“George Washington slept here.”  So proclaim signs ringing in an impossible number of villages and towns along the East coast, each seeking to burnish its reputation by associating with one of our most famous and respected forebears.

“In questo luogo santo Francesco insengno le laudi di Dio…” announces a small shrine, barely noticeable along the road that connects our village of Cannara to nearby Bevagna.  It is on that spot that our native son, Saint Francis of Assisi, is reputed to have delivered his Sermon to the Birds.

Whether x truly marks the spot — and surely it does not — the Saint for our Age gives our area, the Val d’Umbria, a certain specialness.  But I sometimes wonder it this is a classic chicken and egg story.  Did Francis imbue our locale with his sense of spirituality or did the inherent peacefulness of this area inspire the aspiring saint to find the voice of God within him?

Whatever the answer, it is hard not to fall under the spell of this land of tranquility.  In these days of autumn, tractors ply the narrow roads, racing from farm to farm, harvesting the bounty from the land and turning the soil for the next crop.  At our farmhouse the soil was recently plowed, leaving behind huge clayey hunks of dark gray, fertile earth that had just days before laid hidden below a layer of ground cover.  It is hard to look at these enormous clods of earth and not be struck by their possibility.  Their awesomeness.  Their beauty.  Beautiful dirt.

This is our portion of land. A small 3 hectare plot that sits on powerful, fertile earth. Just as Francis turned his back and left Assisi bound for his new home – the so called porziuncola or portion of land from which he would stage a worldwide revolution of the mind and (to a lesser extent) the church – we too are inspired by our porziuncola.

At nights, after shutting the entrance gates to our property before retiring for the night I often linger along the edge of our fields, quietly taking in the celestial light show above and the illuminated sight of Assisi in the distance.  The night after our soil was tilled I lingered at this corner, looking across the distance to our neighboring cemetery, smelling the newly unlocked freshness of the ground and for a solid ten minutes my ears heard nothing.  Not the stray whistle of a cricket or cicada.  No soft flapping of wings.  Not the gentle rustle of a breeze through the trees.  No car or scooter buzzed in the distance.  Above, a full moon cast its shimmery light on our deep gray clods of earth in complete silence.

Saint Francis truly did sleep here and continues to do so today.  And his peace and the peace of this place continues to have the power to inspire.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy