Lobsters and Fractals

I arrived in Cattolica for what was billed as a national-provincial meeting. It sounds like the title of a union conference, but Enza explained that it actually marked something much larger: a turning point for the movement. The fact that we gathered during Pentecost gave us courage in the face of these changes. Jesus's words—"Behold, I make all things new"—turned our thoughts to the hard question of transformation: what new balance could we find for Fede e Luce's identity and mission?
I came home with three things in my hands.
First, a letter from Father Larsen (see the box alongside), written to those gathered there. He couldn't attend due to illness and age, but his words traveled with us.
Father Larsen's letter changed how I see what Fede e Luce offers our world.
Second, a small booklet published by Fede e Luce, collecting passages from Father Larsen's writings. Like his letter, these pieces begin in ordinary moments but open onto surprising light for our journey ahead.
Third, a lobster—the symbol we used all week to talk about something hard to do: shedding old shells. The little lobster didn't want to change its armor, even though it had grown too tight, forcing it into strained movements. All of us searched for our own shells, ready to crack them open and let ourselves grow, and in growing, to free the energy we carry.
I also carried back an exchange between two parents. One had written about the weight pressing down on his community—closed in on itself, no new families, no outside friends. The other replied: "But we parents, we who know how much Fede e Luce means to our own families—shouldn't we be the ones to carry this message beyond our walls? Why leave it to others?" And there in Cattolica sat a couple from Ponte Lambro with their daughter Benedetta, twenty-eight, who has intellectual disabilities. They're about to start a new community in their town.
Then came Enza's reflection on fractals. During seven years coordinating nationally, she'd felt the pull of a truth: that people closer at hand can often nourish the movement better. But the distance troubled her. Yet Enza is also a brilliant math professor, and she reached for a concept that had struck her in high school—fractals.
Think of a cauliflower. Look at its smallest floret, and you'll see the same pattern as in the whole. Each part mirrors the whole. The cauliflower is a fractal. The universe works the same way: whether you look at it in totality or in a single corner, the pattern of development is similar.
Fede e Luce and fractals—they seem worlds apart. Yet what we live in our small, perhaps unremarkable communities might be a seed of something new for the wider world. Father Larsen's letter invites us to sit with this. Through the fractal image, Enza helped us see that "when we hold dear each single situation, when we pay attention to it fully, we can project it outward—we can see it represented in the general. In small things we carry the same image as the whole, so we can trust in the power of prayer, of simply showing up, because this desire spreads and amplifies."
I believe the world around us could change deeply if we could carry out into the wider world the wealth of what we live in Fede e Luce. Think only of what we practice together: genuine welcome of others, and of ourselves.
On the drive home, a few things happened that confirmed something I'd been turning over. One community in Rome lost several members. The grief didn't stay locked inside individual families—it rippled outward. A young woman spent energy organizing a real celebration for a friend with intellectual disabilities, who was turning fifty, right when summer vacation began. Another stayed late at the hospital where she works to sit with a boy in her care. Small bonds, but they shift how we stand in this world and how we touch it.
Cristina Tersigni, 2009