Fundraising by Maddalena Manera

This year for my birthday I will be in Italy, maybe at home or in the mountains, certainly surrounded by people who love me.

I always like the day of my birthday; I find it a good time to take stock, look back a bit at the past year and try to imagine the coming one.

August is the Sunday of the year: the month of the last vacations before the grind of school or work begins again, when we realize that the daylight hours are dwindling and in the evening the cool weather returns.

But for me August is also a time to take back memories and at the same time plan.

This year Lebanon and Syria occupy a good portion of thoughts, both of the past and the future.

I feel that I have been and still will be witness to an exceptional event; seeing people return to their homes, and seeing their joy, is not something that has left me indifferent.

I thought that being in these places, listening to tremendous stories and nostalgic memories would anesthetize me; I was wrong, it made me more empathetic, more emotional, it helped me put myself in the other's place - even if there is still a long way to go.

With respect to the role Operation Dove (Nonviolent Peace Corps of the Pope John XXIII Community) plays in these places, I find myself in the way Václav Havel talks about hope:

Hope is not optimism.

Hope is not the belief that what we are doing will succeed.

Hope is the certainty that what we are doing has meaning.

Whether it is successful or not.

Either we have hope in us, or we don't;

it is a dimension of the soul,

and it does not depend on a particular observation of the world

or an estimation of the situation.

Hope is not a prediction,

but an orientation of the spirit and heart;

it transcends the world that is immediately experienced,

and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.

I hope others will see the hope of our being this way.

It would please me greatly if anyone who wishes to think of a birthday gift for me would choose to support Operation Dove this year!

Thank you.