{"id":305858,"date":"2018-02-05T01:10:28","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T00:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/dialogue-as-a-style-of-life\/"},"modified":"2024-05-15T20:36:20","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T18:36:20","slug":"dialogue-as-a-style-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/dialogue-as-a-style-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Dialogue as a Style of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2018-02-02-PHOTO-00000534\"\u201cA 360 degree dialogue with every person,<\/strong> even people of different convictions had become normal for our family, shared by our children Pietro, Elena and Matteo.\u201d Annamaria and Mario Raimondi are like a rushing river as they share the many experiences of dialogue they\u2019ve had as a family. They now live in a quiet little town in northern Italy, on Lake Como, only forty-five minutes from Milan, Annamaria points out. He\u2019s an ordinary professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Milan, and she\u2019s a teacher. Both are retired, at least \u201cofficially\u201d. They\u2019re quite lively and very active with their family and three grandchildren In their diocese, they\u2019re very involved with ecumenism, and they\u2019re also at the service of the local Focolare community.

\"2018-02-02-PHOTO-00000536\"

Mario and Joe<\/p><\/div> \u201cBecause of my job,\u201d Mario explains, \u201cwe had to travel a lot, especially in England, Paris and the United States.<\/strong> We met the focolare community in Boston<\/a> while I was doing research there. The spirituality of unity<\/a> opened our heart and our mind to many brothers and sisters from other cultures and different religious beliefs<\/strong>. Joe, a colleague whom I met in Paris, was on of them and, over time, became like a brother to me.\u201d \u201cIn 1975,\u201d continues Annamaria, \u201cwith the children, who were small, we became guests of his family in Bristol, England. Joe was the only son of a Jewish family<\/strong> \u2013 his father was Russian and his mother Hungarian. They had fled Vienna, because of the persecution. The wife of Joe, Zaga, is the daughter of a Communist colonel from the former Yugoslavia; she is a woman with great human values, who claims to be an atheist. Their four children and ours were age mates. We shared our daily life together, work, decision-making and approaches to education. One time, when we we had gone back to Milan where we were living at the time, the relationship with Joe and Zaga continued through letters, telephone calls and a lot of travelling for work. Sometime later Joe wanted to return to the faith, re-connecting with his roots. Now, 20 years later, he was unexpectedly diagnosed with a serious illness. The doctors gave him a month to live, and we ran to see him. During the funeral, which we attended, one of his sons said a prayer in Hebrew. That was a very moving moment.\u201d \"2018-02-02-PHOTO-00000537\"\u201cEven now,\u201d Mario reports, \u201cafter many years the relationship with Zaga and her family still continues. She\u2019s old now and not in very good health. We visited her often, for example, when her daughters married, and when her first grandson was born (who just happened to be named Mario!). We went through everything together in our lives: raising the children, vacations, the scientific research… It wasn\u2019t just great human understanding among us, but something much deeper than that<\/strong>. Each of us felt free to be him or herself, and the love among was sincere. Zaga, who still claims to be a non-believer, participated in the priestly ordination of Pietro and the Religious Profession of Elena \u2013 even while wearing a cast on her leg \u2013 Matteo\u2019s marriage… The relationship between our families is still there, and we continue to share the simple times together, the deep and the important moments.\u201d \u201cLast summer,\u201d Annamaria went on to say, \u201cwe learned that an 80 year-old English gentleman had a heart attack<\/strong> while visiting Lake Como in Italy. The hospital was fairly close to our home. He and his wife, who didn\u2019t speak any Italian, were having a hard time. The other members of their group had returned to England. During the hospital stay, which lasted for two weeks, we visited him every day him every day, helping him to communicate with doctors<\/strong>, finding a place for his wife to stay with some nuns near the hospital, doing ordinary things as if we had known each other forever. We gave them the Word of Life<\/a> and shared simple but deep moments together. When he was released from hospital, we accompanied them to the airport. It was there that Antony \u2013 as he\u2019s called \u2013 asked \u2018May I give you a blessing?<\/strong>\u2019 That\u2019s when we discovered that he was an Anglican minister.<\/strong> The memory of that very special goodbye is always with us. Returned to London, Antony and his wife, who are already in close contact with the local Focolare community, still thank us, recalling that moment with gratitude.\u201d Chiara Favotti<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Raimondo Family from Italy: \u201cThe spirituality of unity opened our heart and our mind to brothers and sisters of other cultures and faiths.”<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305858","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=305858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}