Just southeast of Rome, along the Appian Way, stands the Chiesa di Santa Maria in Palmis, the church of Quo Vadis. It is the place where St Peter, who was fleeing Rome for fear of persecution, met Jesus. “Domine quo vadis?” he asked him, “Lord, where are you going?” Set in the center of the church is a marble slab said to contain the footprints of Jesus (which is where the name comes from).
Many years ago, when I was a young teenage girl, we traveled to Italy to meet our extended family. Lauretta, my aunt, served as our guide, taking us to places in and around the city of Rome very few tourists got to see. It was an insider’s view, an opportunity to see this magnificent city through the eyes of someone whose love for her home was so apparent it stays with me some 30+ years later. I remember standing at the marble slab, looking at the imprints of Jesus’ soles and understanding, perhaps for the first time, the idea that time is eternal. It’s hard to visit Rome and not get it. Everywhere you look are ruins, markers of time gone by. A home, a church, a marketplace… the remnants of people’s lives.
Quo vadis, I think to myself as I sat with my writers today. "Where are you going?" We imagined ourselves on a boat, sailing in the ocean. “Where are you going?” I ask them. “What do you see, smell, and hear? Who travels with you?”
I resist the temptation to second guess myself. Have I done a good enough job? Do they have a place to start? What if they can’t think of anything to write? And then, as if by magic, putting pen to paper, we begin.
“This one (journey) is different than the rest…” writes one. “…I work to enjoy each moment. Before my journey was dictated by where I thought I wanted to go. Now I find myself staying in the moment, enjoying the journey, not asking what’s next.”
Another shares an allegory. A tale of characters named trust and honor and courage who accompany him along his path. In the midst of homelessness and recovery from alcoholism, drugs and the ravages left by the Vietnam War, he chooses to fill his ship with the things that he knows will give him the support that he so desperately needs, and deserves.
As if by magic…..
Sitting with these wonderful men I am reminded of that walk through Rome all those years ago. The history fills the room that we write in. For many, histories of great sadness and loss, like the fall of the once powerful Roman Empire. And yet, it is their histories that fill the pages of their notebooks each week. Histories that they wear like ancient garments as they march forward into their future.
“It’s time to acknowledge that I control very little,” one of them said today. “It is enough to put one foot in front of the other. To leave footprints in the earth. To let others know that I walked here.”
Quo vadis?