DJT may announce tomorrow that an entire wing of his Mar Al Lago estate will be devoted specifically to the care of these children, another wing to repair of Yemeni and Syrian children maimed by shrapnel, phosgene, etc., as he's grown bored with the constant traffic of flimflam sycophant diplomats and business shills darkening his guest quarters and fairways there.
29
The loving healthcare system, the vacations that are "focus on the family". The vacations for family leave, for connecting with others. Yes.
12
Don't worry folks in this country, 70% of pregnant women carrying a down syndrome baby will abort. Unrestricted access to abortion at any stage in pregnancy will assure our American future will have less children who need care; thus relieving us from the burden of creating a loving and beautiful home for children who are in need. Italy has always cherished children more so than other countries. This is why Cometa is in Italy and not in America.
6
Several have commented on the rarity of this inspiring place. It's rare because creating such a home is near impossible.
Many see the value of beauty, but few of us have the wealth and abilities of the founders. Even those with interest and ability to help children will face insurmountable challenges. Ever tried starting and sustaining a non-profit? It's hard enough to deliver help and pay rent for average office space. Who other than Gates or Bezos has resources for a European villa?
And, to repeat what many others have said, if Brooks idealizes such a place, why does he support a party whose policies are that healthcare should be a personal responsibility, purchased entirely in an open market, no matter how many families are bankrupted?
67
What are we to make of Mr. Brooks searching out Cometa, and implying it is something to aspire to, without acknowledging how deeply the U.S. system is rigged against a Cometa?
Trump, McConnell, Ryan, and their supporters deny and deny people who struggle like the Cometa beneficiaries in Italy, insuring they are held back, not moved forward.
“Reality will not let you down.” may be the motto at Cometa. But in the US, if you are not a person of means, then you live in a "Reality is set up to let you down" world.
Mr. Brooks, what is your point about making Cometa in the US?
66
As a teacher I appreciate the things brought out in this article -- the necessity of beauty, the gift of nature, the need for a community of caretakers so that one is never left alone in the turmoil of a difficult classroom with children who are acting out their wounds.
But if all this does is make us swoon, write checks for $100 and hope that more rich people like the Figinis emerge, its not enough. Can't we look at people who are already doing this, and try to make their jobs easier? There are thousands of people who graduate intending to be teachers and social workers -- who want to do good in the world. But our systems don't support them. There aren't enough of these rich people who will willingly fork over a fortune to provide places like this. We have got to use tax money, and a whole lot more of it, to see that children, the elderly, the sick -- live lives of dignity and joy.
79
Yet another post saying that this effort should not be praised, or even talked about, because it isn’t the cause you want to see discussed. How tiresome. What is it about opinion essays that you and others don’t understand? This is about one thing. One place. One concept. A handful of people. And it happens to be moving and beautiful. Why can’t you allow it to be just that?
31
One can't help but be reminded about this Republican administration's lack of compassion in all its policies. Why does David Brooks pick one ideal place for children to describe? For many of us, it is a sad reminder of the state of things here in the USA.
11
Thanks so much for this wonderful true story, Mr. Brooks. Kudos to the founders and the other adults who have built this program and provide a home for needy children who are most fortunate to have Cometa. Child care and education should be a nation's top priority. As a long-time volunteer English tutor in an elementary school, I agree with Paul Krugman that pre-school training for all needy kids should be a top American priority. How likely is that to happen with present Republicans?
25
We had a presidential candidate just a little over a year ago who had devoted her major life effort to child welfare. That didn't turn out too well. We chose the opposite instead. Not beauty. Ugliness.
48
What makes Cometa noteworthy is its rarity.
13
“Needs were evident, and the Cometa philosophy is to say yes after yes.”
A lovely, uplifting article, Mr. Brooks…but these needs are also evident in the United States.
My question to you, a Republican, is why the needs of the disabled and needy children are ignored in this country? I do not see your party address these needs and allow the children and their families to live in beauty. Instead the Republican Party works to reduce SNAP, Medicare, support for low income housing, working instead to cut their subsidies for rent, remove funds from public education…I could go on and on.
At the same time your party supported tax cuts for the one percent. Imagine what those tax cuts could do to support these children that you so eloquently write about.
As a parent of a disabled child I have, and continue to fight for respect for my child, reasonable medical services and insurance, and the possibility to be able to live within a beauty that does not exist for us in your party. When you have shared the experiences of my family and many other families, and acknowledge the beauty (support) we have been denied, and admit to your party’s uncaring views, I will accept your observations. While your intent was probably not politically intended, I am sure you might understand my response.
Where is this beauty that you speak of in today's America?
