I was looking up information about an earthquake that hit Northern Italy in 1976. I went to high school in the same region twenty years later and every so often someone would reference it, or you'd see a sculpture or church dedicated to the victims. The Italian teacher at my parents' school told them about it, remembering sleeping in tents in the fields for days afterwards, because everyone was so afraid to be indoors.
During one of my college winter breaks I went on a little road trip with my family - I remember it because it was probably the most anxious week of my entire life. I literally thought I was going insane and had no idea what to do, what it was, what was happening to me. And here I was in my dad's van, charging through the Dolomites, off to see another Picturesque Village. I was gripping the armrests and trying to breathe.
And as this earthquake in Haiti is reminding me of stories about the Italian earthquake, I remembered the church we visited on that little road trip. I've been Googling the heck out of it this morning, trying to find pictures, and I realized that church we saw wasn't rebuilt after the earthquake, it was rebuilt after another earlier disaster, when a dammed reservoir overflowed and completely wiped out the towns below.
The towns were eventually rebuilt, and you can always tell a rebuilt town. It's full of modern cinder blocks, streets in a grid pattern, wide sidewalks and parks. They look nothing like Italian towns. My parents taught in one of these towns and whenever I'd go out there, to help in a classroom or hang out after school, it always seemed ghost-like to me. It was too spacious, too empty. They'd picked up what was left of the old town, moved it a few miles away, started over.
I don't remember anything about the town of Longarone though, where we were going on our road trip, except the church. It was on a hill and you could see the place where the water overflowed. It was so high up and expansive, so huge, I could hardly imagine it.
And the church... it's startling to see modern architecture in Italy, especially in tiny little towns in the middle of nowhere. Most of the time I think it's ugly - maybe that's my sentimental American side coming out, I'm not sure, like how dare the Italians try something new! But this church, even though it was gray and concrete and built to help memorialize what happened, was beautiful. It was strikingly disturbingly beautiful.
Every picture I can find is copyrighted so I can't post it here, but there are so many, and so many of them are amazing photos.
I'm standing in the courtyard, looking at the source of immense devastation, thinking that I, too, am going through some sort of devastation - and yet God was there. He was there in those massive concrete swirls and in the statues in the courtyard and in this Italian valley so far away from my campus in Seattle and my boyfriend and everything I missed. I still thought I might be going out of my mind, but I knew that God knew this. He was here. Somehow this made it bearable.
I watch the news and I get mad at God. Where is he? If he knew an earthquake was in the plans, why didn't he have it happen elsewhere? Some place that could handle the shaking? Surely there are many places where an earthquake might strike that might not cause so much death and destruction. Seattle, even! Why there? How can he let that happen? To them?
And yet, he must be there. I watch that mysteriously-irritating Anderson Cooper stand around watching these poor men dig their sister out of rubble and I believe he is.
