FAITH

FAITH

The first part.

In this article, I will expose my simple vision related to spirituality, related to faith. In other words, we will analyze the source-value or the super-value that determines the existence and functioning of all the values that form common sense.

I know it’s an intimate, sensitive, inflammatory subject. I want to assure you that I have a deep respect for all religions and spiritual expression forms. After all, there is only One all-wise energy that has created us all. It is an area in which criticism and intolerance have caused enormous damage throughout human history.

Every human being has the freedom to choose religion or how to relate to the Spiritual world.

But, for a start, I want to tell you some real events in my life that forced me to reflect more deeply on this super-value. Analyzing these facts, in time, I came to some conclusions that became definitive certainties for me.

Here are the facts exactly as I personally experienced them:

1. At the age of 5, on a cool autumn day, I happily played with other children my age on a large field behind our homes. From the adults’ words in the area, I understood that there were heavy battles in the Second World War. Since this war had ended for about 10 years, everywhere were still scattered, many objects left behind by the warriors, in general, remnants of ammunition used to bring death.

Inspired by this morbid landscape, we children also invented a game of aggression. We each armed ourselves with a tube from an exploded projectile; I would run and fill it with water from a nearby stream and throw water at the enemy. At one point, an opponent of mine ran out of ammunition, meaning no water, and made a desperate gesture. He threw that projectile into my head with all his might. After a while, I woke up in a hospital bed, under my parents’ desperate eyes. Doctors said it was a miracle that I survived such a blow.

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2. At the age of 6, another unpleasant event happened to me. At that time, I lived in the country, in the house inherited from my maternal grandparents. Hard and turbulent times! The communists were all-powerful and were preparing to steal all the land from the people who lived from agriculture. My parents were very hard-working and did their best to survive. To weave something to wear, people used to grow a hemp field. To weave hemp fiber, you had to go through a rather laborious technological process. An essential step in this process was keeping the hemp plants in a river for 2-3 weeks.

One sunny summer morning, my mother woke up very early to go with her to a river 12 km away.

The ox-drawn cart, loaded with hemp sheaves, waited for the departure signal. We children were at the peak of happiness because we went to the river to bathe. You realize that the road took quite a long time because 2 oxen towed the vehicle. When I got close to the river, I asked the man holding the oxen to make room for me, in front of me, on the board he was sitting on, and giving me the whip to become a driver for a few moments.

Trying in a hurry to reach the dream place, I lost my balance and fell behind the oxen, among the wheels of the cart. When they finally managed to stop the cart, they found me collapsed and frightened in the dust of the country road. My mother fell to her knees beside me, weeping and making crosses of gratitude to the Unseen world. I was healthy, without any scratches. The wheels of the cart moved past me without touching me.

The crying mother said it was a miracle!

3. Near our country house meanders a stream, where we children went swimming and catching fish. Along this stream lay vast fields where cows, horses, and sheep grazed quietly. One summer day, I went for a walk on the waterfront, hoping to find a playmate. Being alone, I hadn’t the urge to undress to bathe in the stream, and I continued to walk, looking to invent a game in which I did not need a partner.

As I write this mini-story, I paused and looked out the window at exactly where I was in trouble, over 60 years ago.

While I was walking bored, with a stick in my hand, I discovered a higher mound of earth in which a few wasps were coming in and out in a hurry. Then I said to myself: “Look, I found my playmates,” and I started to put the stick in the holes where these “cute insects” were circulating. Surely you can imagine what happened. A cloud of well-armed fliers rose menacingly from the nest built in the ground, determined to eliminate the intruder who threatened their home.

The fight scene looks like this; I only wore shorts and a T-shirt, with a stick in my hand and on the other side a squadron of planes with a huge lethal force. What can you do in this situation? We have known the strategy for tens of thousands of years; fight or run! As the fight meant 0 chances of survival, I ran at high speed to a high cornfield about 20 meters away. I was not a child with special running skills, but then I think I set a record!

Luckily, the corn crop was neglected by the owner, and a tall layer of weeds growing between the rows. I quickly slipped below their level and saved myself from death by anaphylactic shock. In the end, I found that about 4-5 flyers still touched their enemy put on the run. As far as I can remember, I don’t think I told my mother this story. If no one knew anything, it means that no one spoke: it was a real miracle that you were not killed!

And yet, it was a miracle!

4. In a previous story, I told you that when I was 6 years old, there were sinister rumors about how the communists would steal all our land. All this was confirmed immediately. In a few weeks, all the village inhabitants where we lived were forcibly dispossessed of the lands on which they practiced subsistence agriculture. They were practically turned into slaves; they still worked on their lands, but the communists took over almost all the products. Finally, people arrived in the communist heaven dreamed and designed by “the brilliant leaders” Engels, Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. The happiness of being controlled by the security guards at every moment, and of being poor, hungry, and humiliated.