All I hear from The Republican Party is “no, after no…”
I will wait for your next essay that will say “yes after yes…”
73
The decline of family and community did not just happen due to some sick, cosmic joke. It happened as a direct result of the bottomless greed of large corporations and the super-rich. Supporting a family on one income is practically impossible in many places. Families are dispersed as people are forced to leave home because the local employers have decamped for lower wages or been killed by big-box retailers. Yes, Cometa sounds beautiful. It is telling that it is not in the United States.
37
David Brooks is far from being "sensitive to the problems around:"
Let's list a few not on his list:
-inadequate health care coverage; unclean drinking water (Flint);
-women losing contraceptive health coverage as a right;
-children rejected for being gay;
-racial profiling ; white supremacy.
-homeless working folks; homelessness increasing
- corporate corruption;
- climate change.
-
David is not" sensitive to these problems." David supports a political party that ignores all of the above and much more. David is a lying hypocrite.
36
Not really fair to paint every conservative with this brush.
12
There needs to be something written about the nature of self-sacrifice. A.T. Mann touches on it a little better than this.
2
Lake Como?
You’re talking about love and beauty so I’m inclined to listen rather than speak. I’m not sure what to say about something that doesn’t seem scalable or easily reproducible.
But many comments seem animated by the idea that you should either bash Trump and the pernicious R politics that led to Trump or discuss scalable or easily reproducible ideas. So I’ll say this.
Perhaps the best thing for me about living in Houston and Austin has been living where Greater Louisiana meets Greater Mexico. No culture is perfect, but what would Texas be like without balancing Texan ways of work and commerce with ways in which these cultures make an art of living?
Modern transportation and communication networks allow us to fulfill our needs for food, durable goods, and many services from afar. There are good things about that.
But the efficiencies involved seem to reduce the total number of good jobs.
So perhaps our needs for useful work that allows for a good life and for taking care of family, children, and community will require sustainable local economies that aren’t scalable or completely reproducible alongside the broader networked economy.
If you create a local truck farm will they come buy your produce?
6
The amount of comments here belaboring the necessity of social welfare systems is astounding, and it appears Mr. Brook's prior commentary is well read.
A suggestion on a slightly different way to approach this story...
One of the greatest proponents of social welfare in our country once said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
If your country won't do it for you, then your task is clear: do what you can for your community anyway, while trying to change your country's stance. It is not as though these things are mutually exclusive.
As a parent of two and a strong supporter of my own little "village" in suburbia, my hat is off and I am humbly bowed to this community. Theirs is a task well worth a story and well worth the congratulations. It is difficult enough to have two under your care... I hope the story is an inspiration to others to do own part as well, however large or small they may decide it should be.
Perhaps, too, others may be inspired by the knowledge that there are over 70 million children in the United States. Perhaps they can realize that government assistance, as an embodiment of the greater community and with the support of those of us closer to home, is required for such a daunting task.
18
This is a beautiful story, but I also hope there is monitoring of some kind. We have often seen that compounds that grow large with many children separated from parents end up being unsafe places for children (sexual and other kinds of abuse). I hope this is never the case, but "idyllic" compounds full of children give me anxiety...
14
I have no idea what this utterly unrealistic story is about. It is so far from any working life day to day experience it just falls flat. A famous fabric designer? Really? Is there such a thing? For what reason, that millionaires will pay a fortune for couture clothes?
You don't need a "renown" priest to decide to use your assets to help people.
8
FWIW, Lake Como is renown for excellent fabrics - and I knew it back when I was a poor farm kid who sewed - and developed a love for fine textiles. SO it is not so odd that a fabric designer well know in his field would be from this area of Italy.
Making fabrics is a craft and i think that it is honorable to create things of beauty, and not just for millionaires. I go to museums and see works of art which are ridiculously expensive, but I don't refuse to look because I'm not a Rockefeller or a Walton.
You do not have to be renown to be of service; you are not barred from enjoying beautiful objects because you are not a millionaire.
19
Mr. Brooks , thank you for sharing this experience and story .
It is laudable that the two couples from Como had the inspiration,courage and determination to start Cometa .
It appears to have grown to be an important and solid institution helping needy children in a loving family atmosphere.
I presume that the Italian National Healthcare system ( excellent in northern Italy ) is playing a significant role addressing health needs , as well as the school system .
The small city of Como , nestled in the Alps near the lake and Swiss border , could represent an example to be replicated everywhere there is a will and love .
13
Cometa is only possible because Italy has not only full free education but also free complete Health care !! Americo
18
Italy does indeed have free education and health care but the tuition to Cometa's vocational high school is 4,000 euro per year. Cometa is very well run and organized, not just beautiful. Take a look at its website.
