Connections

Todi, Italy seen from the countryside
Isn't it odd how you meet someone and then soon after, you see that person all over the place? How many times you must have passed by one another before, but you never had met and so there was no spark of recognition, no connection. Then, once you meet, there the person is at the grocery store, in the car ahead of you at the red light, everywhere.

Yesterday, I was with my wife at the Fourth of July parade in Saint Marys and we ran into a LOT of people we know. We also passed by a lot of people with no recoginition. Yet even those we didn't recognize are people we may meet and come to know well later. But we passed by without knowing one another yesterday.

One connection we made on our recent trip to Italy is that we lived for a week in Todi, Italy. It was a small medeival village perched on a hill in Umbria, a region in central Italy. I would never have imagined that I had any knowledge of anyone who lived in Todi. Yet, while there, we saw various things about Jacopone da Todi (c.1236–1306) an early Franciscan buried beneath the altar at church near our apartment.

I decided to Google Jacopone on our return. Here is some of what I discovered:

The former proud doctor of law, Jacopo dei Benedetti, mocked and scoffed at by the boys in the streets of Todi, received the nickname of Jacopone. Once, saddled and bridled like an ass, he crawled on all fours in the public square of Todi; on another occasion, to the great confusion of his family, he appeared at a wedding in his brother's house, tarred and feathered from top to toe. When asked by a citizen to carry home a pair of capons for him, Jacopone brought them to the man's family tomb, saying that this was his true house. Jacopone's folly was however the folly of the Cross, as he says:

Senno me pare e cortesia
Empazir per lo bel Messia.
(A wise and courteous choice he'd make
Who'd be a fool for the dear Lord's sake.)

I found that in addition to becoming a Fool for Christ, he is also the likely author of the 13th century Latin hymn Stabat Mater Delarosa. Oddly enough, my wife, Victoria, and I wrote a Stations of the Cross service earlier this year in which we used the text of that hymn within the service. We had quoted the village of Todi's best-known poet a few months before coming to spend a week there.

It's odd how these connections work. I think it shows how the world is smaller and the communion of saints more closely woven together than we usualy appreciate.

Have you experienced this sort of surprise connection as well?

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

PS: Here is a link to some of Jacopone's poetry: Selected poetry of Jacapone da Todi

Cuurious about "our" apartment instead? The rental information is here: Casa LeFavi. It's owned by the Rev. Bob LeFavi, the priest at St. Luke's Effingham, another recent church plant in the Diocese of Georgia.



More photos of Todi, click any of the photos here to see a larger version of the same picture.

Todi today as Jacopone might have trouble recognizing it.

A resident walks one of the steep streets of Todi.


Two views of the same street with one of the town's many cats.

The main square where Jacopone was once humiliated



A Todi street by night


Todi's narrow medieval streets

Todi bathed in that Umbrian light painters so craved