The Open Dialogue column belongs to all of you — readers we know and readers we've yet to meet.
Don't hesitate to write to us. Send us your suggestions, comments, criticism, praise for the magazine — your struggles, your questions.
In doing so, you'll help others facing the same difficulties you do. And you'll help us understand more deeply the world of disability, which we ourselves have been part of for many years.
We'll do our best to help you, and to show you our genuine interest in all you live through — with all its hardship.
May So Many Listen
I'm glad the magazine has come out. It's a small publication that will be richer or leaner, livelier or duller, depending entirely on how much we readers engage with it.
For now, what matters is knowing this voice exists — and that we want it to reach everyone, to ring out clear and strong. We want it to be an urgent invitation to search together for new paths, new ways of seeing one another, new gestures, new words. Because it's our whole lives that could be transformed by this.
My hope is that people — many people — will stop and listen.
L.B.
Every Article Reaches Out a Hand
When they ask my daughter at the center to write something about her favorite classmate, she always writes like this: "My favorite classmate is Tonino because he's nice, he's well-dressed, he has a beautiful tie, and he cares about me." When she's with the family and wants to join the conversation, she tells a joke — which is really a very long story with a bit of confusion, but it's always about a man and a woman getting married, and so on.
I'm telling you this because when I read and reread Jean Vanier's article, I found that this reality exists, and that Jean explains it very well. To be honest, the first time I read the article, I didn't quite grasp the subject. I had to read it again, slowly, bit by bit, before I understood how important it is to not make a drama out of the subject of sexuality — to know how to give love in a thousand different ways to meet their need for affection toward another person.
As for the other articles, I can say that when I read them carefully, setting aside some of my fear and anxiety about tomorrow, I find that every article reaches out a hand to me. And every topic — interesting to all of us — is written simply, in few words.
I'm looking forward to the next issue.
F.G.
A Question for the Priests
I was happy to find in the pages of Ombre e Luci something familiar — the feel of the old magazine Insieme, like home.
After reading it and thinking about many things, I found myself wanting to ask a question. In Faith and Light groups, we've always heard that it's difficult to get priests and assistant pastors in our parishes to participate in — or at least truly understand — the issues we face.
I'd like to ask the priests who have joined Faith and Light in that capacity: could you tell us what you think? Give us some advice? Help us understand what makes this understanding so hard? Help us, in short, win the friendship that many of us believe is both right and necessary.
A.d.R