3
Where in this touching story is the embedded political message that, like toy surprises in children's cakes, always seems to drive your interest, David? And, of course, as usual, it is the good will of the philanthropists that laissez-faire capitalism creates. Of course, were it not for the sensitivity of the Figini brothers, many of the needy would lack care. And since there are never enough Figini brothers to go around in a society, that is precisely the case.
12
I have concerns, as I am sure David does, about children who are not able to take advantage of such an opportunity, but that discussion is broader and for another time. This Cometa model is a graced moment in the Italian story, and I believe it can be a model for elsewhere. How do we develop the collective conscience of a community, a state, a nation to see that this way of raising our young ones is so much more beneficial than what we are doing now. Just look at our curricula and show me where we teach to interact well with others, where we teach how to raise a loving family, where we teach useful personal skills that will serve us well beyond our schooling. Heck, we don't even do that in phys ed where we continue to throw a soccer ball or a basketball or a football out there when we should be teaching them how to engage in sports they can do all their lives, like swimming and tennis and golf. Thanks to David for sharing. OK, David, now what do we do? Help lead the discussion, help us all to become the change.
6
Beautiful.
Whatever 'faith' has or hasn't to do with it, It takes commitment to create an island of humanity, love, affirmation & trust. Beauty, integrity of objects & surrounds, made & maintained with genuine generosity & kindness...
But an island it must remain.
I was raised by such people believing in such things who sought out such islands of idealism, community, craft, integrity.
At one time, back in an era from, say, the '30's through '70's, such places tho scarce, were sort of in style.
But here's how it goes:
Outside of these islands, people are forever selfish & nasty, 'communes' of any idealistic sort that aren't rigid religious cults, fall to ego & animosity, self-interest in 'self-actualization' (as Mr. Brooks would refer to it) which is code for 'make money & obsess about selfish, self-absorbed things & panic because you think somebody else has more of some self-actualized marketed myth, & time is running out'.
Outside the Island of the Kind, the republicans are rousing the rabble to elect Reagan, rejecting any concept of compassion that's not mandated by the bible under threat of eternal damnation, & those groovy people who had you fooled were bringing on some new age of aquarian indigo-children with groovy, hairy, egalitarian ideas of craft, integrity, handmade & wholesome, all go get corporate jobs in finance & start bragging about their brie, cars, wines & anything that appears affluent.
So stay in Cometa, it sounds wonderful, for as long as it lasts.
2
We are given a glimpse of what sainthood is. A beautiful story about what the extraordinarily decent can do, not instruction in public policy. Simply enjoy the story for what it says about the best in us.
18
So amazingly wonderful and right. Brought tears to my eyes. If only we all could work for the greater good.
I will look for opportunities like this.
10
"Thirty-five years ago, the two Figini brothers, Erasmo and Innocente, were living in Como with their wives, Serena and Marina."
Men are the the protagonists, women are "their wives." Why? It seems clear the couples were all equally involved from the beginning and the "wives" are at least equally engaged with the children.
20
Thank you, thank you. All I have to say is to visit schools in low income areas of NYC - they look like prisons, as well as those NYCHA homes most of those low income family children come from......and you will see where the problems of our society begins. Yes, beauty is important....and it's achievable, and it's heartwarming.
15
Shorter Brooks, Noblesse Oblige, Isn't It Magnificent or to bring it onshore, The Acela Villagers' Burden, An Example for Our Times. I am yet again, underwhelmed.
9
What is described in David's column is the intersection of love and provision, in this case both given by a private benefactor. (the column doesn't state how Cometa is resourced.) While this is noble, it is also flawed. When we leave the education, feeding, clothing and doctoring of the vulnerable to private means, beautiful, deeply spiritual experiences result. But for only some; what about those who are not chosen by a benefactor because the state did not provide? Are they somehow less deserving?
The beauty that results from stories like this one are more inspiring than the gray bureaucracy of universal provision; but let us ask ourselves, what matters more? The spiritual fulfillment of some or the provision of all?
The duty of provision should be the state's; the duty of love should be the private citizen's. It is certainly true that states have espoused faulty judgements of deserving and undeserving due to prejudices, but the law has the capacity to correct that. Faith, and thereby dogma, are sometimes compelled because of their belief systems to not correct those categories of the undeserving.
Individuals and faith institutions should focus on restoring love, via family, social and communal participation; the state is best disposed, despite its flaws, to fairly provide.
7
Right now we're leaving it up to the state. Ask any foster kid if he would rather live in the U.S. foster care system or in Cometa.
2
This loving place with its decent founders forms a sharp contrast to the venality of our public realm in the US. From HRC still going on about her loss, to a presidential administration that is the very soul of venality, we need a complete reboot.
