“Those who think that the world can only be structured as they have known it are the slow learners of history. They fail to realize that their slow learning curve is actually a form of narcissism and also a lack of knowledge. Thus, change comes with great difficulty in human history.”
(Richard Rohr, in Hope Against Darkness)
We have spent time recently in Italy where we are, in every way, out of our element. Despite our rudimentary efforts to familiarize ourselves with the language, we do not speak Italian. We get by counting out Euros in place of dollars, but it remains to us a “foreign” currency. Otherwise we point, we pantomime, we make up words. Every once in awhile, one of them is even recognizable.
What bridges the gaps of understanding? Sometimes it is the signage or the menus that charitably offer English alongside the native tongue – a generosity rarely exhibited at home. But as often as not, it is the kindness of strangers that offers the synapse between blank and desperate stares and grace filled comprehension. Sometimes it is the merchant that is managing a transaction. Often it is someone simply standing nearby equipped with more multilingualism than either of us mono-speakers.
This is high among the many reasons we visit here: the immersion in the effluent generosity of strangers. Italians count it a virtue to be helpful - to notice need, to pay attention to distress, and do what they can to alleviate it. Yes, that’s a generalization. There are certainly exceptions, but they are exceptions that prove the rule.
Italy, of course, is hardly stainless. There was and is that whole problem with the Mafia, and more than a little corruption. And Italians have had their own experience with totalitarian fascism. Mussolini headed Italy for 23 years, asserting self-interested nationalism and suppressing egalitarianism, while installing dictatorial rule by both legal and illegal means, and ultimately allying himself with Hitler during World War 2. Eventually Italians recognized that Mussolini was one of the bad guys and, without going into the details, it ended badly for “il Duce.” Let’s just leave it at that. Neither he nor his way were ultimately adjudged to be “Italian” in the truest sense of the word.
I’ve been thinking about the juxtaposition of our experience with generous Italian hospitality and the current fervor in my own country – choking, as it is these days, with authoritarian suppression, repression, condemnation and sedition. Orwellian doublespeak has become the language of the day, where words have been inverted to suggest the opposite of what they mean. “Freedom” suddenly looks, for all the world, like coercion. “Liberty” is now enforced by constraint. Imagination is now blasphemous, self-exploration and expression are now immoral, while exploitation is nonchalantly assumed. As for historical reflection, that’s now against the law. “Remembering” is only permitted to be patriotic so as to romanticize it; never honest or critical so as to learn from it. Has there ever been a time in American history when more freedoms have been removed in the name of…freedom?
Moreover, our elected leaders are actively and openly scissoring the fabric of American concourse. Far too many of them. They are actively undermining – without supporting evidence other than a dislike of outcomes – our electoral process. The Governor of the state in which I live recently beat a path to a news conference to condemn as illegal and immoral a grand jury’s indictment brought forward in another state – a grand jury of ordinary citizens of that state, on which she had not sat, and had not been privy to the evidence, and therefore about which she can hold an opinion but no intelligence, and yet about which she feels qualified to speak. And she is in plentifully ignorant company. Surely this attempted discrediting of the very legal system by which our country thrives is irresponsible, if not treasonous. She should know better. We should all expect better. We should all collectively be better.
This isn’t theater. This isn’t a television show. This isn’t farce contrived for our collective entertainment. This is “us” – or at least it is who we aspire to be. Or once did.
Honest, not duplicitous.
Imaginatively large, not judgmentally puny.
Expansive, not constraining.
Blessing and encouraging, not mockingly condemning.
Generous, not selfishly stingy.
I think about how wonderfully kind it was for the young Italian woman in line behind me to help me know where to go to wait for my cappuccino, and the woman at the market who helped me weigh and label my vegetables; the stranger at the station who confirmed I was boarding the correct train. The farmer a few miles away who picked us up for a visit because we didn’t have a car.
And countless other mercies.
And how in earlier times we Americans helped each other build barns. We gave each other rides. We shared our equipment. We shoveled each others sidewalk.
We were community. Because somehow we knew it was the human way to be.
As I clumsily counted out my Euros, and turned to wait for my coffee to be brought to me on the porch, I knew there was more I should say, but all I could mouth was, “Grazie.”
Thank you.
For being human.
And recognizing me to be, as well.
Thanks for the lesson in patient, common humanity.
Grazie. Grazie mille.
Perhaps, should you come to my country, I can return the favor.
Just don’t ask the Governor.
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