For years, there has been a feeling of inner unrest, an inner noise which could not be ignored... this 'noise' made me walk unfamiliar paths and made me ever so determined to somehow try and silence it. The more I pushed 'the noise' further from my consciousness, the more unhappy I became... the more anxious and ever more 'lost'. Thoughts and feelings which were once so familiar and comforting became alien to me and an inner turmoil ensued which affected every aspect of my being.
It was only on a recent trip to Italy that things changed... It all happened as I visited St Peters Basilica in Rome, I wanted to go and light a candle and say a prayer at the tomb of St John Paul, as more than twenty years had passed since I was last in Rome and in that time much had changed. It was as I sat in the side chapel where St John Paul's body is buried, that this inner feeling of peace eventually came. There was no clap of thunder, no bedazzling lights, in fact there was nothing out of the ordinary with exception of sitting in this beautiful Basilica at the Vatican...
As I sat in the side chapel, I started to feel 'different'.... I wasn't sure in what way initially, but all I knew was that something felt different within. I couldn't quite put my finger on what I felt but I somehow knew that it would be transformational. I continued walking around the Basilica, blending in with the huge crowds of people that were there, until a small bell rang in one of the other side chapels. It was twelve o'clock and a couple of altar servers and a priest came as if from no where, processing down the small aisle and up to the altar - Mass was about to be celebrated.
As a lapsed Catholic for over twenty years, I hadn't planned on attending Mass and yet that's exactly what did happen. As I sat there in the pew, it didn't seem to matter that the service was in Italian, the Mass somehow transcended language. If I'm honest, I'm not actually sure what I was thinking about... I just sat there and watched silently... Whatever change that was taking place in me, happened in that very moment of time.... I might as well have been sitting there all alone, as the thousands of people that were at the Basilica somehow faded into the background. The external noise was drowned out by an overwhelming silence within. I can't honestly remember the last time that I felt like that, if ever I did at all; all that I did know was that the silence was deafening.
The experience was cathartic, much like that of a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. Past hurts seemed to be righted, inner anxieties - calmed and a sense of a new beginning was apparent.
Since returning home from Italy, that feeling of peace has remained and many ghosts of the past have been laid to rest. Life feels so much different right now... there is a feeling of inner happiness, its a feeling that is difficult to describe, but yet a feeling that I somehow want to share with others. For such a long time I felt a feeling of unrest, of searching and a quest to find that inner feeling of joy. I am unsure what has happened internally that was so transformational, but I do know that it has changed both my internal and external life in so many ways. I have made some life changing decisions since returning home which have already shaped my future into something exciting and new, but that is for another time ;-) .
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