We’re on the way

and for the meeting.

We have been dreamed.

We want to reach the Encounter forever…

Faced with a generation that is fleeing

It seems that the one going in the opposite direction is fleeing.

It takes conviction and strength to go upstream to its source

like salmon does.

There’s a swell today.

and what it seems, is not;

And what it is, doesn’t seem like it.

Society hasn’t exactly stopped talking about the person.

It has transformed it into an object of reading, management, and performance.

But a person is not an isolated block that then enters into relationships.

It is constituted relationally.

It needs the other to survive.

Human beings become human in the encounter, from the moment they are conceived.

THE FORGOTTEN QUESTION

What does this society know about the person who lives in it?

It is visible, visibility without knowledge

It’s information, without hospitality.

Diagnosis without implication.

Here a new but equally chilling solitude is born.

It’s not a lack of company.

But rather the absence of a gaze that

do not classify,

Don’t label it.

A look

paused,

serene,

that does not invade.

A look that I simply loved.

does not reduce

does not manage

does not colonize

NAME.

We are a shared embrace that we know how to renounce because we are seen and recognized.

It is fundamental in childhood and old age.

The embrace, the human touch, does not invade,

confirms.

It reminds the other person that they are not an “abstraction”, they are a person.

It is an inhabited body,

vulnerable,

unrepeatable.

It is not an affectionate ornament,

It is human architecture.

Being present does not mean sharing space, but paying attention so that the other person is not reduced to an “interruption”.

In childhood, that presence shapes, nourishes, and connects.

In old age, it sustains, maintains the bond, and accompanies.

Without presence, the person becomes data.

Manageable, perhaps.

But unknown.

THE PRECARIOUSNESS OF THE OPEN AIR

Those who are fragile – due to age, health, or loneliness – do not need their fragility explained to them.

It needs not to be abandoned in it.

The art of cooking for someone offers a powerful and accurate image of humanity.

Cooking is transforming:

• matter in care.
• time in food
• food in relation.

It is no coincidence that in early relationships the body matters so much.

Voice, gaze, and touch convey confidence even before words.

And it is not by chance that, in old age, when a person may become more isolated, human contact acquires a decisive importance.

The right to be supported without being degraded.

Today more than ever, not everything that everyone does is what everyone should be doing.

There is a silent violence that empties human life of meaning and purpose.

The culture of success, usefulness, and self-sufficiency  turns difference into suspicion.

He who does not run.

The one who takes care.

He who grows old with joy.

The one who prays.

Who stops.

He who does not live subject to useful profitability.

It is the one that does not subject ability to social logic.

And this society often wants

rejecting those who do not fit into that speed of useful profit by turning them into subjects of charity and making them invisible.

The elderly, the sick, or people with disabilities become invisible.

They are tolerated as long as they do not interrupt.

They are celebrated as a memory, but marginalized as a present.

“Nobody gives thanks

to the dry riverbed,

because of his past”

(Rabindranath Tagore)

WOUNDED FREEDOMS

Wounded freedom doesn’t need cutting-edge, quick-fix medicine. It needs an anthropology of forgiveness.

Forgiveness must avoid two anchors that make it sick:  dependence and naiveté .

Forgiveness that clings to the wound is not liberating. Nor is it liberating to excuse the wound due to a lack of intent. This is always a personal responsibility.

Forgiveness is ceasing to be ruled by the hurt.

although it takes a while to stop bleeding.

It is about opening a space where the truth is neither shut down nor disguised.

Resentment ceases to be the deciding factor.

The capacity to forgive, elevating the dignity of all involved, is a  grace from God  that must be continually sought in order to imitate the crucified one:

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

There is a question that confronts us with ourselves.

What kind of presence are we willing to be?

This world—which is ours and we have no other—is not humanized by the accumulation of data.

analysis,

speeches…

It becomes more human through the density of encounters.

And every encounter begins when someone stops looking at the other as

function,

problem,

residue

or nuisance

and dares to receive it as a MYSTERY.

This question is simple and demanding,

Who are you really looking at?

Who are you appointing with justice and charity?

Who do you hug with respect and tenderness?

Who do you cook with care for?

To whom do you return freedom through forgiveness?

If these questions make you uncomfortable, it’s a good sign. If the wound itches, it may be starting to heal.