Rome, Day 26

This gate from 1584 is a good contrast to the unhistotical woods of western North Carolina to which I shall return in just over three weeks.

Is it not a kind of areligious, if not irreligious, non-confessional confession to come here — from the overly-cold benches of preferred Piazzella Caffarelli (with its overview of the physical inner city of Rome) — to this solemn enclosed other- and inner-worldly sanctum with its (specific Society of Jesus) sub specie dei view of Mankind, Life and World, to record my higher, mundane and personal thoughts about Rome and my stay — two days from ending — in Rome?

As the black-garbed churchman walks by looking a bit scepticalliy at me. Would he not disapprove of this my mixed sin of solipsism? Yet the heavens, beliefs, aspirations incorporated, inarted, indesigned,… here are otherworldly to not only me, but the outer street life of Rome. Do the many tourist who wander through this and the many churches of Rome also “sin” with their mere curiosity, photography, unmeditative passing presences here. And how many worry about such personal mundane thoughts and being in a church?

An other churchan (I think) kneels at the left recess of the Church before a painting with Jesus apparently holding a red flag, the Standard of the Society of Jesus, with Ignatius. (Reading about it, I learn this painting actually descends to reveal a French-Occupation melted down statue of Loyola. Called a “Baroque Machine”!

I cannot write in my journal here in this Church. Contrast of outer and inner. Both too much of separate stories.

I received an email about the local bears and raccoons and neighbors… doesn’t compare to Rome…as I sit in the Piazza del Popolo.

I can only suppose that the churches nearby to Johann, Wolfgang, Goethe, and his artist friends home in Rome could’ve offered little, if anything for a life guidance, had they even wanted such. what he needed and wanted. The church did not offer what he wanted or needed. He wants is among else to experience not suffer the world.

The closest in Rome I have come to Augustine. The relics, the remains, of his mother, Monica.’

What is the Catholic Church without relics?