Summer 2003

It’s back to school tomorrow the greeting will be “Hi, had a good summer?”

In a moment of reflection what have I been up to? The holidays began with two weeks in Castiglione Del Largo, Umbria, central Italy. We hired an apartment where most of the garden was a vineyard, I spent hours relaxing and reading under an olive tree, when it got too hot it was a dip in the pool, idyllic!

We had some wonderful days visiting the historic and artistic treasures of the area. We visited Florence, the highlights being the Uffizi where we saw the art collection of the Medici family; the oldest gallery in the world. We visited the Accademia where Michelangelo’s statue of David dominates the rest. We walked across the Ponte Vecchio and into the Duomo and the Santa Croce where there is the tomb of Galilileo, a memorial to Dante, Machiavelli’s tomb and a cloister of sculpture and religious paintings. In the Church of San Lorenzo late in the afternoon we stumbled on the Oratorio Society of New York practising for their evening performance - the singing quite exquisite.

We had a fantastic day in Assisi where the Basilica St. Francis is enormous and very beautiful. There are three churches one on top of the other. In Sienna we ate pizza and ice cream in the Piazza Del Campo where twice a year there is the Palio, a bareback horse race. In Orvieto we marvelled at the paintings on the outside of the Duomo, Orvieto is a town perched on a plateau 984ft over a plain. We visited caves and enjoyed the cooler temperature there.

We visited Rome on the middle Sunday of our holiday and arrived in time to observe a Mass in English - afterwards in the noon heat we listened to the live broadcast from the Pope. From St Peters we went to the Colosseum and then took a guided tour of the Forum where we saw many ancient buildings and the garden of the house of the Vestal Virgins. We had had a wonderful balance of culture and rest – a pleasant holiday.

Two weeks later and we were off to Christian Adventure Holidays. It was like a military operation, five visitors staying the night before; two mini buses and a trailer collected from Rawlins, packing wetsuits, boots, waterproofs and catering equipment as well as supplies from the cash and carry. The journey up was good and the complication of collecting another mini bus in Temple Sowerby turned out to be OK in the end. Twenty-two adults, two children and forty-one Adventurers arrived safely. Activities went well, Liz our daughter, got her ‘A’ level results which were good and the catering for the big meal on the last evening seemed easier than before. Even the clean up at the end was going well and we were going to get home in good time.

The journey home turned out to be difficult; many will already have heard of Malc’s accident. The low point of my summer was definitely the moment I saw Malc in a hospital bed in Carlisle hospital with an oxygen mask and wires from his chest attached to monitors. We realised we were not going to be taking him home with us. Malc spent three days in hospital and arrived home eventually on the Tuesday.

Well you’ve heard about the low point - what was the highpoint? Was it the Colosseum, St Peters, Florence’s Duomo or Assisi? On the Wednesday evening in the lounge at Bassenfell Manor to see young people singing and worshipping God in an amazingly noisy way has to be the high point. It was a privilege to see the zeal, the beauty of Jesus reflected in their faces and the excitement and satisfaction had to be the best!

Psalm 147 begins with
‘Praise the Lord
How good it is to sing praises to our God
How pleasant and fitting to praise him’

Psalm 45 says
‘You love the righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God your God has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy’

All the Art of Italy, the striving for Glory seems to miss the point, it is simple: Righteousness through the death of Jesus and forgiveness of sins will lead to joy!

Margaret Gaunt

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