From a young age I have always adored oversized books full of faded photos and interesting facts about art history, the Baroque Period, European grandiose, classical sculpture, mosaics, and Renaissance Architecture—anything I could get my hands on. I always left the library with the largest books I could find on these subjects. Accompanied by the masters, I learned the rudiments of drawing and form, and was that precocious nine year old whose sketchbook was full of Greek and Roman statues in all their nude glory. So many images and places, architectural landmarks, Caravaggio, Botticelli, Michelangelo, all treasured in my mind, feasts for my eyes and all from those treasured books.

Years passed and I arrived at my college-searching years set to pursue sports and a major in Art Education. I had always loved art and was lucky to be a somewhat talented competitive swimmer.  But despite my ideas about what was best for me, I somehow ended up at my father’s pick: Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.  That first year, at a place I was not certain I wanted to be at all, was rough.  In my sophomore year, which I almost did not stay for, everything changed forever. Rome happened.

Here at Thomas More every student spends a semester in Rome, and every student comes back seeing the world with what we like to call “Rome tinted glasses”. Returning from Rome, female students sport scarves and Italians boots, and perhaps even a hint of Versace while the young men have been introduced to a world of other-than-khaki pants and an appreciation and respect for a smarter, dignified appearance.  These young men and women have an eye for terra cotta, Baroque Architecture, water fountains, and cobbled streets with gypsy musicians. They have a taste for a savored cappuccino, the siesta, an evening gelato, conversation in a crowded night piazza teeming with smells of carbonara, olive oil, cheese and cigarette smoke.  But this is merely a taste, just the beginning of the Roman roam.

Worlds away from rustic Puritan New England, in the Eternal City everything becomes real: the architecture, mosaics, art, an orange tree lined via.  The pictures, images, works of art, half-imagined in my mind were suddenly there in front of my very wide open eyes.  Not something in some famous art museum traveled to, but ‘in situ’ or ‘where it was made to be’.  

Slowly this reality-turned-reverie seeped into my understanding of Faith.  Again, everything became real. When you stand in the Roman Forum, some distant history dreamed of is under your feet and is physically surrounding you.  Suddenly you have entered into a civilization older than anything you have ever experienced.

Reality slowly became bigger and bigger to me.  The old and steeped symbolism within the countless churches led me to one Faith, a one Church preceding all others.  

“If this is real then everything is real,” I thought.  “This is no longer a myth that some martyr was beheaded here, and a church built over his tomb. These are the catacombs of the Early Christian Martyrs! I am standing in them!”  The Puritan in me was gone forever.  This Faith was bigger than anything I had ever encountered, and what better way to encounter it than in a semester of roaming Rome.

I became an overflowing fountain that could not contain the glistening and exuberant waters of faith, beauty, art, friendship, love, and truth that Rome had opened me to.

Now, I truly love the rustic red barn, autumnal trees, rugged beached New England that I have returned too.  It is a love infused with my experiences abroad. Maybe it is not “Rome tinted glass” with which I see the world, but with new eyes!