7
Because Brooks is a political commentator this article must be viewed through a political lens. Republicans love to find people who do good deeds because it gives them an excuse to disproportionately line their pockets with more and more riches that should really be used for those in need. Case in point: the most recent tax reform is widely regarded as the biggest transfer of wealth to the richest among us.
25
Just because someone is a political commentator doesn't mean they can't see things around them without a political lens. In fact the view that everyone sees things as right or left, red or blue, is part of our problem today. Yes, this might be seen as one of Bush 41's "points of light", but why can't it just be a lovely story about people doing good in the world, even if a "political commentator" wrote it?
12
Faith: It is a lovely story. And I am certain Brooks was quite moved. But he is a conservative columnist who frequently writes about the good individuals do - an often-used argument our Republicans politicians use to justify their failure to provide for those in need. Everything is not left or right or red or blue as you say, but this column always is.
3
Thank you for sharing this life experience, a living arrangement made possible by love, which makes all other virtues unnecessary. Truth is beauty, doubled when shared this deeply, a tribute to the human spirit. And whether there is a God or not, always a worthwhile discussion, we humans have a conscience and know perfectly well 'right from wrong' intrinsically. Reason makes us skeptics of things we cannot prove with science and common sense, but our emotions and feelings dictate our behavior and allows us to feel at one with nature....and with each other. And Cometa is proof of the pudding.
11
Lovely. I needed to read this for balance of the extreme selfishness of the US ruling class. Will share this, will save this, will do more to help. Thank you David and to these wonderful people helping children in so many ways.
Congress, read this, good is possible.
13
A beautiful piece and I guess it was your anniversary vacation. But it wouldn’t be beautiful if these people had to worry about not being able to pay American type health bills.
17
Please visit Holy Family School in Chicago's inner-city. It is a small miracle blossoming in one of Chicago's most dangerous neighborhoods.
5
Brooks, you write as if you have simply retired. Feeding the birds. Is Trump really that bad?
6
As usual, a well disguised indulgence in the sloppy sentimentality Mr. Brooks has become so famous for. Now, let's have a conversation about all those suffering children worldwide who haven't been discovered by Mr. Brooks and how we're going to address their difficulties.
17
So...it’s wrong to report on something good because there is so much that is bad? That is absurd.
11
Many of us who read the Times are already sending thousands of dollars to children and others in need here and around the world. This beautiful essay gave us encouragement to continue doing so and perhaps increasing the amount we already give.
4
For me, the most important piece published in the Times in a long time. It breaks a crack across the masthead that lets the light get in. Beauty is truth. Beauty is the peaceful persuasion of G-d. Keep writing the truth, Mr. Brooks! What else is left for you? What else is worth your time?
11
If ever there was an article written to justify to IRS that this was a “working vacation,” this charming story, coming right next door to Lake Como, is it.
8
Yes, of course, David Brooks. Where else can you go in writing after the havoc you have helped to wreak on your country, and through your support of the frightfully immoral republican agenda, on all children everywhere?
20
American democracy, the rule of law, the concept of integrity in public service, and our leadership of Western civilization are being trashed by your Republican Party, and you use your august position at the Times for distraction.
You've lost any semblance of meaningful contribution, Mr. Brooks.
12
Thank you, David.
5
Dear David, I volunteer to accompany you to ruminate at lake como anytime. Contact me on where to send my tickets.
2
I note that Brooks makes no mention of the outcomes for children who have passed through this commune. Did he not bother to ask? Apparently, Brooks only wants to see what fits his narrative-of-the -week. Where is his journalistic approach?
5
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
— Frederick Buechner
8
Enjoy your beautiful Spring vaycay in Italy, Mr. Brooks!
1
The largest organization in this country designed to care for widows and orphans is the Social Security Administration. Children of a deceased wage earners are entitled to benefits as a matter of law. At present the Social Security trust funds are solvent, but the Republican Party has been hell bent on undermining the agency.
To provide hope and extend charity, donate to the trust funds to keep it solvent.
9
And prevent Paul Ryan, who himself benefited from the survivor benefit, from privatizing Social Security or otherwise destroying it.
10
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all
ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know."
Ode on a Grecian Urn
John Keats
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44477/ode-on-a-grecian-urn
2
Hope. Pure and simple.
2
They say no good deed goes unpunished. I guess the journalistic corollary is that no good column goes unpoliticized. I thought this was a well-written piece about a place that all Italians must be proud of, and that every citizen of the world might try to emulate in some small way.
16
.
Why not believe in balance, beauty and abundance.
There is enough for all. And all deserve dignity, happiness and personal fulfillment.
Find a heaven in your soul, then make a heaven around you.
6
Pollyanna strikes again says this adoptee and for a brief time fostered and institutionalized child now adult.
