{"id":291592,"date":"2008-04-09T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-09T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/treading-dangerously\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:39:45","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:39:45","slug":"treading-dangerously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/treading-dangerously\/","title":{"rendered":"Treading dangerously"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The application form in front of me, for a teaching job<\/strong>,  reminds me that my student days are over. I have to choose a destination, and  the box is staring at me. Should I stay in my Southern town, or go somewhere  else? I am in front of a real life choice.  <strong>Many of my companions choose the North, where there are more  opportunities<\/strong>, and they can get away from the things that so often come  up in the papers: illegality, irregularity, and criminality. But so many things  link me to my town! Not just my family, my feelings, my friends, my interests,  but also the hope of doing something, of going against the current, in spite of  my limits. The challenge that Chiara gave to young people came to mind: \u201cto die  for your own people\u2026\u201d. The idea of staying, with the risk of less work  opportunities, in \u201cdifficult schools\u201d, is growing, rather recklessly, inside. I  speak about it at home, with my girlfriend, with my companions.  <strong>It is evening and the form has to be sent in the morning. The choice  is made: I\u2019m staying.<\/strong> I think, \u201cWhat can I do in this quarter, an area  affected by the Camorra, where people are shot and killed? I can love! May God  help me.\u201d I select some \u201cfrontier\u201d schools as well as \u201c\u00e9lite\u201d ones. God will  help me understand where he wants me.  <strong>A few months later, I am given a year\u2019s work.<\/strong> It is amazing,  I enter my school career through the main door, with the best contract! On the  first morning the lessons are suspended, because of vandalism the previous  night. I understand straight away that God has taken me at my word. The moment  of trial has arrived.  <strong>It is a very special situation and the social unease can be  felt.<\/strong> The days go by, some with difficult moments where nothing seems  to work, and others where the children\u2019s faces light up, and they come to me,  because they want to improve and have a better future. I hold on to this hope,  and my pain has a meaning.  <strong>I don\u2019t know whether I can keep it up, because it is hard to confront  bullies<\/strong>, to gain respect, and to speak about mathematics in these  situations. But I know that moment by moment I can try to bring God into the  classrooms.\u00a0\u00a0 I can bring him through reprimands, through marking, through  conversation, through discussions, through explanations, through silence,  through ticks on the register. If he wanted me here, there\u2019s a  reason. (<em>P.D. &#8211; ITALY<\/em>)  &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A dilemma: it was time to be begin my career. Safety and success, or a risky social commitment?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}