Built in the late Republican period in the 1st century BC, this temple was erected by the quatorvirates Gneus Cesius and Titus Cesius Priscus. Once thought to have been dedicated to Minerva, when a votive plaque to Hercules was later discovered, it is now believed that the temple was dedicated to him.

The facade’s six fluted columns support Corinthian capitals and stand on plinths that rest on steps leading to the pronaos.

In 1539 the inner sanctum of the temple was transformed into the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, with further alterations added in the Baroque style during the 17th century.

This week’s image ~ Night-lit Column Base, Tempio di Minerva, Assisi, Italy.

Open the door! And what a beautiful portal (a grander word) it is. Wooden doors in Italy are works of art in themselves, be they entrances to cathedrals, palazzi, businesses, or residences.

Massive doors, hand-crafted with attention to detail and adorned with brass ornamentation or elaborate knockers, give to the structure and people living or working there a feeling of stature and importance, while modest doors, often scribbled with graffiti, missing paint, and patched here and there from an accident (or a few) speak the language of rugged old-worldliness born of practicality.

Trastevere garage door, Rome, Italy.

I’ve always been fascinated with doors, primarily because of the symbolism they embody as an axis of transformation. Doors of Knowledge. Doors of Perception.

If the doors of perception were cleansed, things will appear to man as they truly are: infinite. ~ William Blake

Doors of Siena, Italy.

Or, employing the title of Henry Van Dyke’s poem, Doors of Daring:

And all the bars at which we fret,
That seem to prison and control,
Are but the doors of daring, set
Ajar before the soul.

Announcing a new life.

In addition to being a statement of situation or purpose, when arrayed, doors transmit messages: of human suffering, when draped in black after a person’s death; of cultural festivities, like Carnivale, when strung with multi-colored flag banners; and of personal joy. The door above, bedecked with a light-blue ribbon, broadcasts happy news throughout Assisi of a baby’s birth. Dio lo benedica! (May God bless him!) people whisper to themselves as they pass by.

Door to Oasi Pace e Bene, Suore Francescane di S. Giorgio Martire, Assisi.

In Italy, where almost anywhere you direct your camera offers creative possibilities, wooden doors invite a closer look. So, prima di aprire la porta (before you open the door), zoom in.

Side door, Basilica di Santa Chiara, Assisi.

Appreciate the finer details of an art that has been around for centuries, an art that is within easy reach of all.

This week’s image ~ above right ~ Door Circa Via del Corso, Rome, Italy.
Thumbnail image ~ Door Ornament, Assisi, Italy.

In his poetic film, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Italian director Franco Zeffirelli masterfully paints the humble life of Clare and Francis ~ two young souls who devoted their days on earth to caring for the sick, the outcast, and the poor.

Their strong, abiding love ~ which sparked a religious renaissance nearly eight centuries ago as far as imperial Rome and raised them to sainthood ~ is the substance of resplendent stories of the miraculous.

Statue of St. Clare outside San Damiano monastery.

It was at San Damiano ~ below ~ located outside Assisi on a long, sloping hill covered with silvery olive groves overlooking Spoleto Valley ~ that Clare resided in poverty and prayer for nearly forty years with her community of sisters.

San Damiano, exterior.

San Damiano, courtyard.

San Damiano, chapel.

Still today a spirit of quiet simplicity remains, recalling the perennial and elemental power of “loving one another.”

This week’s image ~ above right ~ Spoleto Valley, Umbria.
Thumbnail image ~ Fresco, San Damiano.

What is so endearing about seeing laundry hanging outside to dry? The accompanying sensation of how good it smells after being caressed by the wind and warmed by the sun.

Before clothes dryers, Americans hung out their laundry and even today many of us string a line and make sure we have clothespins handy not only for that clean, springtime scent, but to save energy as well.

Look at how ingenious the Venezuelans and Italians are in making sure their laundry gets done, even in crowded living spaces.

This week’s image ~ above right ~ Laundry Line, Sienna, Italy.
Thumbnail image ~ Caracas Laundry (and pigeon perch!).

To fly
you must be free

To be free
you must let go

To let go
you must find trust

To find trust
you must have faith

To have faith
you must keep hope

To keep hope
you must see beauty

To see beauty
you must know love

To know love
you must learn to fly

The lesson is this:
If you love to fly
you must fly to love.