Pampered, financially well-healed adults, with the need to fulfill themselves wth other's children because they had resolved not to procreate their own children are lauded by the well-heeled NYT columnists sent to the beautiful complex in Italy.
In there is a similar place created for orphans and homeless and infirm boys called Boys Town initiated by Father Edward J. Flannigan who began his mission with only the little money he had from his own pockets and his philosophy that there is no such thing as a bad boy. Now the sprawling campus/farm/schools include girls and exists on the donations from the public. This beauty isf Beauty is as beauty for whatever he/she is and teaching the love of self and humanity with skills and education to survive and be productive in adulthood.
Beauty is as beauty does, and self-motivation comes via a lot of hard work.
5
I think if more people know about kids with dislocated elbows reporting to the ER, less parents would swing small children around by their hands as in the picture at the top of the article. But it's simply not widely known...
1
:-)
My brother once told me that he and his wife, as first-time parents, were each holding a hand of their small, mitten-wearing child and gleefully swinging her through the air, between them. The child slipped out of her mittens and just flew. Luckily there was snow on the ground. His summary of the lesson learned: don’t swing a child wearing mittens. My summary: think things through before you act.
2
Why should faceless government bureaucrats care about your children whom they will never meet? Bureaucrats care only for their jobs and their children.
It takes an outlook beyond self and for many, religion is the source of that meaning but that is foreign to the Left whose belief is based on control by government.
3
Ok then, I guess we'll all just hope that renowned fabric designers and former tax consultants come along to save all of the children in need.
6
Ah, the paean to good individuals who provide for the poor, the frail, the hurting when what he should be doing is continuing to name and count the moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party. More articles like this, please.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/opinion/the-gop-is-rotting.html
3
‘The idea is to give students the power to welcome others, born out of a sense that they have been welcomed. ‘
Right now on our Mexican border, mother’s and their children, fearing for their lives have been locked out of asylum from our country.
Your party talks Christianity and love while it practices racism and hate, even towards innocent children.
13
This is a lovely article about a beautiful thing in a spectacularly beautiful place, and a testimony to the love of beauty, and of children, that is a part of the Italian culture.
The one sour note is your throwaway line about "the worldwide decline of family and community has left millions of children estranged from any experience of a loving home." That statement is highly debatable, but I guess you can't write a simple article without flying your curmudgeon flag, asserting at least once in your allotted word count that the Good Old Days were better and more wholesome than today.
In fact, the estrangement of many children from "any experience of a loving home" is as old as humanity. It adds nothing to your article to throw in this gratuitous and unsupported assertion that the problem of abused or neglected children is somehow due to recent cultural trends or the most recent generation of parents.
5
This was the one line that really bothered me, too. Teen pregnancy is way down. Parents, of both genders, are spending more time with their children. Where is this decline of family?
2
Mr. Brooks, if this were a community in Denmark, paid for by tax dollars, would you be as enamored? I suspect the beauty you see, in part, is its private funding.
11
Don't worry, Trump and/or his club members
will change Mar Largo into the same kind of
loving, social structure. They are just hiding
their real natures and will soon glow forth!
4
Ronnie's ghost won't be at all happy to learn that you are seeking out bleeding heart socialists and basking in their love, desire to help mankind, and keen willingness to sacrifice their own lives. Not one bit.
2
Someone said of Italy that even ugly people are beautiful there. It's a way of looking at the world.
1
David, I'm glad you found your Shangrila. When you return home you can ask yourself why your Republican party wants to take the social safety net from millions of American children. Then you can ask yourself why you persist in not removing the chains that bind you. You are better than that. Just what are you afraid of, beauty?
7
Wonderful story, great way to start the day.
Some people take gap years in order to transistion from high school to college. I took a gap five years from college to professional career job to build my dream clinic. It was non stop, lots of work, lots of responsiblity, but the end result is something I have always cherished. My mental health clinic helped thousands. After five years I was emationally burnt toast but to this day, 30 years later, enternally greatful for the care and help we gave to others in a genuine and meningful way.
Try it.
2
Assume there is beauty in every person and situation: that is a truly loving way to live. I am so happy and thankful to know there are people like this. A place like this. I wish I knew them!
Every life is of value. Everyone has the right to be loved.
2
What wonderful people and what a wonderful place. I've worked professionally with foster and adoptive kids, many of them special needs, in the US. I think amazing and necessary places like this can be intimidating to "the rest of us." I look at this project and think "I could never do something grand like that."
The challenge is many cases is to convince adults with an interest in helping to do something as a first step. One can mentor a kid, foster one kid, join a support organization such as a respite care center, volunteer to hold or entertain children in a hospital, etc. Everyone I know who does this is changed for the better by it.
