China
(by Francesca Colombo)
Throughout all these years, city life with its frantic pace often led us, during days off, to take day trips out of town. Returning from these little getaways, with the children and youths who passed through our home from time to time sleeping exhausted in the back seats, Cristina and I always thought about what it would be like to live there, among rivers and mountains, with the Great Wall as a backdrop.
This thought continued to accompany us over the years, but only in the last two has it become the “subject” of deeper discernment, compelling us to adopt new perspectives: both on mission and on the “poor” who, for reasons known only to God, cross our path.
As is true for many missionaries living in China, integrating into society through work was very important for us to understand the culture better and build relationships. However, the risk we began to sense is becoming part of a system that, over time, alters you and causes you to lose sight of the reason you were sent in the first place.
Hence the effort to seek a fresh gaze on our mission here, avoiding being constrained by an increasingly complex local society, avoiding being entrapped by “it has always been done this way, it can only be done this way,” and finding the courage to venture onto new, untrodden paths—paths to be forged with creativity, in order to express that for which we were called and sent to this land.
In recent months, our eyes have crossed paths with those of Youyou, Mini, and many other young people and their parents.
For a variety of reasons, these kids drop out of school in middle school, or some even by the end of primary school, spending their days in front of a screen; life seems to end there.
Theirs are dull and frightened gazes; they are the gazes of fragile youths desperately asking us adults: what is the meaning of life? Helpless and bewildered are the gazes of their parents, who, perhaps even more fearful than their children, torment themselves with useless feelings of guilt.
From the intersection of our renewed perspective on mission and the gazes of these boys, girls, mothers, and fathers, the dream of moving to one of the many mountain villages surrounding Beijing began to take shape.
A different mission, where we would like to try being a sign of contradiction, proposing a different lifestyle, closer to nature, more humane, which in this era and context is perhaps the most effective witness.
We believe that to rekindle the light in these young people’s eyes, there is a need to return to real life, not a virtual one, where one can get their hands dirty and see the fruit of their labor. That is why the house we will move into has a vegetable garden and an orchard.
We also believe a beautiful place is necessary to help them discover or rediscover the beauty of life, to marvel at the wonder that is their own existence; that is why the house is in a valley along a river.
Our desire is to open our home both for educational journeys for parents and for residential stays of varying duration for their children.
For some time now we have carried all of this in our hearts and minds, praying constantly, and the signs all seem to point toward this path. In the coming months we will begin to walk it, not without fear, yet confident that the Lord, who has led us this far, will never fail to grant His support.
Photo by Antonio Castellano su Unsplash
Source: “Guarderanno verso Colui che hanno trafitto”, Cmd Como, pp. 88-89.
