Fourth March Square

A few days ago I was returning by bicycle from a meeting: gloves, a scarf and a super padded jacket to keep me warm.
Overhead a washed-out blue winter sky. The temperature was just above freezing. Whizzing through the streets, I find myself in an unexpected Piazza IV Marzo. Unexpected not because I was lost, but because I didn't imagine finding so many people sitting at tables on the terraces of bars and restaurants on a December weekday afternoon. Piazza IV Marzo is an ancient square that has recently been redeveloped, it is an open-air living room: dehors, flower beds, benches, bicycle racks and good lighting.
While the legs pedal, the head ruminates. This crowded square on a very cold winter day speaks to me of the need for beauty, of the need to slow down, of the need for meeting, for sharing, for relationships that inhabit all of us. To put it in a word very dear to our Fraternity: the need for presence.

In reception, one of the greatest difficulties of those who are at the beginning of their service is to find meaning in their stay, when there is nothing practical to do. The more the years go by the more I realize that the sense of our presence is not so much in doing but in being there; in contemplating instead of seeing; in knowing how to stay, without haste, in an open, welcoming and light way. Learning to inhabit those spaces by simply offering the possibility for those who want to "be with". In beautiful, clean, hospitable spaces - but above all inhabited - it happens that if you sit down and turn the clock to the other side, the tables mysteriously fill up. And then it can happen that Exalted, 3 years old, climbs onto the chair next to you and asks you to give him a piece of paper and felt-tip pens because he wants to draw you a drawing or that Ritaj arrives with the Memory box and asks you to play a game with her . That Amina, she is 75 years old, decides to share the Arab bread she has just bought in the market stalls and serve it on the table together with dates, almonds and a steaming tea with fresh mint. May Doina, who attends the fifth year of art school, seeing you without haste, show you her plates with the sketches in watercolor and charcoal and share her anxiety about her future. Let Adriana start to open up and talk, and in the end she says to you «it's been a long time since I spoke to someone about myself». Our job is simply to be there, like those outdoor tables that challenge a winter day.

Simona Pagani
NP January 2023