Fire! One day during spiritual exercises, we came out of our talk to the smell of burning wood. I wondered what bonfire the Italian candidates were having to make lunch. Then, I noticed burnt leaves on the sidewalk. This wasn’t a bonfire.

Walking up to my room I noticed jets of smoke wafting form the valley bellow. I when up to the roof to see that a knoll in valley was engulfed in flames. The men who do maintenance in our house were down there soaking everything in our direction with fire hoses.

(Smokey says that only you can prevent forest fires. In Italy they take this to a new level: only you can stop forest fires. The whole knoll burnt to ash over 45 minutes without one professional fire fighter coming – and that is inside the city with houses 50 yards away.)

After lunch, I walked again to the roof and only a black mound of ash could be seen. Not a flame was in site and barely a puff of smoke. How quickly the things of this world pass.