I’m getting this week’s photo challenge from dailypost.wordpress.com in just under the wire, I think.

The challenge this week is to show “abandoned.”  I’ve been pondering it all week and though I knew I didn’t want to show something like an abandoned car or house or something like that, I couldn’t put my finger on something new to photo.

Instead, I decided to show you this photo that I took a couple of years ago.  I think it’s interesting for a number of reason.

First, this is graffiti that I photographed from the wall of a building just outside Vatican City in Rome.  I was there with Fr. Roderick Vonhogen for the Beatification of Pope John Paul II.  I saw this as we were walking along a side street and nearly didn’t stop to shoot it.

Second, it grabbed my attention, and I use it now, because it expresses a hopelessness of the future, an “abandonment,” if you will that seemed so out of place in Rome.

I often wonder about the person who sprayed this on the wall and hope that he or she found answers for their angst.  I think this feeling of abandonment, which we all feel from time to time, is a good thing to ponder during this season of Lent.