When my friend Nina G and I arrived in Assisi, Italy for our writing residency at Arte Studio Ginestrelle this past January, we did so with a particular writing project in mind. Instead, other stories found us and took us on different creative paths as we explored the history and spiritual traditions in and around Assisi, the hometown of St. Francis and St. Clare. It had been a long time since I felt a heart-connection to Christianity and I could not have predicted before this trip how much I would be changed by the story of a small community of spiritual friends who shared a radical vision for community, faith, and life 800 years ago. One story from that community now inspires the project I am working on.

Based on the story of Brother Rufino’s temptation and torment by the Devil found in The Little Flowers of St. Francis, I am writing a children’s play for adults titled “Brother Rufino’s Best Worst Day.” Utilizing puppetry and song, I hope this play will embody the child-like wonderment and trust in the Divine that first touched my heart while learning about Franciscan spirituality in its birthplace. It is also a trickster narrative for our troubled times, a subversive and irreverent form of sacred wisdom that honors a radical love and kinship with all living creatures and which insists we include ourselves. I wish I had encountered more stories like this one when I was younger, especially during those times when I felt most alone in my struggles with mental health and deconstruction of my religious faith.

This project is inviting me then into qualities of the creative process I not only have lost access to at times as an adult–joy, curiosity, play, comedy–but it is also offering a do-over to my inner child. I am writing children’s songs and learning how to make puppets, neither of which I have done before and may never do well. But I am trying to trust the message I find in this story of Brother Rufino and St. Francis in ways both small and large: to link ourselves to Love, not an illusion of Perfection.

I hope to be able to share more of this project as I go along. This weekend my nascent project will be catalogued alongside the work of other artist residents from this past year at the Assisi International Contemporary Art Exhibition. If I am able to return to Assisi next year, I would love to be able finish this project where it began. In the meantime, I will keep following where this story takes me.

Brother Rufino in the Garden