April 1, 2004
Mother Italy
An unintended pilgrimage
by Stephanie Hiller
III. Dopo la Dea
We did have to take the train, but apart from yanking the bags on and off, there were no stairs. Traveling through the northern part of Tuscany we saw villages outlined under a light blanket of snow. At the station in Bologna I felt a dark presence suggesting Nazis. Perhaps it summoned up a scene from some movie. Bologna was a center of resistance against Mussolini's fascists and their German pals, so I suppose it must have been a place where their presence was strong.
The door was locked at the flat when we arrived at the flat but very soon Sandra Schiasi arrived with Mary Daly from the airport. Poor Mary, her plane had been delayed, and the whole trip a nightmare. "I feel like a prisoner in a medieval city," she murmured, "and I'm not a medieval person." Later she told me her computer had shredded the manuscript of the book she is working on. She certainly had my sympathies!
The flat, paid for by the government, was maintained by the women's association, Orlando, which runs the Biblioteca del Centro Documentazione delle Donne, an archive of women's books. It hosts its web site on its own server at http://www.women.it/serverdonne/content/prima/home/
It was great to be in a flat and be able to make a cup of tea! Sandra and another woman fluttered about, finding towels and making up beds, and then departed. Sandra had brought cheese, prosciutto, pasta, sauce Bolognese, home canned peaches for our dinner that night -- and rice crackers for me! (Somehow she knew already about my problems with wheat.) She apologized twice for not being able to find rice pasta! The warmth and attentiveness of our Italian hosts were really exceptional.
Luciana
Perkovich
That evening Luciana Percovich came to greet us, and we
shared personal histories over tea and sandwiches. Luciana
is a teacher at the Librera Universita Delle Donne in Milan,
and it is thanks to her that we were guests of Orlando.
Luciana described how meeting the Aborigines during a trip
to Australia had introduced her to spirituality rooted in
nature, and the Goddess, and Lucia spoke about how a similar
epiphany -- the vision of red poppies in a field of golden
wheat -- had guided her work.
By now, I was feeling quite acclimated to Italy. Apart from the Nazi ghosts in the train station, Bologna felt warm, gracious, welcoming, and a bit more real than Florence, where in five days I had not seen one single grocery. (Real people lived on the other side of the river from where we were staying.) I remembered what Wally had said about Florence being too much like a museum. Bologna, though architecturally equally arresting to my American eyes, was definitely real.
We were escorted the next morning to Via Domani, where the convegno was being held in an impressive municipal building. Apart from the usual two hour break for pranzo, the talks were lined up one after another. By the end of the day we were dazed. I was tickled when Sandra Capri introduced herself. She is a reader of this magazine who had written to me suggesting I attend a convegno with her while in Italy, and here we were at the same event. We had an exciting conversation and she suggested that I say something to the group about Awakened Woman. For the rest, she gave me brief synopses of the talks, for which I was grateful. They were all very interesting, in particular a paper by Selene Ballerina about the Virgin. Another delightful coincidence was meeting a friend of Lucia's from Berkeley! Josephine (Pina) Piccolo, a feminist poet and professional translator, now lives in Italy. At the last minute, she was called on to serve as Mary Daly's translator -- not an easy assignment, as you can imagine, if you're familiar with all the redefinitions and word play of Mary's work.
Mary's talk, centered on her work in progress, Amazon Grace, analyzed the implications of modern genetic engineering and where it may lead. (You can read her talk in these pages.) "This is scary stuff," she said, "but you don't need to be scared. Whenever you talk about things like this, someone is always going to change the subject."
Sandra
Capri
"And what have you seen of Bologna?" Sandra asked me as we are getting ready to leave." "Not a bit," I replied, explaining we have only gone from the station to the apartment and here.
Her face expressed her dismay. "If there is one thing I would show you, it would be the Cathedral at San Luca. Would you like to go? I can take you tomorrow if you like."
That is the church of the black Madonna -- the one thing I had asked Lucia to show me in Bologna.
