Green pass to the sky

"You phoned?". This is a question that I ask more and more often. People think of moving the other towards the good, with a whatsapp or an email and in the end what could happen, does not happen. Ever since they put the Android hands free in the car, I spend my travels making phone calls. I have a directory of 6,800 names and at the end of each year I check how the growth trend has been. Every now and then I ponder whether these attitudes are positive or not and in the end I am convinced that without that column I would not do all the little good I can do. Not only that: I never find anyone who tells me to remove him from the mailing lists because he is bothered by messages or other.

Putting yourself in the shoes of others is the indispensable condition for taking care of the other, wherever and in any situation he finds himself. And yet, more and more I find someone who does something to please me, to feel a bit at ease with their conscience. When Ernesto Olivero invented restitution in the 70s, I followed the thought of him by inventing the Re.Te. (technological restitution). It was, and it is important, not to feel too well in front of humanity derelict for the most varied problems. As if to feel a bit "thieves of undeserved happiness". The net. it wanted to be an aspect of giving oneself, almost an evolution, to be able to definitively solve the problems that afflict the poor, as it is for all technology and science.

Being born at certain latitudes, in certain families, with good health, is not our merit and I have always thought that if the conditions of life were far above the multitude of people all over the world, there had to be a reason and I had to draw some consequences, on pain of living a life as a hypocrite. In the end, alive or after I died, I would pay the consequences.
Since 1980, the year in which Re.Te.
an innumerable and multiform series of gestures emerged from the Sermig.
From sending the package of drugs to the most remote dispensary on earth, to building the hydro hospital to purify the water in Bangladesh which is contaminated with arsenic. From the monthly truck sent to Romania to support the lives of street children to the chlorinator sent to Senegal to disinfect the water from bacilli and avoid nefarious dysentery. From the photovoltaic lamp to allow the herdsman Bhil from Rajasthan to study in the evening, to the quintalates of food distributed to the Caritas and listening centers of the Pinerolo area.
At the entrance to the Cumiana Global Village, from where small or large loads depart and where experiments are carried out to verify that the technical ideas work, for a month there has been a large billboard made up of many small signs. Each sign represents a state and bears the start date of the aid, the main partners, the quantities sent, those 9,240 tons, the number of shipments made and the photos of the partners themselves. We called it the "green pass" sign, to be trendy. I tell everyone to look at it carefully because one day we might need it.

Because? At the end of the day we will be judged on charity, and it can only be so, given that everything in the world has a logic; if we had and someone else did not, the tons sent and marked on the "green pass" of the Village, could make a difference to our eternal joy.

But let's get back to the phone call. Many people lose the best of life, paying attention only to their own affairs. Even more by not caring about the good that his neighbor could do. The fear of throwing open doors and windows of one's home forces us to breathe an air made more and more mephitic by our own life.
I send emails because talking, meeting, hosting, it costs me effort and maybe I mask this attitude behind the excuse of not having time because my social relationships are too many that in reality are getting smaller and smaller.
Someone should remind us that beyond ourselves the world exists and is for us.
And it is that specific person who can interact with us. Not another.
Remembering it is not a job for heroes: it is simply part of our ability to expand positively, even in this way, in that land that some call love.

The monk, the prisoner, from their cell sometimes teach us that the way out of ourselves has no limits.
I met people of both categories who, without moving from home, were able to enter the hearts of many. Someone deep in God's heart. And let's say little! It all starts with what I want. Do I really want to know in order to love the other, or do I gradually reduce myself to not even loving myself anymore, regardless of my health?

I have never gone to Africa. Only a few times have I met the street children of Romania. There are people who, if they do not go on vacation, and perhaps on vacation abroad, are deprived of much. But I am happy looking at that "green pass" billboard because I can very well see beyond it. Having cured a poor person is important, but I have understood that it is equally important to take care of those who can best help that poor person. Who has the cure par excellence? A mom, a dad. Isn't it that these figures are in crisis? Especially the father. Since the scope of being master has been taken away from him, he no longer knows what to be.
I have learned that to command one must learn to obey. How many command without ever having obeyed and make great ruins! If one had learned to be a "son", first of all, a good father and a good mother would also be good at the moment. We find ourselves in the world without references of proximity. But there is always a way to go and find fathers and mothers to learn from. The important thing is to never think of being able to build yourself with the do-it-yourself!

Rinaldo Canalis
NP Focus
October 2021