It is one of the best examples of how aberrant, illusory thinking of “leaders” can bring hell into people’s lives. But all these degrading abuses would not have been possible if those led had revolted and not been. Characterized by ignorance, cowardice, and lack of solidarity. You don’t know who is more to blame for these dysfunctional social conditions; the tyrant or the tyrannized?

In this situation, my parents looked for solutions to save us as a family. We children, the two brothers, could hear them talking all night looking for survival strategies. My mother did not have much schooling, but she was brilliant and very determined. He was an innate leader. She was able to find solutions to any problem, no matter how difficult it was. I have never known a man stronger and more persevering than her. He could easily have been an excellent head of state. I am sure that this blog and the educational works I have written would never have existed without its huge force to inspire and lift me. That’s about true parenting, my dear! A strong and determined parent who emanates a wave of positive, purifying, creative, unstoppable energy that will lift the child higher and higher.

When we grew up and got to college and did something wrong, my mother called us and said in a harsh voice, “Be good and obedient. If it weren’t for me, you’re still driving a horse-drawn cart in the village.” And he was absolutely right.

In the following days, my parents’ decisions managed to bring about major changes in our lives, which the neighbors could not even dream of. He enrolled us, the boys, in some schools in a neighboring town; they sold everything around the house; cows, pigs, chickens, cereals, etc. In the end, they also went to work in another city. There, he had begun a frantic activity of communist construction and industrialization.

Forgive me for being seduced by this wave of love, nostalgia, and gratitude for my parents. In fact, this is how any normal child should think and feel when he thinks of those who gave him life and helped him grow and evolve.

In fact, I keep trying to tell you a short story about what it was like to lose my life while I was a student at the city school. I was about to finish elementary school, grades 5, 6, 7, and my older brother, high school grades 8, 9, 10, 11. To survive, we were assigned to a boarding school, where we were provided with accommodation and meals. There was a prison-like atmosphere, supervisors, going to classes in disciplined columns, etc.

This dormitory, or boarding school, was actually designed only for high school students. We little ones, 4-5 boys, were accepted after some interventions, among the few hundred big boys. They went to a class in the morning, and we the little ones in the afternoon. Because the supervisors focused on the big boys, we, the little ones, had more freedom of movement.

One morning, I happened to be left alone in that huge building. In fact not alone, because the cooks were also preparing the food for lunch. Under these conditions, I started walking through the building and the orchard to find something to play with. At one point, I reached the outside of an annex under construction. Here, I discovered a metal box with an open door in a wall, where I found a lot of colored wires. Also, in this box, I saw a white plastic tube. I was delighted with this tube; I had the impression that it was actually a kind of flute, for which I could have performed a delightful song.

I reached out and took it. This plastic tube was actually an insulator, which superficially protects some electrical connections made in a hurry. Left unprotected, the wires arched and stuck to the wall of the metal box. The moment I tried to close the box’s door, I was violently hit by the electric shock. I fainted and fell to the ground. After an hour or two, I was found by a cook who watered me with cold water and woke me up. I got to my feet as if nothing had happened. I am convinced that this simple woman, who found me lying on the ground, did not even realize why I was fainting there. It didn’t make the connection between my condition and the metal box full of electrical wires.

Wasn’t this also a miracle?

5. In the previous story, I told you that I went to do the elementary school in a town near the village where I grew up. All this time, my parents worked in construction in a nearby town, 40 kilometers away.

During the summer holidays, I went with my brother to live with them. It was not easy because they shared a two-room apartment with another family. But that was the situation.

On the first vacation I spent with them, I felt lonely and a little scared because I didn’t know any children to play with.

I heard people talking around me that there was a river near the city, with clear waters and green meadows, where children and adults went swimming and sunbathing on hot days.

One sunny morning I went alone, on foot, to see this miracle. It was a wonderful place indeed; golden sandy beaches, crystal clear waters full of fish, meadows covered with lush willows and flowers. The beach was full of adults and children playing together and filling the air with their happy screams.

Being a more shy, more introverted child, I did not dare to communicate with anyone. I found that no one cared about me, as if I were invisible. Towards noon it became even warmer. Then, I thought of cooling off in these clear waters by swimming a little. I was sure I would be able to do it because I was, a few times, at some lakes near the city where I was doing school, and I managed to stay afloat for a few moments.

We left the crowded place in the beach area and went down a few tens of meters downstream. I had no way of knowing that this was the most dangerous place, with deep water and fast currents. After I went down into the water, I realized the danger, but it was too late. Right there, near the shore, the water drew me deep, with great power. As we descended, I no longer had the strength to fight the water, so I opened my eyes, and instinctively stretched my hands forward. The water was clear. I could see very well the shore along which my body was speeding down

At one point, I saw a root arching in the water. With my hands outstretched in front of me, I grabbed it, and slowly, slowly, I rose to the surface of the water. After calming down a bit, I looked around. The same bright sun, the same calm atmosphere, the same distant giggles of children. Nobody cares that I was ready, ready, to drown. Or maybe Someone was worried and sent an angel to save me!

What do you say? Coincidence or miracle?