Lucia decides to join us, and the next morning we set forth. First Sandra shows us the church of San Stefano, close to our lodging. It is a very austere ancient building, or series of buildings actually, originally built by the Romans and made into a church in the 10th century. After that, various rooms and chapels were added in succession, all the way up through the 19th century. Inside the entry is a huge pieta of Mary bearing across her lap the body of the crucified Christ. Of all the images of the crucifixion, this one pains me the most. The chapel is very cold. Mass is being conducted within, and we can see through the glass doors one of the monks, dressed in a white cloak with a pointed hood -- a grim reaper in white. Later I mention to Sandra that I am spooked by this image. Yes, yes, she says, in her warm, knowing way. She is a lovely person who has quite taken me under her protective wing, but her mind is acute. We laugh a bit about the monkish image. Just a few minutes later the man walks over to me. Standing "right in my face" and almost touching me, he addresses me in Italian. Sandra replies, and the man ambles off. He had wanted to know if we were laughing at him!
We explore the large piazza in the center of town, where two of the Bologna's towers stand princely and tall, stop in a café for a welcome hot drink, take some photos and hop in Sandra's car to ascend the hill.
The drive up the hillside is fascinating. We took of Bolognese politics. Sandra informs us that due to federal budget cutbacks, the city is trying to make up the shortfall by privatizing the water. As we make the turn from the city, Sandra points to a spot where the procession begins each year. She tells us the story of how some of the people had protested the presence of a Gay and Lesbian organization's office in the same building. "Well they had to move," she said, "which is a stupid thing, but you know the new office is a better one!"
Here begins the 3 mile walkway to the church which includes 666 porticos. 666 is the number of the devil and also of the serpent, Sandra says, and there is some controversy about why this is the number of arches. People, her father included, walk the whole way up on Sunday morning to attend mass. Lucia reminds me that the Mayor of Bologna was so happy when the Left won the election that he walked all the way up the hill to San Luca in pilgrimage to thank the black Madonna. Standing in the hallway created by these porticos and looking up or down, one is greeted by a tunnel of graceful arches. Sandra picks a spot so I can take photos before continuing on to the top.
Here on the heights, where very wealthy people have their houses, the remnants of last week's snow now turned to mush in the gutters adorns the rooftops, giving light to an otherwise grey and misty day. As we reach the top, the view of the Apennines dusted with snow stretches out before us.
Beggars greet us at every landing. A small child holds out a bowl. I woman sits in the cold stairwell holding a motionless infant. Gypsies I'm told. I don't want to dig in my purse right now, but vow to remember on the way down.
Within, the white walled chapel gleams with gold. It's a magnificent church, very airy and bright unlike many other darkened halls I have visited. High above the sacristy is the painting we have come to see, brought here from Constantinople in the 12th century; according to legend, it was painted by Saint Luke. Each year this painting is carried down the hill to the Cathedral of San Pietro, where it remains for the eight days leading up to Ascension Sunday. In a ceremony honoring Mary's ascension to heaven, depicted in so many Renaissance paintings of which Titian's is perhaps the most remarkable, the pilgrims carry her back to her nest in a long procession. Today only the faces of virgin and child are visible. The picture is protected by a silver plate.
We ascend the little staircase to her chapel and I stand before her. She isn't black. She is brown. She is Byzantine, but she also looks Semitic. She looks like a real woman of her time, a Sephardic Jew. She is simple. She is not beautiful. Unlike the regal virgins of Renaissance Art, she wears a black shawl such as Arab women wear, covering her head. The child's face is adult and knowing.
I stand before her with my question. I ask, What about the fate of the world? I am filled with unspeakable sadness. Her expression relays the terrible tragedy of her life, a tragedy we share. To give birth to a divine child, knowing, despite the hardships, that he was divine, watch him as, ever more detached from her, he grew into manhood, revealing himself as the Son of God, defying the conventions and injustices of his era, only to be slaughtered by the heads of oppressive government, is to bear immeasurable grief. Tears start to collect in my eyes. Surely for her no resurrection could have compensated for such a loss.
