"The Most Beloved Children"
by Carla Gallo Barbisio; Einaudi
The most beloved children, as the back cover states, are children who are "different"—children with mental illness, the handicapped. The stories in this book, the various situations they describe, give precise meaning to the title. Twenty accounts told in the first person by those who live this difficult, expansive love day after day—love tested to the very limits of human experience. These accounts emerge from conversations between parents and siblings of "different" children and a psychologist, Carla Gallo Barbisio, who has worked for years in the province of Turin. They are published without introductions, without commentary, so that they may spark reflection, foster a growth of conscience, and serve not only parents but also professionals and policymakers. These aims are the ones Gallo Barbisio herself sketches in her introduction—brief and clear, yet enough to reveal her stance: she stands entirely, unambiguously, with the people whose stories fill these pages.
I want to be brief as well in recommending it to you. (Could each group not have a certain number of copies to circulate and perhaps discuss together?) This is not a book about the handicapped; it is a book that lets us know, at least a little, real people in their everyday concrete situations—situations that are often crushing, sometimes tragic and without solution, always profoundly difficult.
After reading it, there remains a sense of gratitude toward those who gave us this new knowledge. Yet alongside that gratitude sits an absence, an emptiness that weighs. We find ourselves asking: why is it that society takes on other grave and difficult social conditions—unemployment, ignorance, poverty—and works concretely through countless efforts to remedy them in an expanding approximation toward solutions, while the situations of "different" children remain so distant, so excluded from this broader design of civilization?
Perhaps the reason lies in lack of knowledge among ordinary people. It is not enough that professionals and politicians understand the situations: neither science nor politics has yet been able to assume the task of lightening or solving them. I believe ordinary people must know. To know means to be close, to feel, to see, to participate.
When people think of the cries or violence of someone with mental illness, they shudder and feel afraid—because they do not truly know, even if they have read books or watched television reports. But when a person hears the cry of M. or the shriek of E. (that is, when they know M. and E.), not only do they lose their fear; those sounds become communication and dialogue, deepening understanding, awakening participation. Only direct knowledge fosters the growth of collective conscience, the kind that can help humanity move forward. Perhaps I should have merely recommended the book, but instead I am sharing with you the reflections it stirred in me. I do not know whether parents who have children facing similar difficulties as those in the book will find reason for interest or comfort—perhaps not. Yet there are moments of strength, of serenity, of resolve to fight and endure, which are beautiful in themselves and which can help greatly. Perhaps the book should be recommended to those who do not live these situations firsthand but who tend to remain trapped in the narrow, sometimes suffocating circle of their own private concerns.
For all of us in Fede e Luce who share at least something in common, I believe we can transform this into encouragement to expand ever wider the space in which we work—through our gatherings, our celebrations, our liturgies, our outings—so that everyone has the chance to "know" without exclusion the friends, the brothers and sisters, the companions (what does it matter how we express our desire for unity?) who walk the same path. Perhaps it will come to the point where a guttural cry reveals itself as friendly, and a shove delivers a healthy jolt to the automatism of a handshake.
Lucia Bertolini, 1980
"The Life of Bernadette"
R. Laurentin, "The Life of Bernadette" - Rome: Borla, 1978 - 3,500 Lire
"We owe this work to one of the most qualified contemporary experts in the history of Lourdes. The work does not present itself as a novelized history: the names, facts, and dialogues are scrupulously drawn from documents to which the author subjected rigorous critical study. In short, a book to read in order to encounter Bernadette in her truth, in her authentic gestures and words, and to embrace the lesson of her life (thirty-five years), entirely animated, until her death, by the message she received from the Virgin." (Monsignor Donze, Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes)
"The simplest writings will be the best. Things lose their nature when you try too hard to adorn them." (St. Bernadette on her deathbed)