Secrets to our Personal Past

We have tuned in our purpose of traveling to grow, learn, entertain, curate stories and discover more secrets for Carla’s Living Seasonally quest.

If the opportunity presents itself, go to Rome and live there for a month. There is so much to see. So much beauty, so much history and so many secrets.

Go to Rome and be stirred by the Roman Coliseum. Originally known as Flavian’s Amphitheater, the construction began in AD 72 and we completed eight years later under the reign of Titus, son of Emperor Vespanian. The Coliseum has four distinct levels seating over 50,000. We have walked at the floor level where sand is the base for a vast wooden construction. Look up and you see the vast stone walls that create a labyrinth of passageways and rooms without views. Close your eyes and picture where wild tigers engaged with hunters, slaves and gladiators, fighting to their death on this sandy floor. As you tour the upper portion of the Coliseum through eighty entrances, each are numbered except the emperor’s gate, a gladiators’ gate and two for special guests. Sounds like AT&T Stadium in Texas.

Look harder and you will find the gladiators’ gate is directly within site line of the emperor. Make sure and go through the emperor’s gate and look up. Here, you will see a Secret.
In this place of brutal combat, where strength, skill, and brutality intersected hangs a stunning Cross. Blink and you will miss it. What? In this arena once designated for Nero’s Circus famous for feeding Christians to the
lions, home of where Saint Peter was crucified, there stood a cross placed there by Pope Benedict XIV in the 18th century.

What is the significance of this Secret find? Consider the contrast. The Coliseum represents one Roman Kingdom and the other….the kingdom of God in Christ prevailed.

Living Seasonally can transport you as a time traveler. The Roman Empire is no more and the Coliseum is merely a tourist attraction, perhaps one of ten iconic buildings you see on most travel journals or luggage stickers attached to Samsonite. But in this moment of seeing a simple Cross, here lies historical cross roads of Jesus first followers contrasted with empire, temple, dominance and bloody hatred.

This is not fiction. This is the actual history of your faith and your ancestors, upheld by a single unprecedented event- the resurrection. Travelers, meet your past and consider the secrets to
your very own, very personal past.