Wayne Visser submitted this poem as part of the “Reflections on Love/Poems on Peace,” 2010 Valentine Peace Project. Wayne is Senior Associate at the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership and Visiting Professor of Sustainability at Magna Carta College, Oxford.

This week’s image ~ above right ~ Pelicans Aloft, Santa Cruz, California.

If you enjoyed this poem, you might also like to read One Flower At A Time and Painted Blossoms.

yellow lupine lean
petals cupped to hear
the ocean softly singing

About Jane Benson:

“Poetry has been part of my life since childhood when my mother read aloud her favorite Robert Frost poems and I wore out our copy of Robert Louis Stevensonʼs, A Childʼs Garden of Verses.

“More a reader than writer of verse, I like to collect poems and share them with others, sometimes learning them by heart. Occasionally, I write haiku for myself to capture a feeling, image or experience –a moment in time that I want to remember.

“Recently, I began a group for poetry lovers at Deborahʼs Palm, a new nonprofit community center for women in Palo Alto, CA.”

This week’s image ~ above right ~ Jane Benson, Pescadero Beach.
Thumbnail image ~ Yellow Lupine.

The temple bell stops
but I still hear the sound
coming out of the flowers.

~ Basho

This week’s image ~ Japanese Temple Bell, Creative Commons, Saul Adereth/Flickr.

Deep within an indigo sky,
On a cold dark winter’s night,
A river of stars makes a pathway above
All frost and golden bright.

Between one place and another,
Long ago and far away,
We sent a message
To reach us when the time was right,
on the darkest of nights……
It came to us;
The Sign we’ve been waiting for.

Deep within an indigo sky
On the Winter Solstice eve,
A magical event;
A full Moon eclipse,
Hidden by a rainy mist,
Announcing the arrival
Of the Avatar of the Great Divide.

Between what we know as time
And something other,
We are shown a mystic key……
It came to us;
How to walk in the Middle Way.
How to meet in the center of extremes.

From deep within this season
Of Light;
Kindness, service and good works,
on the longest night of the year,
We sense a change within ourselves
Reflecting the  Gift of Enlightenment;

Merry is the person who can find
In every way, to Love,
To believe in goodness,
To see magic all around……
To dance in the evolutionary stream.

Between one place and another,
A Star comes down from the sky;
The Avatar of the Great Divide,
Who can gather us all into One
And who has begun to turn the Key,
Unlocking a new Circle of Time.

Read more of Renee’s poems on her website.

This week’s image ~ above right ~ Carina Nebula (“Mystic Mountain”), NASA, Public Domain.
Thumbnail image ~ Boomerang Nebula, NASA, Public Domain.

All
The craziness,
All the empty plots,
all the ghosts and fears,

All the grudges and sorrows have
Now
Passed.

I must have inhaled
A strange
Feather

That finally

Fell

Out.

~ Hafiz

Translation by Daniel Ladinsky.

This week’s image ~ Creative Commons, Swan Feather, Jim Champion.
Thumbnail image ~ Creative Commons, Feather Fan, Phoenix Wolf Ray.

The two types of clowns are in fact the white clown and the Auguste.

The white clown stands for elegance, grace, harmony, intelligence, lucidity, which are posited in a moral way as ideal, unique, indisputable divinities.

Then comes the negative aspect, because in this way the white clown becomes Mother and Father, Schoolmaster, Artist, the Beautiful, in other words what should be done. Then the Auguste, who would feel drawn to all these perfect attributes if only they were not so priggishly displayed, turns on them.

The Auguste is the child who dirties his pants, rebels against this perfection, gets drunk, rolls about on the floor and puts up an endless resistance.

This is the struggle between the proud cult of reason (which comes to be a bullying form of aestheticism) and the freedom of instinct. The white clown and the Auguste are teacher and child, mother and small son, even the angel with the flaming sword and the sinner. In other words they are two psychological aspects of man: one which aims upwards, the other that aims downwards; two divided, separated instincts.

Clown marionettes, Cararcas open air market, Venezuela

My film [The Clowns] ends with the two figures meeting and going off together.

Why is such a situation so moving?

Because the two figures embody a myth which lies in the depths of each one of us: the reconciliation of opposites, the unity of being.

~ Federico Fellini, Fellini on Fellini

This week’s image ~ above right ~ Santa Cruz Clown.