in Boston before that), I will be moved to the general curia after my last morning at Italian school on Friday. So now I'm in transition mode: thinking about when I ought to do laundry such that it might be dry in time to pack it up, going to confession, visiting my new friend TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile) to put some euros in my phone, trying not to anticipate going-away salutations and events as a way to be less anxious about them, etc.

I have to say that I'll miss this neighborhood where I've been staying since the middle of July. The small community of three or four friars, visiting the Capuchin nuns next door for Mass in the morning, the regular folks doing regular stuff, the friendly Turks at Istanbul Kebab, the crazy store where the Chinese ladies sell everything in the universe, including cheap school supplies for the local Italian student, and the nice girls at Alice Pizza.



But probably more than anything I'll miss being so close to the basilica of St. Paul. It's usually a pretty peaceful place to go an pray or just sit, the Blessed Sacrament chapel is a cozy spot, and there's almost always a priest to hear your confession. There might even be a confessor who speaks English, either the Italian monk who speaks just a little but is very willing, the one I can't figure out who hears in five languages and always gives as a penance one of the psalms coming up in the vespers that day (that was easy), or the one whom I think is German and who absolves, I absolve thee from thy sins... Valid and licit? I don't know. Just too cool? Absolutely.

I don't know if all of these natural and supernatural delights will be as easy to come by in my new circumstances, though I'm already praying that God show me the way to a good confessor. But here some wisdom from the Desert Fathers arrives for inspiration:

If a monk knows of a place where he can make progress, but where the necessities of life can only be had with difficulty, and for that reason does not go there, such a monk does not believe in God.

Even the Lord himself, when someone boldly announced his intention to become a disciple, warned that the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head. That's the thing about the journey; at first you think that little by little you will soon arrive spiritually at a peaceful and serene place where you can rest your battered spirit. And it's true in a way. But it's also true that all you find is the way.

I once had a very good spiritual conversation with another friar on how much time we waste thinking that we will get our prayer and our spiritual lives together once things 'settle down' or 'get back to normal.' But it's an illusion. There's no such time. There's only the mess, and the only time to pray is now.