Il Bosco Sacro

After the initial difficulty of adjusting to a new space and situation and mourning my bank account, it definitely feels great to have a place of my own. I love my room and I love my little space, sparse though it may be. Yesterday, I was listening to Andrew Bird and putting my paintings and pictures up in my room and came to my Bosco Sacro (Sacred Grove) foldout poster from a Liahona magazine I got what seems like a million years ago. I got it shortly after I received my mission call to Italy and remember cherishing the flimsy foldout poster like it was the world's most prized possession. Just looking at the words, all in Italian, "Cio che e' successo qui ha cambiato il mondo: fa che cambi anche la tua vita" filled me with excitement, wonder and impatience for the adventure that lay ahead. I had no idea what the words meant, but at the same time they meant everything to me.

Looking at it now, it still holds the same treasure-like quality, but it's changed. Rather than the wonder and impatient anticipation that overwhelmed me every time I looked at it, it's filled with the most incredible and priceless memories of an experience that is truly too amazing to even describe. There is nothing better that I have ever experienced, or what I could imagine exceeding the experience of, than looking into the eyes of someone who understood, for the first time in their life, who they were--who they really were in an all-emcompassing perspective. Knowing that life is not just an arbitrary sequence on events, but that there's more to life than meets the eye. That as The Lord says in The Doctrine and Covenants 84:88, "For I will go before your face, I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts and mine angels rounds about you, to bear you up,"He is with us always and watches over us and helps us and loves us. And that's amazing. Knowing there is a plan for us, that we're not just roamers, getting by day-to-day just because we happen to be alive. It is truly incredible helping people understand that and see their lives become so much more meaningful and beautiful.

Not to mention what those kind of life changing experiences for others on my mission did for me. Never have I felt so close to everything good, to God, to love, to beauty, to truth. Never have I felt so sure of what was the right thing, of what I needed to do. That is truly an amazing feeling. And the Gospel is meant to teach you those things all the time, and it does, but there was something about treading on the foreign grounds of a country that will be forever engraved in my heart as a sacred and magical and heart-changing place, that augmented those feelings.

So I look at this poster, taped in places, with its plastic border that I put on, definitely not what would be deemed as a fancy piece of art, it fills my heart with all that it stood for before my mission and all that it stands for now, a symbol to me of what really matters in life. I imagine that the way my love for that picture has changed is somewhat compareable to what love is like in a good marriage. Having never been married, I really don't know, but I imagine that before the union, you can't wait to see what the much-anticipated and desired experience will be like. You don't want to continue going through life as before, but just want to be onto that next step, united with that which you love so much. During the marriage, that fairy-tale mind set wears off, but it's so much better in reality than what you could have even imagined, so much more fulfilling and incredible, with love entering your heart on a stronger scale than ever thought imaginable. Of course, the tough times are weightier than you ever imagined too, but once you look at that person, you see the treasure that has grown even more valuable with time--the challenges just an inevitable factor in the equation, but not the defining piece. And you look at that person, after all the time has passed since that initial anticipation to be with them, and you would never want to part with them, no matter how frayed or simple they may be, or even how different than you expected. Because that person that you now understand so perfectly but perhaps could only have attempted to decipher before, is absolutely incredible and has helped mold you into who you are today.

"What happened here [in the sacred grove] changed the world: let it change your life." That is what the poster translates to and that is exactly what happened to so many people who I love so much. And what happened to me. It's truly incredible that God gives us these gifts in life that mean everything. Life really is so amazing and we have so much to be grateful for.