Olive Branches of Multiple Varieties

 Day 14

We walked among the groves on this, our last full day in Spello — morning, and then again afternoon.  We had destinations in mind — a cemetery here, a shrine there — but mostly we felt this need to be out along the paths beyond the village, among the trees.

For centuries olive oil has been, beyond kitchen and the table, the enacted, anointing vocabulary of blessing — the liturgical lubricant of forgiveness, peace and hope.  I haven’t a credible explanation why.  Perhaps in the cultures that gave rise to the scriptures of Jews, Muslims and Christians, olives and their oil represent, by their ubiquity, all that which is foundational, basic and essential — the primal gift and ground of the Holy.  Perhaps it was used ceremonially just to remember our foundations and what is finally important.

Before, then, resuming our place in the routines of our lives; before returning to the hourly news reports of conflicts and threats, storms and terrorist assaults, we wanted to immerse ourselves in the surrounding olive branches, willing, by visceral experience, to take something of their blessing back home to our world in such desperate need of it.

It’s not that Spello is inured to such challenges. As a walled city, danger and threat and tumult are part of its DNA. As victim of two major earthquakes in the past 20 years, the very walls bear scars.  It’s shopkeepers carry the weight of economic downturns.  And it’s people — it’s families and neighbors — are not strangers to the usual abrasions of close social interaction.

But such challenges are muted, more peripheral threads in the overall tapestry of life.  They aren’t ignorant of world affairs, but neither are they glued to television channels continually drenched in their toxicity.  They interact with each other.  The animated and enlivening conversations with the personalities in front of
them are more precious than the swirling political vicissitudes around them.  They are largely pedestrian.  They walk home from work — journeys of a few blocks that may take an hour because they are filled with hellos and pauses for stories exchanged among friends. They are no stranger to the countryside or fresh air.  Connection with each other and their surroundings is daily routine, not special event.

Which is not to say there are not special events.

Which is how it turned out that the olive branches this day would come in more forms than wood.

We were invited to a party.  If there was an occasion, we weren’t aware of it.  It was, as far as we knew, simply a time for friends to be together.  There were the hosts — an Italian professor of the classics and his American artist/professor wife — along with various expats from around the US.  There were Spellani, like the community cultural director and his wife, two restauranteurs, a neighbor or two and also a poet who shared, as a spontaneous climax to the evening, her new publications.  And in the midst of it all there was made a place for us. Over the course of the evening there was discussion of books, of ideas and words and personal stories and creativity and imaginative stimulation.  There was encouragement and curiosity and affirmation.  There was food and thanksgiving and hellos and goodbyes.  In its own way— in lives shared, in Italian, broken but earnest English, and our own welcomed monolinguism — the entire room became an olive branch, heavy with anointing fruit.

“How good and pleasant it is when kindred live in unity!  It is like precious oil on the head...” (Psalm 133:1-2)

How good and pleasant — and hopeful, and enlivening — indeed.

We are mostly packed, and prepared for the journey home — functionally at least.  In truth, there will be parts of us that won’t fit in our bags that will necessarily remain behind in these homes, along these streets, and scattered among these olive groves; partly because there is so much of this place that will accompany us, profoundly enlarged and changed, home.

Perhaps we will find our way here again.