We are celebrating because Ombre e Luci is turning forty. It is right and beautiful to celebrate, but it is also good to look back and see the story of these forty years, the first steps, our forebears.
The magazine was born from need—from our first gatherings, from a hunger to stay close to one another throughout the year, to share impressions and stories of our life together. It echoed the extraordinary moments of the first summer camps at Alfedena: Patrick, despite his severe spastic paralysis, managed to climb Mount Meta in the Gran Sasso range in a makeshift stretcher—"with them." Together, the magazine fed and strengthened our hope and joy in the darkest days.
Because as the days pass—for everyone, but especially for families with a disabled child, or for young people with parents who quarrel or are divorced, living in homes where family love no longer breathes, who come to find it from Fausta or Rita or other mothers and couples who have become expert in the needs of their most fragile children—not every day is bright and joyful. There are dark passages, weeks and even months of doubt and questions. "Why? Why me?" The cry goes out against God and everyone else, seemingly unheard. In each life there are shadows and lights. Exactly! So why not choose Ombre e Luci as the title?
But the first issue of Ombre e Luci was not our first leap from mimeograph to print. Four years earlier, we had made a pilgrimage to Assisi—our first real Pilgrimage. When we returned, to commemorate that journey, we published a memorial issue in print. We dared to spend far more than a mimeographed sheet would cost. We needed real printing, from a real print shop, with a real bill to pay. A bill that some anonymous saint paid for us.
That issue was called Fede e Luce – Assisi '78. Fede e Luce—not only to honor our movement's name, but to say that it takes great faith to see light even on the darkest, most opaque days. The faith of Francis of Assisi, the poor saint who could sing the Canticle of the Creatures and praise the beauty of creation even when he was nearly blind.
Nearly five hundred of us set out from Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland, with a small delegation from France. Each person gathered faith as a store and reserve for the dark days that would surely knock on the door again. This little magazine is full of such testimony. Among many, I offer two, from mothers with severely disabled children—a girl and a boy. "God," the first writes, "loved me by giving me a fragile daughter, because he showed me that the world, people, are still full of goodness, and that brotherhood has not vanished in this age of selfishness and cruelty and violence. (…) I saw smiles so beautiful and moving painted on suffering faces. They will always stay in my heart as witness that this was truly lived, not a dream born from my desire for peace. And such peace I received that it left me almost stunned." The second echoes her: "We came to Assisi all poor, each carrying our own burden of joy or sorrow, more or less heavy to bear; it is precisely through this that we will see the Light. (…) I too fought my battle to gain peace of heart. After the storm I felt God's presence closer."
This single issue tells the story of days lived together—games, celebrations, joys and hardships met with calm, thanks to friends and families facing similar struggles. It is a treasury of testimony from people of every age: many children, younger siblings, friends' children. It circulated widely in our communities, confirming what everyone increasingly felt: the need for a "real" magazine, "published regularly," that would help us understand the gift Fede e Luce was to each of us. A place to read in simple words the many diagnoses affecting our young people. A way to open our eyes and hearts to deeper knowledge, to prayer, to mutual support. A magazine where we could print the most beautiful photos—the ones that say more in a glance than a speech, readable even by those who cannot read. All of this pushed us to dare. In early 1983, Ombre e Luci was born.
In forty years, the world around disability has changed considerably. Our young people now go to school in regular classrooms alongside their peers, with no separation or exclusion. Everything seems to favor their place in an ordinary—or nearly ordinary—life. And yet not all that glitters is gold. While many hardships have become lighter, the question of their tomorrow still haunts us. This means Ombre e Luci's work is far from finished. It is more necessary than ever to nurture an ever-widening network of friendship and fraternal help, to share information about group homes and other possibilities, to build toward a future we hope will never have to come.
So let us resume the journey toward our fiftieth year! Let us do it together, committed to spreading the magazine, growing our subscriptions, showing by deed and not just words that Ombre e Luci matters.
Maria Grazia Pennisi, 2023