Golden Age Thinking

Tomorrow we leave for Florence in the morning, so I wanted to get this post in before the weekend. Nothing super profound, just some musings I've had...

Before I get to the "deep stuff", I forgot a great part of the Forum/Emperor's grounds. So there was this round building, I didn't get a picture of it, but just imagine a medium sized church with pillars and a dome...Our professor pointed it out and said that was formerly the "Temple of Cupid" and they had yearly festivals where they would come together and dance. The ritual was pretty simple; it went like this: A destra, a destra, a destra, a destra, a sinistra, a sinistra, a sinistra, a sinistra, kicka kicka..........(translated: to the right to the right to the right to the right, to the left, to the left, to the left, to the left, now kick....)

Haha - he had some in our group going for a little bit, and he claimed it was the original "Cupid Shuffle." I started cracking up and loved it. Hope that gave you a laugh as well, but maybe you had to be there :/

So what I've been thinking about is the concept that talked about in the movie Midnight in Paris. The idea of "golden age thinking" where people in a certain era or location think that life in another time period or setting would be so much better than their present. These people end us always thinking the grass is greener, but don't realize that every era and place has its drawbacks and people are always longing for something else.

This hit me a couple times while I'm here. First, when people (including me) in our group travel on the weekend, and feel like we love the region were we visit and "don't want to go back" to Rome. As silly as that sounds, the weekend retreat is often a breath of fresh air away from the bustling streets of Rome. But that's all it is - a retreat. If we actually were in that spot for a prolonged time we would feel comfortable, get frustrated and want to go somewhere else. This also happens when we think that we "don't want to go back to the US." Most people in our group are loving Rome - its history, public transportation, cafe culture, food, and class structure, etc is awesome. But we aren't truly experiencing what it's like to live here as a citizen and feel the everyday grind that locals have. We don't have to pay taxes or deal with the high unemployment rates and struggle to keep up with the standard of living.

Granted, my semester is incredible, and I am nowhere near ready to come back to the US, but as far as wanting to live here, I don't think I could make the switch. Here's what the locals have to deal with that I'm thankful we don't have (for the most part) in America:
-Incredibly corrupt and disorganized presidents/politics - in the recent election, none of the candidates received the majority, so what did they do? All 3 candidates are now in power. What genius thought that would ever be a good idea? (I am still incredulous about this, and it's kinda the crux to my writing this)
-An unemployment rate of 11.2%, and rising...
-A constant presence of tourists and therefore, ethnocentric people imposing on your culture. I know I'm one of them, but I think it'd be tough being an Italian on the other side of it.

America certainly has its flaws too, don't get me wrong, but I guess I'm just flushing out that much of the Romanticism is gone. I think it'd be fun to live here for an extended time, but I don't think it is something I would want to make permanent. It is a spiritually deprived city and needs people to help ignite a fire across the country, so that could be an opportunity that God may work in later, but with these new feelings, I don't think that's my direction of the future. I want to come back for sure, and I want to travel much, much more in Europe. But live here for good? Ehhh...

In other news, today was the last day for the Pope. Some people in our group saw him fly away in his helicopter, but I didn't make it out to see him. But, I was in St. Peter's Square when he was delivering his final "angelus" message on Sunday. In case you didn't pick up on my equivocation, that was a euphemism to say that "I actually didn't see the Pope. I got there 5 minutes after he finished and when 2,000 people were leaving St. Peter's." Still, it was incredible to see so many people pilgrimage and flock to the Vatican for his farewell.

I am going to see a ton of art and architecture at Florence, so the next post will have more pictures, but I cannot guarantee that I'll be able to describe everything lucidly. But that's okay. In our reading for the week I was reminded that God is indescribable, beyond any words or concepts or theology that we can muster.

I don't know how this ties in, but I love it, and I'll leave you with this:

Zephaniah 3:17 "The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, he will rejoice over you with singing. "