Paraphrasing Mother Teresa: only God can do great acts of love, people can do small acts with great love.
7
Thanks David for reminding us that there are still those on the altruism side of the Selfishness/Altruism spectrum.
2
Comets is a wonderful facility, but a terrible model for society. Very few successful people will give up their lives and livelihoods to staff places like this. Too few will even contribute enough to support facilities with trained staff. Government support would make such facilities possible, but that would require higher taxes and acceptance of regulation. David, if you really want to help homeless children and orphans, lead the fight to repeal the Trump-Ryan tax cuts.
5
A "swelling of gratitude" led to fostering one child which evolved into a community of caring. This is what can happen when capable individuals act in caring harmony. Putting a government bureaucracy/program in its place will not have the same result. Why, NeilG, would you inject a middle-man to do the caring for you? Such a worthless leftist attitude ...
1
Cometa sounds like a place we would hope would be there for all of our children. In the meantime we need to realize that many of the teachers who are out on strike for better wages really do love the children in their care and put in way more than the required hours.We could show our children love by having universal pre-k in more than a handful of states.We could also show our caring by having available and affordable health care for children.We can't provide the ideal but we certainly can do a lot better than where we are now.
9
What a wonderful group of people! Thank you for sharing this story of people who are making the world a better place, one child at a time.
3
Beauty, Yes. Beautiful Facade? Most certainly. A 'special place', even a beautiful one, for children of parents who are having difficulty coping with their child's disability is merely a cosmetic patch for a complicated history of marginalizing the disabled. For centuries disabled children have been shuttered away to institutions, away from their loving families, away from society all-together. They were neglected and abused and often times left to die alone to never see their parents or siblings again.
Brooks claims that the 'family is in decline' but the reality is quite the reverse (in this country at least). We have made priorities to try to help families with disabled children raise their children at home, and to send them to the same schools everyone goes to. We provide help to parents who need the extra hand in raising a child with disabilities so that they can keep going even if they have to take less hours at their job in order to care for their child. And we need to be doing this with all families, even ones who might otherwise have a child taken away due to an ongoing social problem. We have begun doing the work, and we need to do more work – on all fronts – that keeps families truly together.
David Brooks, I usually appreciate your column but this one, not so much. Nearly everything demonstrated here is anathema to the critical work that has been done in the field of disability studies. It comes across as just another "Jerry's Kids" telethon.
3
NG - I'm confused. Where is this "help to parents ...even if they have to take less hours at their job?" I'm unaware of any program in the U.S. that supplements parents' reduced income when they need to stay at home with a disabled child.
4
Aren't there multiple paths to loving care for children? Aren't these adults doing something wonderful for the children in their care, and providing love where there was not enough? Yes, helping families to keep kids together with their birth families is critically important work, and huge progress has been made – but isn't there also room for more love in the world, too, where perhaps some kids don't have other options? Is this really so terrible?
3
In Oregon family members can be permitted to become full time caregivers employed by the state, with certification and training. And there are the social security benefits that go directly to disabled individuals and when they are minors this goes to them via the parents. Then we have the ADA laws which places requirements on businesses, public place and infrastructure to accommodate disability and prevent discrimination. That law and the IDEA require that schools must create the least restrictive learning environment as possible for children with disabilities. Lots more, it's all researchable. Not saying it's all perfect, but we actually do have a decently working system, compared to previous history especially.
1
Yes, this is very lovely and inspiring. But call me a cynic. We've heard wonderful stories like this before, and then we hear about neglect and abuse. And Mr. Brooks, the party you support would never support facilities like this. And you know that.
9
Young people will learn and grow among beautiful surroundings filled with diverse media of student art because whatever talents or ideals they have are nourished and fostered. Expanding the mind to consider all manner of diverse ideas and disciplines results.
I saw how the learning environment affected both my daughter and my son as they were growing up. My son matriculated at a school in his late teens where student buildings were nestled high enough in the upper reaches of Santa Barbara's hills so that the expanse of the Pacific created an illusion of what I thought infinity might look like if someone tried to paint it, where just approaching the building tickled the imagination. Of course, the sun is known to shine constantly in Santa Barbara, and the combination of sun and sea nurtured a sense of peace as one entered the building--a Spanish-styled hacienda built in the 1930s--but the students' art simply made my mind explode.
My daughter attended a high school devoted to the arts, although in a more urban setting, where the focus on the arts unleashed her talents for science and math, which she followed in her career.
The real goal, of course, is to make our children better people as adults, permitting them to express their talents, knowing that self-expression is a key to human growth, rarely if ever to be discouraged or diminished. It's fair to say, watching my children as adults, that I received more than I thought possible.
