So was the September camp actually going to happen? After weeks of head counts, volunteer lists, and planning meetings to figure out who could actually make it, we finally left. A small group, loosely organized, but burning to be there. Anyone who saw us wandering through the village of Gagliano, or splashing around in the town pool—and what a pool it was, slides and games for everyone, though Valerio was disappointed about the low diving board—must have wondered what kind of strange group we were: little children, teenagers, people with handicaps, parents, older friends, all of us chattering happily arm in arm. We were hardly a uniform bunch. But that's what Faith and Light is always like. Anyone who's been to a camp or joined a community knows it.
Into the same pot go children and adults, different social backgrounds, different beliefs and politics, different ways of living. You could call it a great big minestrone. But what holds all these differences together? What's the glue? The secret ingredient that makes the soup so flavorful? And how is it that people so different not only stay together but actually thrive together, and come home—at least, this was my experience—full of calm and peace in their hearts? There has to be something that creates that particular "Faith and Light" feeling, some mysterious element that makes a camp "work." It's certainly not just the activities or the carefully chosen games tied to the camp's theme, though those things help and matter. They fill the days with joy.
Yet the Gagliano camp—so improvised, so often invented on the spot—taught us that the real secret of Faith and Light lies elsewhere. I think curiosity is at the foundation of everything. You arrive curious to meet your friends, to discover the young people, to live something new. You come ready to open yourself to others, ready to listen and observe in ways that everyday life makes hard to sustain. You're willing to step outside yourself. The first days are never easy for anyone—not for the volunteers trying to shape the rhythm so the atmosphere stays calm, and not for the young people, so tied to their habits, their familiar places, the people they know.
Yet every time, at every gathering, something deeper always emerges—it's a surprise each time—moments of real sharing. During a trip, around the evening circle, or while cooking lunch and chatting over pots and pans. Conversations at camp are never trivial. They dig into lives, into people themselves. From curiosity comes mutual knowing—not always instant, maybe gradual, but real and deep. At Gagliano, despite my shyness at first, the atmosphere of sharing was so clear, the acceptance of each other even in silence, the genuine wish and curiosity to discover the person beside you for who they really are, that it felt natural for me to open up, to let myself be known, little by little, but truly and happily—while also watching and joining in as others opened up too.
It's widely recognized (though often in words more than in action) that everyone—and I mean everyone—even that girl who seems so shallow at first glance, or that boy who does nothing but curse, or that young man who doesn't speak and won't meet your eyes (but what a moment when he does!)—we all carry a treasure inside. A treasure means we hide it, somewhere, often unknown even to ourselves: our deepest essence, everything we could give to others, everything we could help them understand about us, if we felt free enough, if we felt ready. I couldn't tell you myself what this treasure is, even though I've felt it many times, in others and in myself. I only know that when a person manages to pull it out, to let it shine for another, or to catch sight of it gleaming in someone else—that's immense joy. It's feeling full, alive.
And the joy is tripled when it's our young people who shine, who let themselves be discovered and known. They're so mysterious, so hard to read. Yet it's they, in their naturalness, in being themselves no matter what, who teach us to drop our armor, the defenses we put around our own treasure to keep it safe—which only ends up hiding it from others. At a Faith and Light camp you learn, and the first teachers are the young people themselves, to drop those defenses, to be yourself, to live in real communion with real people. That's where the indescribable atmosphere comes from. From curiosity to welcome, from welcome to knowing and accepting, from accepting to sharing yourself and to the joy of uncovering the treasures in others and in yourself. That's the magic recipe for our minestrone. That's why on the last day of camp, I had a stomachache and endless sadness.
Benedetta Bertolini, 2008