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subjected to experience

At the Root of What We Saw
The VIPs and the volunteers tending the parking lot under the sun, all in front of an event in the making... From here, we begin a work of reflection without which “we do things by halves.” GIORGIO VITTADINI helps us to understand what we take home from the Rimini Meeting, and what new openings are offered.

by Davide Perillo

“What do we take home from Rimini? First of all, a fact: it is not we who create the event, it is there in reality. The Meeting is not a group of people commenting on something already existing, but it is an event in the making.” This event saw him once again this year amongst the protagonists, onstage alongside Tony Blair, as well as the Italian Finance Minister, Giulio Tremonti. He was there, too, in deep discussions with the people whom he met between an exhibition and an interview, between a coffee and a talk with guests in the visitors’ lounge. So it is no surprise that the assessment of Giorgio Vittadini, President of the Subsidiarity Foundation and one of the motors of the whole show, starts off from there, from that first example of “event in the making” that becomes knowledge–the volunteers. “Almost 4,000 people who live a week in that way cannot fail to astound. But knowledge is the journey from which it is born. Many of them do heavy work, ungratifying work, in the parking lots or doing the cleaning. Yet they make a journey in which that experience, which seems to be the negation of positivity and happiness, becomes a way of reaching the heart of the Meeting. They are aware that the Mystery is the meaning of everything, of what they are doing and the sacrifice they are called to, and they answer with a gesture of gratuity, or of thankfulness for what the Mystery is giving them. But the Meeting is an event in another sense, too.”

What?
Things happen there that are much greater than words or comments. You meet  the experiences of those who have them: the friends from the Naples Sanità District or the Sem Terra. When we took him to see the café of the Cooperative Giotto, economist Mario Draghi was struck by the fact that it was not an initiative for the convicts, but by the convicts. In fact, more and more people are struck by these facts and get deeply involved in what they see, even beyond what the organizers of the Meeting propose to them officially–think of Joseph Weiler or Mary Ann Glendon, but there are many others, too. As a matter of fact, the more there is respect that doesn’t reach the point of identification–as in the case of the journalist Oscar Giannino, who began his address explaining why he kept on saying “you” and not “us”–the more we come to grasp that there is much more going on than meets the eye.

And this dynamic is to all effects a journey of knowledge…
Yes, because whoever faces it like this understands that the origin of the Meeting cannot be simply those who make it, but a Mystery who–through people, encounters, and things that happen–corresponds deeply to human needs. You can call it what you like, but it is an unforeseeable fact. Then, at some key points, the main thread of the theme has taken on the value of a cultural elaboration that challenges modernity. I am speaking of the lectures of Carmine di Martino, of Julián Carrón, of Rémi Brague, of Yves Coppens and the Nobel prize-winners for physics, of Weiler, and of Glendon, who, for the first time, spoke about “elementary experience” instead of natural law as the basis for human relationships and for civil life. All in all, there was a deep reflection on the experience of modern man, as a cultural elaboration in the strict sense. In the end, you realize that all this is an event, that is, something that does not derive from what we do, but goes beyond it–and the first thing we do is acknowledge it. We are amazed by it because in all these various aspects emerges something we call Mystery, though others call it something else, but it is something imponderable that makes the Meeting unique. In Rimini, the exercise of judgment, or comparison between what the Mystery present makes happen and our elementary needs and evidences, has become an experience of a people, shared by all, by VIPs and by volunteers alike.
This forms a twofold link between the Meeting and the contents that Carrón re-launched in La Thuile, at the Assembly of Responsibles of CL.
The Meeting was to see La Thuile in action. There is a striking harmony between the theoretic journey and the event in the making. Last year, the protagonists of the Meeting were the witnesses. This year, a step forward was made in deepening the judgment on the experience. What was indicated to us in La Thuile is the reading of an experience in the making. It was not a “dictation of the line,” an indication from the leadership that says, “Now we have to move forward.” No. Now we have to become aware of what is there in the depth and at the root of the experience we are living. In Rimini, this can be seen very clearly. The very structure of the Meeting consists in valuing what is in the making: personal relationships, acquaintances, and encounters in the course of the  year. The Meeting is born like this, from this wealth which is continually growing. It is not a structure that dictates the line; it has to yield to what the spectacle of the Movement is.

What surprised you most?
Tony Blair’s address. I was expecting a “political” address, not an expression of his own person. I had never thought that someone with a history in the Labour Party, in a country where a Catholic cannot become king, would have the courage to speak so boldly about his conversion, about faith, about the fact that multiculturalism needs an identity, and so on. He is someone who commits himself personally, and this confirms something that Fr. Giussani always said: what changes man’s heart is what changes the face of the world. In the same line of thought, what still strikes me is that ideological opposition–that always ends up abstract and sterile–is giving way to the desire to meet, to the need for diversity in those who meet. The yardstick for this is human experience, the journey that we find ourselves making as men and which, as men, we want to share.

Apart from the title, are there aspects of method to keep in mind for future editions of the Meeting?
First: these days there are more and more foreigners present. We have to think of logistical and organizational solutions to facilitate their participation in the Meeting. Then, second, we need more workshops, more moments of encounter, dialogue, and deepening between experiences of different cultural extractions and different countries. Third: we need to multiply at the Meeting the presence of experiences that are particularly lively and meaningful, that are themselves a source of encounter–like the convicts, the Sanità District in Naples, and the Sem Terra. Fourth: we need to communicate better the main theme of the Meeting documented by the most important events, and the messages we want to send out on specific themes. This last aspect opens up another basic point that emerged this year.

What?
We cannot leave undone the development of a critical, cultural, systematic, and original reflection–which is born of the wealth of our experience in all aspects of reality that we want to tackle, when we have capable people. This is what happened this year on various aspects of knowledge with Carrón and Di Martino. The alternative is superficiality, doing things by halves, as if example were enough, without a real work of reflection to make us understand what novelty, even under the profile of “thought,” is brought by what we are living.

From here we go back to La Thuile, as method…
True. It’s judgment. But we have to reflect on the resistance we have before a certain level of deepening, and on the temptation to say that it would be contrived. The patrimony of awareness that is fruit of a life lived at the height of our human stature cannot be contrived. It rather requires a work to be done.