5
Could somebody please make a documentary about this place and these people. I grew up a foster kid and it sounds like the “fairy tale” place I always dreamed of but never found. Contrary to popular thought, sometimes a permanent, loving, institutional setting is preferable to a transient series of temporary “homes” that frequently, but not always, turn out to be less than “ideal” surroundings for frightened and confused, pseudo-nomadic populations of orphaned and abandoned children. Thank you for shining your light on this loving and forward thinking group of caring and wonderful people.
14
What a wonderful story! We as individuals can only do so much, but if we do what we can for others, it can change our lives. Even though we as individuals only can change a small bit of the world, we can change the world. Thank you!
3
This sounds like a truly wonderful place and we need so many more. But we also have to always have checks and balances in place such that the helpless and innocents are protected fully. I hate to be a downer but we always have to be on guard for predators now that we know how common they are, how they seek out opportunities where they will fly under the radar, and how they prey on the helpless. I just hope that Cometa has safeguards.
5
This warm and open-hearted column about children and love is very nice. However, Mr. Brooks, you've helped to create and support a government that could never produce this kind of happiness. Instead, the Republican Congress, Trump et al, and financial supporters are bent on ruining the lives of ordinary people. Just look how they recently tried to destroy Obamacare, with empty promises about the future for many people without it. Look how Trump et al are bent on destroying our environment. There are so many other examples of how Republicanism is government AGAINST the people. I don't know how you can walk around with your head in the clouds and ignore the destruction that your party is determined to do.
10
Beauty is essential for the spirit.
7
Something is changing in our communities. For over two decades elders have been gathering together in congregant living. For some years now something called Island Co Housing on Martha’s Vineyard has brought together families who share a compound where there are common eating areas and some small scale farming and shared workshops. Of course Israel has flourished with the kibbutz model that has not only created small villages but entrepreneurial success. A drug treatment community in North Carolina runs a two year residential program based on trust and mutual respect. Everyone is trained to do a job. Small clusters of shared living could offer an alternative to affordable housing. Isolating suburbs and soulless cities are not the only way to live and maybe a new way is slowly emerging.
7
At a time when most of the stories in the newspaper are bleak reminders of the sad state of our world, here comes an article that restores faith and lifts the spirit. Thank you, David Brooks.
14
Wake up David. The world is full of these beautiful places. The majority of humans are kind gentle loving forgiving, unlike what our TV series like Scandal NCIS CSI Blindspot Law and Order...and violent genres make us believe.
13
Mr. Tonei,
Let us sink into denial, and sing the praises of a world filled with the Children of Paradise. There are over 344 emergencies, 108 countries, millions of young lives saved where each emergency still is a crisis for the affected children, who are among the most vulnerable.
UNICEF stands ready to provide immediate assistance, clean, safe water, protection and health care within hours of any notification. Today its work has never been more important with an estimated 535 million children living in countries affected by emergencies. Regardless of whether these children are migrants, refugees or internally displaced, they are all just children.
The human mind is not able to take in the magnitude of what is happening, but we can try and not cry. David Brooks has found some beauty to share with his readership in the midst of chaos and turmoil. He is 'woke', and does not assume to take Cometa and its people for granted.
2
Brava.
1
It is imperative that out TV networks stop funding and sponsoring violent shows that show the dark side of humans, as a form of gross entertainment, gore, horror, terror, murder, crime, explosive behavior, criminal minds etc. These shows use technology and forensic science to show how they follow crime leads, instead of displaying how medicine science and technology engineering, have all made our lives better and enabled humans to use their empathy an compassion towards bettering lives. Not stockpiling weapons, chemicals and nuclear arms, to create fear division and unnatural evil and disconnection between nations and between humans.
2
Yes, individual philanthropists are a poor substitute for a system of government that embodies justice and compassion for citizens. America's leaders seem to be leaning more and more towards validating the rich and powerful and dismissing the "have-nots" as parasites and losers. Never mind that the greed of certain" haves" helps to create and maintain the suffering of those in need (witness the opiod crisis).
Sometimes the actions of individuals can speak louder than words in fostering altruistic values that can lead to legislative changes. The attention those at Cometa give to the least powerful in their society is a statement of the need to for humanity to cultivate the well being of all.
An example of the power of individual action is evident in Costa Rica, where a group of pacificist Quakers from Alabama settled in the 1940s. According to a Costa Rican I met in Monteverde, where they established themselves, the Quakers had a profound effect on the local culture in teaching the value of environmental conservation. Costa Rica is now a nation headed for carbon neutrality and an example for the world.
