SOCIETY

This is the story of a man who walked through life under a dangerous amount of vices, sleepovers and alcohol in his blood, without knowing days or nights, and without any attention to the advice of his mother and friends, Christians a good part of them. He finally heard them. Today he is an ambulance driver, a job he appreciates, because he feels that from his post he helps the needy. And even if ambulances are missing and the guards are tense, it takes encouragement to many in need, whether it’s a sick child, a physical impeded or an old man.

The beautiful song Only Once, was composed by Agustín Lara for his friend the Mexican actor and vocalist José Mojica (Mexico 1896-Peru 1974). Lara wrote the lyrics when she learned that the great singer would become a Franciscan friar. From the New Word we share small fragments of a long and fruitful existence, which are, in short, like small pieces of a puzzle that are arming the soul of a great man, who was able to choose an expeditious and glamorous life; but he chose a spiritual life where fame, gold and money never took place.

This could be the story of any mother, professional or not, committed to the mission of cultivating authentic values in her children to nurture and at the same time offer to the society where they live. Today, when technology absorbs many of our children, it would be healthy not to compete with this reality. It is about using it in our favor, as a tool for formation, which, of course, presupposes a change of paradigam in thought, attitude and action.

For Mon. Juan de Dios Hernández Ruíz, bishop of Pinar del Río, the virus that appeared in China a few months ago caused life to take on another rhythm. In tune with the popular saying that says, “If you want to see God laugh, show him your plans,” the Church in Vueltabajo had to adapt her life to a time of pandemic. However, as it quotes from a recently published book, peace in the midst of a pandemic is found only in Jesus. “The question for all of us, he says, is this: are we going to trust Him?”

While September brings for believers, and for Cubans proud of their traditions, the celebrations associated with the Virgin of Charity of Copper, politics pokes out its hairy ear. Again, ideological stances, and more than these, hatred and the desire to separate and prevail, seek to meddle and soil issues where such attitudes and feelings should not be accommodated. How can some pretend that a sacred symbol, like that Mother of all, serves to sustain or to hate and oppose a political system? Charity, without exclusions, is everyone’s. No side has the right to politicize a celebration that rightly calls for harmony, peace, unity and not hatred. There are too many misfortunes right now, just because of the policies, hatreds and selfishness on the sides of the world, so that also the premises of peace and union are soiled with ideological mudslides.

It is in the vocational dimension of his life that the seminarian Juan Carlos Pañellas has felt the effects of this time. It is in her that she has had the most positive experiences and where she has suffered most from some realities that make her think a lot about her priestly future. While from Holy Week to today he has been able to bring communions to several people every Sunday (something that makes him very happy), seeing closed temples and under-neglected people in such difficult times has made him reflect, feel the human frailty, and see the contradiction of the ecclesial discourses to be amended.

If any of those officials, enthusiastic in naming the years, had named it after 2020, this would have been the Year of The Salt Flat. Xavier, a young Cuban, tells him, whom a communications scholarship took him to India at the end of January, from where he was due to leave in May. There he had to stay in a university bunker, with friends from various countries and languages, waiting for repatriation flights that took him from Delhi to Ukraine, and from there to Frankfurt, and then landed in Havana.

Journalists’ most repeated joke states that doctors bury their mistakes; lawyers lock them up and journalists publish them. Of course, a typo, besides adding jokes and anecdotes, usually has no greater consequences. The worst thing is when misguided jobs, misguided approaches, or distant texts or images of common sense are transmitted or that contradict some harsh reality.

A couple of recent events set off alarms about the invasion of idiocy swarming in the nets. In recent days, news of the occurrence of attacks and offenses to the Facebook profile of Cuban actor Roberto Espinosa Sebazco circulated on some digital platforms, who in the Cuban novel on duty plays a loathsome rapist and paedophile. Another event, which also calls us to analysis is the violent capital regrowth of Covid-19. Social indiscipline, ignoring health and government orientations, is another way of exercising idiocy.

To find old friends in a crisis situation, he revealed to this woman, Cuban, architect and visual artist, who was supposed to retain this moment in a work. It was important for her to hear her voices, her laughter, her ideas, her illusions, jokes, and her sacrifices, “beyond sharing them or not, beyond differences, beyond all that exists.” From this experience born in pandemic time, he conceived the project “To all who know how to love”, a video that brings together dear friends. As a base and common thread, he took the martyred discourse “With all and for the good of all”.