L'Albero Della Vita - The Tree of Life

ciao a tutti,

Even though the mosaic "the Tree of Life" was one of the main reasons for choosing this particular language school in Otranto, i waited to go see it. I wanted to feel grounded, clear and strong of heart and mind for such a big event. I waited 3 weeks till I was ready. Monday afternoon we had a good group of new students at the school and Barbara Dimitri, the teacher who gives the tour was at her most animated.

I was not prepared for the impact this amazing work of art would have on me. I cried like a baby the whole time. I had to ask a fellow student for a kleenex to keep wiping my eyes and blowing my nose. I cannot describe the deep connections that I made to it, but i will try.

As Barbara explained the images and the stories and phylosophies behind them I realized that they were deeply significant to my persoanl spiritual path. The images depicted the history of civilization and included things like the usurption of the pagan traditions by the powerful roman catholic church. Many vivid images followed the rejection of the patriarchy of feminine divinity, equality, laughter, dancing, material possessions and self love.

The Greeks who were here and the Greek monk who created this masterpiece firmly believed in Astrology and integrated the symbols into it. Each month depicted an era of mans evolution as well as the astrological meanings and the routines of daily life at the times of the year. It was obvious that the Greek churches did not reject the old beliefs and melded the pagan rituals and lessons into their form of chrisianity.

One set of images that struck a cord with me in particular, was the month of August and the symbols of Leo. The images showed a snake that represented the roman catholic church eating a smiling, dancing man. Barbara explained that the (great) movie "the Name of the Rose" was about this issue. The roman church banned all books that were considered comedies as well as dancing, smiling and laughter. The book "the Comedy of Dante was a banned book, but there was a church library just outside of Otranto that contained this book as well as other books of comedy and pleasure. Eventually the Romans burned this library and had the Library keepers put to death.

Also contained within this amazing cathedral were the bones of the martyrs of the Turkish Invasion in 1420. 800 skeletons looked out with empty eyes from behind the glass walls. The very stone used to lay their heads upon was integrated into the Altar. WOW!

I cried and cried over the suffering, the history, the beauty and the crimes of the Roman chtholic church. I have never in my life seen anything so beautiful as the tree of life. Except maybe my beloved tree of life the ancient redwoods. There were many many parallels between the two. You would have to see it and touch it to believe it. Otranto hold many doors to the spirit world and this was one of the. link to a website with some awesome pics of the cathedral and Otranto.
http://www.paradoxplace.com/Perspectives/Sicily%20&%20S%20Italy/Puglia/Otranto/Otranto.htm

Blessings:

- the Tree of Life.

- the videos of Yota on my camera. I miss him so much. I watch the videos often and show them to everyone.

- The dollar is rising again. 11 cents this week! I have never been so concerned with the value of the dollar before lol.

- a gay and lesbian friendly community. I saw mention on the internet that this was the case. But i have seen many many couples both living here and as tourists. I take this to mean that this is and open minded and open hearted community. I just wish those two boys that work at the internet cafe would stop having sex nearby in the storage room while i am on the internet lol lol.

- breakthrough after breakthrouh in my studies of the language and the cooking. i have not started my mosaic classes yet.

Curses:

- hitting the wall. even though i have made breakthroughs... i am also hitting the wall over and over again when we start moving too fast in class. OOOOH the headaches. I cussed and cussed over my homework last night. today in class even the advanced student were slapping their forheads lol.

- not being able to afford to buy or carry all the ID books around with me. I want to know the names of every bird, tree, butterfly and flower!

- the hungry coyote is still tailing me. I keep turning him down... 4 times now. I wonder how many NO's it will take before he gives upo on me. i guess i will find out lol.

I better go now. I have loads of homework... but it's a sunny day and i want to go to the beach. i better get started. love you all.