"Will you come visit me, Serena? Why won't you come see me?"
"Franci, did Andrea explain that there's a virus and we can't see each other?"
"Yes, he told me!... but when are you coming to visit?"
Touché…
"When will there be the little house?"
"Claudio, you know it's not possible right now. And I'm asking you—please don't go outside."
"I'm pretending there's a war outside, so if I step through the door they'll shoot me!"
"How come you didn't call me these past few days?"
"I'm too busy reading!"
Touché…
Questions and answers: that's Fede e Luce in a nutshell. Fede e Luce is Francesco with the raw, visceral directness of his questions; it's Claudio with the resilient creativity of his replies.
COVID-19 has raised plenty of questions and answers at Fede e Luce. From the urgent crisis of "what comes after us" to how to stay #CloseFromAfar, these months have been for everyone a compressed version of our most troubling questions about the future, mixed with an immediate hunger for small daily comforts—a phone call, a message.
So during quarantine, amid countless requests for closeness met with creative responses from a distance—via Zoom, over the phone—the communities somehow managed to hold their gatherings. (Thank God for technology and creativity!) The Fede e Luce network overflowed with everything: prayers and video recipes, karaoke and poetry. Parents, young people, and friends invented it all. But what circulated widely also left much behind. Technology kept us tethered to a semblance of contact—but it's not available to everyone, and it doesn't work for everyone.
Among the young people in my community, for instance, no one can join a virtual gathering on their own. Those lucky enough to live with their parents or in the "right" group home could join via Zoom. But those living alone, in the "wrong" place, or without access to technology—during lockdown they saw no one at all, not even on screen.
Fortunately the strictest lockdown didn't last long. As soon as we could—though sadly not yet for those in group homes, institutions, or nursing facilities—we organized small in-person meetings of three or four people, following all distancing and hygiene rules. We also kept our virtual gatherings, but found ways to include the various Claudios and Francescos so they too could see their friends, even if only on a computer screen.
That first walk with Alberto and Ada, coffee with Omar and Letizia, lunch out with the Poet (that's Claudio's nickname)—those were pure oxygen. A step back into normal life. In our traditional gatherings, the practice of sharing responsibility for each young person helps connect them with the larger group. Online, we discovered, some people needed to serve as bridges between the screen and the rest of the community. I learned this with Claudio, and with Valentina, with Francesco.
My first virtual gathering with the Poet was, as Claudio himself would say, very "Claudiesque"—which is to say, caught between the desire to stay and the need to bolt. We set up outside his house, a meter apart, masks and gloves on hand, and logged the others in on Zoom. Claudio sat in front of the screen just as the usual chaos of our community swirled around. In person, that's natural. Online, it became unbearable for him. He's used to commanding the scene at every meeting, and he couldn't function from the margins of a screen. He grew agitated—trouble brewing. He grumbled in his inimitable way and asked me to shut it down. We closed the connection and just talked, mixing the existential with the mundane, as we always do. It was so simple that only a fool like me could have thought Claudio would enjoy watching everyone through a screen. He has endless depths, but also sharp lines between light and shadow. Once something falls into shadow for him, it stays there. Virtual gathering: failed. In-person visit: a success.
When Valentina and I tried the same experiment with Francesco, things went much better. Maybe it was the power of two, maybe it was that Francesco is less complicated than Claudio—but that morning, keeping our distance, masks on, hand sanitizer close, we managed to connect Francesco and his brother Andrea (who'd never even done a video call before) with the rest of the community.
Francesco sat at the desk in his tank top and shorts, facing my monitor. Andrea stood behind him, eyeing the screen with disbelief. Franci called out hellos to everyone in his big voice and bombarded Carlo Alberto with questions, as usual. But like Claudio, he didn't last long. Technology exhausts you when it's a stand-in for real life. After a while he stood up and said, in his own straightforward way, "But I don't know what to say."
You're right, Francesco. I don't know what to say either, most of the time. I tell myself there's a time to speak and a time to be silent. But I'm hoping our in-person gatherings come back soon.
===FINE===