A Mother Writes
My name is Iolanda. I've been married for thirteen years and have five children, including a spastic daughter, Mariangela.
I never struggled to accept this child in her condition. Even with four other children to care for, my real difficulty came when I realized that Mariangela's illness would never improve.
I noticed her condition around age two. From the beginning, I made sure she didn't feel singled out by it, and that her siblings accepted her as she was.
For a long time we found it hard to take her out, to be around other people. But with help first from Stella Mattutina, and then from Faith and Light, those barriers fell away.
My other children—Massimo, Laura, Stefania, and Paolo—have always accepted Mariangela for who she is. In fact, having a sister in a wheelchair at home has helped them embrace the other young people they meet through Faith and Light who face their own struggles.
I saw just how much her siblings love her two years ago, when Mariangela spent two weeks in the hospital. They suffered deeply from her absence. They were so used to having her at home every day that they asked, on their own, to pray together for her healing. They even asked their schoolmates to do the same.
Faith and Light has opened us up. To one another, and to others. It's been a great gift because it makes us feel every day how much we belong with Mariangela.
Iolanda
From a Reader
I'm a devoted reader and admirer of the newsletter "Together," and I hope you'll see fit to publish my poem, "With Autistic Children," in one of your coming issues.
In my work, I've been fortunate to work alongside neuropsychiatrists and psychologists who are skilled in their fields. But like most professionals, they're skeptical or dismissive about faith as a tool for healing. They doubt the value of an environment tailored to a child—one where images, texts, and parables are carefully chosen and examined.
I believe deeply, instead, in the power of appropriate religious and spiritual formation for children, especially those who are uncertain, troubled, or less gifted than their peers.
My poem is perhaps more a search than an answer. But how can I give up looking for a doctor willing to explore paths so little known, or rather so little valued?
Warmly yours.
With Autistic Children
Go to the most vulnerable,
To those whose thoughts are locked from words:
Because they have enormous eyes and fear all gazes
They open closed hands to the other,
longing to find a gift there.
If to heal the long anguish,
to know seas opened after
the crash, darkness on the rocks,
faith suffers from a science
That does not believe. I write these verses
to a disappointed doctor,
absorbed, in light envelopes with white wings, certain I entrust them to him.
Friendship
Friendship is a serious commitment. It's a daily practice of openness and sensitivity, tending to real communication.
The bond of friendship goes deeper than blood. To have a sincere relationship with friends who share in our daily anxieties—as is so common in the world today—well, the only thing to say is: "I HAVE FOUND A TREASURE!"
But to develop true friendship, we must know each other deeply, share our thoughts. That means we need to expand how we communicate, so everyone has room to express the treasures we carry within. And this can happen one-to-one or in a group, so that all of us can both give and receive. Then our friendship will truly have meaning.
Fausta
Faith and Light
I knew about Faith and Light only by reputation, until I was invited to an event at Villa Pacis. I went in the afternoon, and what struck me was a profound serenity.
I was moved by the mutual exchange of gifts and the way each person enriched the other. On one side: the gift of vitality, exuberance, energy, and love. On the other: something even more precious—the gift of suffering, of truly accepting pain and turning it into love. This enormous treasure of inexhaustible inner growth, radiating its light, offered simply and without fanfare, as a living expression of faithfulness to the Gospel.
I left Villa Pacis filled with gratitude for having lived an experience of authentic love.
A.M.
From Milan
Thank you for keeping me informed about Faith and Light's activities. To beg your pardon, I'm sending you photocopies of articles that, if you're able to use them, might offer some ideas for your newsletter "Together." You're welcome to excerpt them or republish them in full, as you see fit.
I send you my best wishes for ever more intense social and Christian action in this most delicate area, with warm regards.
Dr. G. Tizzoni, 1977
...........
The Handicapped
From "Il Segno," March 1976
Who are they? How many? Why are they excluded? And so on.
The term "handicapped," borrowed from English, refers to people who are hindered and disadvantaged—physically, psychologically, or socially—for various reasons. In Italy, we speak of somewhere between three and four million handicapped people. Consider that two to three percent of the school-age population has mental deficiencies. I'm limiting this to the sector of the psychologically handicapped, more commonly known as the subnormal.
Rather than leave the causes and statistics to those better qualified to explain them, I want to say something important: an intellectual deficiency, and the difficulty or inability to express oneself or work like others—because it stems from physical injury and thus from natural causes—these things do not diminish the moral and ethical wholeness of the person. They do not reduce his or her full value as a creature, beloved by God and by society.
These people with special needs are, by human measure, less fortunate than others. Yet perhaps in God's design they balance out a humanity too often burdened by vice, hatred, and ingratitude.
Remember the Gospel parable of the talents. It should convince us that the handicapped, too, have the right to school, to work, to life—within the limits of their abilities.
They don't ask us for pity or compassion. They wait for our participation, our acceptance, our friendship, so that they are no longer "excluded."
Dr. Tizzoni
A Faith and Light Mother
I came across a suggestive poem by Rabindranath Tagore, written to his son. I wanted to share with all of you the emotion it stirred in me.
I wish to find a quiet corner
in the heart of my child's world.
I know he has stars that speak to him, and a sky
that bends over his face to delight him
with rainbows and silly clouds.The ones that pretend to be silent
and claim they can never move
come creeping to his window
with their stories and with trays
full of shining toys,I wish I could travel the road
that runs through my child's mind
and out beyond all borders;where messengers bring news
without purpose among the realms
of kings from no known story;where Reason makes kites
from its laws and flies them,
and Truth sets the facts free
from its bondage.