Following Father Michel Charpentier's introduction, remarks were offered by Francesca Cremonesi (director of a care center for the severely disabled in Piacenza), Valeria Levi della Vida (medical student), Signora Menegottio (mother of a handicapped boy), Dr. Sergo (specialist psychiatrist and neurologist), and Jean Vanier (founder of Faith and Light).
Since we cannot reproduce all the remarks in full here, we share portions of Valeria Levi's and Jean Vanier's contributions.
Valeria
I want to offer the perspective of young people, who should represent in society that new force we talk about so often. I say "should" because we young people are often the first not to notice the handicapped—our brothers and sisters.
A few days ago I went to meet a friend with muscular dystrophy at the school exit. Dystrophy is a disease that attacks and destroys muscles, gradually preventing even the simplest movements.
When school ended, all the other kids ran out. My friend's mother and I went into the classroom. He was there alone, his books still scattered. The sight shocked me. Not one classmate helped him gather his books, or pushed his wheelchair down the hallway, or helped him with the stairs?
We always say we must give handicapped people the right to life. But so often we don't.
There have been many other instances of true friendship and deep concern between handicapped and non-handicapped people. Still, I think it matters that all of us—young and old alike—understand and learn to be a little more brotherly with one another, naturally including the handicapped.
I believe our commitment should lie in small things: a smile, a bit of help when it's needed, half an hour now and then—but consistently. More in these simple gestures than in grand social schemes or big speeches that ring hollow and pointless.
What I call "commitment" doesn't mean—for me, at least—a matter of social action, or clearing my conscience, or a Christian good deed for some paradise that may come who knows when. It isn't that at all.
When I go to Faith and Light meetings, I don't go to give, to be the good person handing something out. I really want to learn. I want to understand what true friendship means, learn to smile even when I don't feel like it, learn to live at a slower, simpler pace—without all the complications that so often distract us from what life is really about.
Valeria Levi della Vida, 1975
Jean Vanier
When a person lives, she has hope. That hope points toward growth, toward becoming more.
For a wounded person to live, hope and growth must be possible. She announces this hope through language. Those around her must understand her language. I can be a brother only if I understand what my brother says.
There is the language of words, the language of gestures, the language of silence.
When a child wets his bed, that is a language. Every gesture the child makes, every word he speaks, says something to those around him. When a child cries or screams, that too is a language—it says: I need you. When you visit a hospital and see no child crying, that is also a language: the language of despair. Because if a child has cried long and no one has answered, eventually he stops crying and enters despair.
This is why silence is also language; the face is language; the eyes are language. And when someone wants something, when a wounded person wants something—perhaps her desire doesn't match my desire. It is in that moment that I don't want to listen. I have difficulty with the wounded person, with the wounded child. Often we have our own idea of what he should do. We try to fit him into our conventions. We fear he will make strange gestures, gestures that will make those around us think he is an idiot.
The danger for parents, friends, and educators is the wish to make the child "conventional"—to make him fit our rules, eat properly, be well-behaved. But that is my desire for him. What is the child's desire? His call? His hope?
That is our challenge: Are we available enough, honest enough, to truly listen and understand his language? Even when his freedom calls him against what I desire?
The wounded, fragile person is often afraid to express what he wants. His desire, his hope are themselves fragile. He feels around him the desires of those close to him—the desire that he be like others, that he not cry, that he behave properly. So he becomes afraid to express his own desire. For this reason, I believe the most important thing a parent, educator, or friend of a fragile person can do is ask himself: "Can I listen, or am I imposing my desire?"
We speak often of love. Do you know what love is? Love is not protection, not holding tight, not caressing. Love, first and foremost, is being happy with whoever stands before me and accepting him as he is, as a gift from God. And the second thing love does is want him—my weaker brother—to grow according to the music of his own being, to live as he is, not as I desire.
In these two dimensions of love, we must first learn to listen and welcome the other as he is. We must learn to understand the language he speaks—the language of his gestures, his mouth, his face—and remember that every gesture has meaning.
If the child breaks something, we don't punish him or tell him not to break things. We must remember that before that gesture, he was telling us something: "I am unhappy. I am sad. Something is wrong." And if he breaks something, that breakage means something.
For this reason, it matters to understand the language of his gestures. And at the same time, we must hold in our hearts a great hope: the hope that he will grow according to his own dynamism until he becomes fully who he is meant to be in God's plan.
Jean Vanier, 1975