Stay human

We are living in a dark hour, which disturbs and scares us. We are in a complicated season, with incandescent situations in various points of the planet, with wars that are pressing and causing shivers, with uncertainties and fears that spill over into our daily lives full of shadows and worries. There is no need to repeat the list of what today makes us feel fragile and almost lost.

Spectrums that were thought to have been overcome and archived are returning. Conflicts, fundamentalisms, terrorism, violence, weapons, prevarications... assorted inhumanities are re-emerging with arrogance, shamelessness, shamelessness. The images that follow us on the news seem to take us back decades, if not centuries.
The wounds that are being inflicted on humanity under bombs, under ruins, in shipwrecks, in poverty, in discrimination, in inequalities... are impressive. With a disconcerting aggravating circumstance, that of the children who are the most distressing victims of this painful and despairing darkness.

But it is precisely in these circumstances that we are asked to double our commitment, gathering the "hope that does not disappoint". Hope to look for ways out, to not remain indifferent, to become increasingly aware, to deploy as believers the alternative strength of prayer that can change souls where there is an urgency to change the things that are wrong and are bad, so bad.

The new generations who grow up, going through these moments of darkness with us, have the right to be accompanied on alternative paths, so that they have a future of real life and not of collective annihilation. And they must also be listened to in their intuitions which go a little further than us, without allowing ourselves to be influenced by a few too many contradictions.

You can lean beyond the mists. And together you can bet on something new. And we can start from the small big gestures of everyday life, where we can and must "remain human" as the volunteer pacifist, Vittorio Arrigoni, killed at the age of 36 by jihadist terrorists in Gaza, said. Yes, it is an indispensable duty to "stay human", day after day. And it is a formidable prophecy in the present time, stained by enormous inhumanity. Starting with the loose cannon of indifference. Not waiting for others, trying immediately, from everyone who feels up to it and wants to give a shock.


Corrado Avagnina
NP December 2023