Ciao, Italy

I have loved being here in Italy this month!  I have enjoyed the sunsets, vineyard, wine and lovely Italian people.  I love the birds chirping, the wind blowing, and the air so comfortable that one does not even need air conditioning.  I love the food, the Masses, and the priests and nuns.
    Ciao, Italy!

The Dignity of the Human Person

How lovely and enriching to be here in Rome.  Our class is investigating three possible grounds for human dignity: human reasoning and the power to know objective truth (including mathematics, laws of physics, and so forth), the power of self-determination (freedom), and the capacity to love others.   

Assisi, I love you!

Going to San Damiano, where Francis heard Christ say, "Francis, rebuild my church," and where Clare and her sisters then lived for 50 years, was awe-inspiring.  I sat and listened and prayed for an eternity.  It soothed and anointed my heart.

Florence Won My Heart

How Florence won my heart!  The majesty of the duomo, the beauty of the art, the children Florence bore--from Dante to Galileo to Michelangelo--are inspiring.  

     How I loved leading students through the Uffizzi, telling them about the early Renaissance altarpieces of Cimabue, Giotto and Simone Martini; Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera; Michelangelo's one round painting, the Holy Family; the Laocoon; Bernini's San Lorenzo; Gentelleschi and Georges de la Tour and Caravaggio.  What a feast for the eyes, heart and soul!

Lecturing in Ostia

Here we are in the ancient port town of Ostia.  I am giving a lecture on Augustine and Plotinus.  Did you know that Augustine records him and his mother, Monica, having a joint mystical vision?  It is one of the only recorded joint mystical visions in history.  They stood at a window in an apartment here in Ostia, according to the Confessions, and had a vision of heaven, transcending time and space for a brief moment.

   

Here in Rome!

  We are finally here in Rome!  Sebastian, Jacob and I traveled together from Dallas to Rome, and made it in record time with record few catastrophes--just Sebastian throwing a huge fit over the use of the airplane bathroom, only later to be followed by an even bigger fit over the use of the Rome airport bathroom.  But to Sebastian's credit, he stayed awake the whole next day after the flight, preventing any serious jet lag thereafter.  What a trooper, roaming around campus on three hours of sleep!
   Being here on campus is a dream: the pool and tennis court, the food, the sunset over the vineyard, the wine. . . it is all so heavenly.
   And so I have begun teaching the undergraduates the Philosophy of the Human Person.  In our class, we are asking, "Do human beings have a dignity that sets them apart from other beings?  If so, in what does that dignity lie?  How can we prove it?  Or can it be proven?"