You must believe in spring – Venice

It is one of my favorite song titles ever. Because I do. Believe. Even when I think it will be impossible for me to, “No, not this year,” come what may…

And then the months roll over and I feel so alive. Brimming with humanness. I want to eat the cake of the world, sip down its emotions as wine. My skin is bristling perforated, too sensitive to know where I end and the rest really does separate from the other.

Now, imagine that sensation while wondering around Venice. And no – I see you coming from here – no drugs were consumed (even if copious Spritz’s were downed, even at suggestive hours of the day) but oh how my senses were on high alert.

At times, I needed to go into a sacred space just to catch my breath by the tail before it left me to go exploring down a glistening canal.

That is when my hands would start to shake. The utter peace colliding with such scattered, hungry discovery and yet both holding something in-between; a nod of acknowledgement as undeniably true. I couldn’t help my hands. And so, as I have written before, I just could be a wide-mouthed witness at best.

Because the churches, the cathedrals, the altars of Venice demand attention and respect regardless of your spiritual, religious, or none of the above affiliation. They did to me. Most especially at the Basilica dei Frari, which while certainly not the most spectacular (that one will hopefully get a post of its own if I can write it), the one where I felt so at peace and so grateful for it. I stayed and wandered, looping back over my steps until my eyes ached. I could not take it all in. But my heart calmed.

And that wild human rushing became something else, just for a moment or two. How messy we are, how incredibly imperfect and yet with our bright intentions, our brimming goodness somewhere to be found.

We try so hard.

It was worth it to take the risk. To believe. Not in a specific story. But something not so far away, finally, to what just might resemble an eternal or at least, ever possible, spring.

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The following is a mix of photographs from only a tiny handful of the beautiful churches of Venice.