Retired as a social worker in '95, I came to Faith and Light a few years later through a small workshop we ran together—not with any grand intention, and certainly not after much deliberation.
The role of community leader arrived unexpectedly in '99. Now, at the end of three years, I find everything open to question except one thing: what I've learned about listening. I see a father's troubled, tense, exhausted face as he barely holds himself together while his son grows suddenly turbulent, then watch him join his son in mime during our celebration. I hear a mother tell me, carefully and patiently, about her life watching over her son. I listen to a friend who has come to understand even my own emptiness. I feel them as my brothers and sisters. There is something positive in the mystery of human weakness.
Today I can say the community educates us because we need it to. The experience of mutual learning isn't something we chose or decided on ethical grounds—it's a necessity. Change, newness, arrives constantly at every gathering, and we find ourselves reaching to understand it.
In my years working within institutional care settings, experience was filtered through layers. Sharing wasn't always seen as important, and when it happened, it was shaped by technical procedure.
In the Faith and Light community, affection is foundational. You breathe the freedom of real friendship, and the whole person responds to that. What follows—our shared search for each other's good, our careful and attentive concern for each other's struggles—demands constant dialogue. It is a path toward the person.
If this essential quality has remained alive and clear through the years, and has reached me, then I'm convinced we're holding onto something truly fertile, something of real cultural worth.
— Antonella B., 2003
