Alongside Native Americans
It was a lake so clear you could see the bottom and drink the water with your cupped hands from the canoe. It seemed the perfect world. Yet here and there a plastic bottle was stuck in the bank, held down by low roots. In that extraordinarily beautiful landscape, it was a punch in the eye. Alek’s story is rich with images such as this. He was among the four people who were part of a temporary Focolare at Whati, in Canada, from July 19 to August 20, 2018. “We’re talking about the Great North, almost at the Arctic Circle, a town with 800 inhabitants. It seemed even less, since the meeting of the Tlicho people (Tłı̨chǫ in their original language) had just ended, and many of the locals had left for vacation. “The Tlicho people are Native Americans (called “First Nations” in Canada), who can be found throughout North America. They are part of the Dene, an association of Native Americans in the Northwest Territories, and they live in an area called Tlicho Land, which has four towns with a total population of close to 2,000 people. Whati, which in its native language is Wha Ti, is one of these towns. It’s on beautiful Lac La Martre, which at its widest point is a good 70 km.” 
With the youth group, Alek and Fr. Alain organized the cleanup of a stretch of shoreline. “It was just a gesture,” he says, “yet afterwards we heard that one of the residents there brought this to the chief’s attention, and the cleanup has now become a regular activity throughout the year.” This too was a result of the temporary Focolare at Whati. Besides Alek (an Italian who lives in Birmingham, Alabama) and Fr. Alain (a priest from Montreal), the group was made up of Lioba from the Focolare of Vancouver and Ljubica from that of Toronto. The reason for their journey was a request from the bishop of Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, to have a few people from the Focolare community come to the area (covering the costs) to give the residents, at least for one month of the year, the chance to come together spiritually and receive some training on Gospel living. At the same time, another group was having a similar experience at the village of Fort Resolution. 
“We were at Yellowknife for a few days, having come from our cities, after trips that were pretty adventurous because of the weather. There we got the chance to know each other and receive the bishop’s blessing.” “Arriving together at Whati, we were there for a total of four weeks, to renew relationships that had begun the year before from another similar experience. We were there to get to know the local leaders and to contribute to a few projects started by the tribal leadership. The second week we organized a Bible camp for the kids, and the third week, at the request of the local leaders, we went to meet some of the elders of the village. It was moving to pray together with them. It seemed to us that there was communication that went beyond any difficulty to understand their language.” 
The people of that place are suffering from a difficult transition from tradition to modernity. “In the space of one generation,” Alek explains, “they found themselves entirely deprived of the roots that had been their deepest identity, perhaps for thousands of years. Those of my generation were born and lived in teepees, and speak Tlicho. Their grandchildren no longer speak the traditional language, use smartphones and are taken by consumerism and all its consequences, including alcohol and drugs. “Yet, the community is still driven by a simple, deep faith that is based on reading the Bible and the natural spirituality of its people, who are still sensitive to spiritual things. “For my part, it was a chance to meet face to face with some of these stories. With them I felt at home, perhaps as never before. I was also a way for them to be touched by God.”
Indifference and mistrust are often born from fear and from a lack of knowledge about one another. In order to face the growing tensions of identity that undermine society, there are many very fruitful opportunities for dialogue and spiritual sharing created by religious institutions and associations. This is the case of 
«Universal brotherhood was also the project of people who were not motivated by religious motives, but simply by the desire to benefit humanity. The French Revolution’s motto: “liberty, equality, fraternity”, summarizes the great political project of modernity, a project which, in part, has been disregarded. While numerous countries have built democratic systems of government and have succeeded in achieving some degree of liberty and equality, the same cannot be said of fraternity which has been proclaimed more than it has been lived. But the one who brought fraternity as the essential gift to humanity was above all Jesus. In revealing the fatherhood of God, He broke down the walls which separate those who are “the same” from those who are “different”, friends from enemies. He loosened all people from the bonds that imprison them, from all forms of slavery and subordination, from every unjust relationship, thus carrying out an authentic existential, cultural and political revolution. (…) The instrument that Jesus offered to us in order to accomplish this universal fraternity was love, a great love, a new love, different from the one we usually know. In fact, He transplanted the way of loving of heaven here on earth. This love requires first of all that we love everyone, therefore, not only relatives and friends. It asks that we love the pleasant and the unpleasant, our fellow-countryman and the stranger, the European and the immigrant, those of our Church and of another, of our religion and of another. Today it asks the countries of Western Europe to love those of Central and Eastern Europe – and vice versa – and it asks everyone to be open to those of other continents. In the vision of its founders, in fact, Europe is a family of sister nations, not closed in itself, but open to a universal mission: Europe wants its unity to contribute, then, to the unity of the human family. This love asks that we love our enemies as well and that we forgive them if they have offended us. After the wars which stained our continent with blood, many Europeans were exemplary in loving their enemies and promoting reconciliation. 
Therefore, the love I am speaking of makes no distinctions and takes into consideration all those we meet in any moment, directly or indirectly: those who are next to us physically, but also those about whom we or others are speaking; those who will receive the work we do day by day, those we come to know about through the newspapers or television…. Because this is the way God our Father loves, making the sun rise on the bad and the good, and causing the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike (cf Mt 5:45). (…) Furthermore, the love that Jesus brought is not an idealistic, sentimental love, made up of words. It is a concrete love. It needs to be expressed with deeds. And this is possible if we make ourselves all things to all people: sick with those who are sick; joyful with those who are joyful; worried, insecure, hungry, poor with others, feeling in ourselves what they feel and acting accordingly». 
With one of the fastest growing economies, India is a country which is racing toward constant improvement in life expectancy, literacy rates and health conditions. However, of the 1.2 billion inhabitants of the country, the conditions of those living in the poorest regions are still difficult. Despite its status as an economic power, mortal malnutrition persists. Every evening in India, 200 million people try to fall asleep despite the gnawing hunger. And every day, 3,000 children die of hunger. In Mumbai, where thousands of people go for cancer treatments, Sunny of the Focolare community, wrote: “During the treatments, the families sleep on the road or around the hospital, in the lack of all necessities.” This is an alarming situation of poverty, especially if compared with the data related to the growing waste of perfectly whole foodstuffs, thrown away at the end of wedding banquets, rites, and family parties. The country is one of the world’s main producers of foodstuff, but is likewise one in which a good part of these goods are wasted. Among the causes are also the shortage of transport and warehousing systems especially the “cold chain” system: according to estimates in 2017 of the Indian Ministry of Agriculture, the value of the losses connected to foodstuff wastes (not only in terms of farming goods and foodstuffs, but also in the use of water and energy) could range between 8 and 15 billion dollars yearly. 