"And He shall be called Savior." He, for whom wars are waged. How has this terrible execution -- endlessly repeated by innocent young men slain in battle -- saved the world?
I left the chapel feeling the weight of all the prayers that have been left at the Madonna's altar. To me, hers is the saddest story of all.
Not so our afternoon. We enjoyed a delightful meal at the home of an elderly couple who had been partisans during the world war, resisting the Nazi presence. After a great meal -- the homemade Bavarian Cream was unforgettable! -- we went to a meeting at Armonie, where there was a lively discussion. One of the women wanted to know about feminists in America, and Luciana suggested I respond. I was brief, describing the new tenor of organizations since 911, and the question of whether they want to call themselves feminist. I suggested that we needed to unite these organizations with women's groups around the world -- for example, theirs -- to build a global movement.
Lucia with Mary
Daly
At once there was talk about betrayal by feminists of the second wave, conflicts that had arisen, the breakdown of solidarity.
Mary Daly in her blue windbreaker sat bent over in thought, listening quietly . She said gently, "Yes, but we have to remember that there were forces trying to break us down. To destroy us." She paused. "There was, you know, there was an enemy." It was a moment I believe I'll never forget.
The talk moved on (most of it in Italian, of course, but Sandra was summarizing for me, and I was beginning to understand the general import on my own) to a discussion of what should we be doing then? At some point I joined in, and spoke of the depleted uranium spreading not far from their shores. (Yugoslavia, I was amazed to notice, is just across the Adriatic Sea from Italy's eastern coast).
With sudden passion, I said, "We don't want for our sons to be crucified again! We want our sons to be healthy and strong." The message of the black Madonna was pouring through me.
Across from me I could see Michela Zucca, who had spoken about the stregeria at the convegno, snap into alert and then drop down into a familiar place of pain. She does have a young son, I learned later. And she spoke of her work with the Centro di Ecologia Alpina, which works for sustainable mountain development.
I added that I thought we could bring our diverse groups together by focusing on areas of agreement, and reserving for later discussion those areas in which there is conflict.
Theresa, who is one of the directors of Armonie, said that she likes to focus on specific, doable projects. "For example, we are working now to ask for safety for women in the parks."
Armonie's activities, which include courses, health consultations, and meetings like the Convegno we had just attended, are described at their web site, (link).
The energy of the circle (for we were in circle, though no sacred space had been invoked) was, as always, intense, and for lack of a facilitator it ricocheted off to a dispersed conclusion. I remember wishing that we had a talking stick and a protocol. But we were holding the energy, even as voices bubbled up with all the lively disorder of emotions long held back. And I was certain that this conversation would continue spiraling off, much as Mary Daly describes of women's culture in her eloquent books.
It was time for us to go home. Lucia and I were leaving the next day, again at the crack of dawn. With typical prudence, Lucia was soon in bed, whilst I stayed up savoring the clarity I have come to expect after a few days in Europe, and trying to read a difficult book about redefining the left by Hilary Wainwright. Of course I didn't sleep enough.
We arrived in SFO on a beautiful, balmy day, thoroughly exhausted. Wally received us and drove us back to their lovely home in the Berkeley hills (rebuilt after being totally destroyed during the 1989 earthquake) to pick up my own little car and make the drive uncertainly home. I had to have a cup of good strong black tea before hitting the freeway and found it in a typical Berkeley café I remembered visiting before. Through my bleary eyes, I found myself examining the street and the people much in the way I had examined passers by in Florence. I was still on the road.
As I drove back across the Richmond San Rafael Bridge over the San Francisco Bay, it was impossible not to notice how astonishingly beautiful is the Bay Area, certainly equal to or even surpassing anything I had seen in the last two weeks. But the flavor, and the composure, I had experienced in Italy would stay with me, undiluted, for several days, and I hope will never completely evaporate. And perhaps that is the suit my mother had in store for me.