13
David, you seem to be a closet socialist. You apparently see value in people caring about people. Unfortunately, such behavior is more common in the "lazy" Mediterranean countries of Europe than in places like Germany, Britain, and the US, where life is all about economic production, financial success, and survival of the fittest. Is it possible that the "worldwide decline of family and community" you bemoan is perhaps driven by the capitalism you so love?
22
What a relief to contemplate beauty, nature, children and generosity -- when so much of the world seems to be dominated by ugly behavior, destruction of the environment, terrible adult role models, and me-me-me greed. There was a time when America in general was more like what is described here. I know, because I was there. Someday maybe some of that will come back. It still exists out there, in small pockets - but you'd never know it by reading or watching the news.
5
All children in this world should be so lucky.
7
Exactly! and they are not, because not every child can be cared for by some loving, kind and generous philanthropist. There is something very wrong with our post-modern, high tech societies that children can't receive care like this except by chance. That's why we are supposed to have functioning governments, financed by taxes, that are there with more than a "safety net," for children and adults who need care. That doesn't mean there can't be loving, voluntary communities, but that is not enough.
6
"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love." Socrates
"When a man loves a woman
Spend his very last dime
Trying to hold on to what he needs
He'd give up all his comforts
And sleep out in the rain
If she said that's the way
It ought to be" Percy Sledge
I could go on and on and on. Across the continents and thru the ages. Must be true!
Recently I've been reading about Hannity and his HUD holdings. Rents have begun to rise briskly for those that can afford it the least. Some folks have a tremendous amount of love, but it ends at their epidermis.
9
David this is going to sound terrible but these are the kind of words that were used about Mount Loretto a Catholic charity home for disgarded and orphan children in the early part of the last century. But now I read the chat rooms of kids who lived there under fairly terrible abuse. Some sexual abuse, , a lot of mental and physical abuse it turns out, no as idlylic a place as was painted for visitors. And I wonder if this place is for real? I hope so but I am always skeptical having been in the business of disgarded children who have no voice of their own my whole life.
9
Inspiring! How wonderfully caring and productive for society. If only the USA would encourage and initiate such communities across the country. Oh, how foolish of me - far too expensive. Taxes would have to be raised and such activities smack of socialism.
7
Yet Trump and many Republicans want to end DACA. Yet Trump and many Republicans want to turn away families from the caravan trying to come to America to escape horrible conditions in Central America. Yet Trump and many Republicans want to gut welfare and Social Security.
Beauty is wonderful. But it will turn ugly and meaningless unless it's appreciated and nurtured.
6
“The idea is to give students the power to welcome others, born out of a sense that they have been welcomed”, writes Mr. Brooks.
Ahh, feeling welcomed, Mr. Brooks? And will you next write about what ICE is doing to families? Our own government is kidnapping children! Or is there another word for what is happening at our Southern border?
“Why Does Trump Treat Immigrant Kids Cruelly? Because He Can”
The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof. April 25, 2018.
Where are some 700 children being housed after being torn from their parents’ arms? This must be a violation of their civil rights, aside from being horribly inhumane. What can we do to reunite these suffering children with their families? This practice must stop!
I hope you find it in your compassionate conservative heart to add to Mr. Kristof’s voice on this horrific situation. It’s no garden of delights.
12
An what intentions do you have Mr. Brooks regarding the possibility of "transforming your life," and giving up the ghost that you somehow believed were the worthy impulses of the Republican party and the conservative movement that have been entirely hijacked by the radical resentful, angry right wing. Will you transform your political beliefs and entirely repudiate the party that you have long supported, thus publicly transforming yourself?
10
"Beauty Educates." Love that.
4
I am quite strongly anti-child and anti-organized religion, and feel the world would be a much better place without the chaos that both engender. Although I still would rather be without organized religion (I do sense a greater meaning to it all that organized religion seems to diminish), this astonishing article has put a dent in my corrosive armor.
Organized religion? Not in the Humanitarian Field as I know it; not from my colleagues whose family members died in prison camps, or African friends in the Public Sector on assignment to Afghanistan. Regardless of our nationality, we leave our religious beliefs at the door, and take up the gauntlet for the cause of Our Children world-wide, often in red zone nations, where Angels fear to Tread.
"Last week Marina spent most of the meal with an infant with Down syndrome on her lap. “At first, I was afraid of disabled children,” she said. “But her presence has been a revolution of love for the entire family.”
surely this is not the first disabled child they have fostered in 30 years?
1
So now we do know what Jesus would do, so where are so the evangelicals who support Trump. They want to make a difference for themselves and care nothing about the pain and suffering of others. Brooks has exposed them even more as their hypocrisy stands out even more.
12
What a beautiful story. These folks saw a need in their community and worked hard to meet it.
They looked locally and acted locally. They put their money where their mouth is.
I am forced to compare these people with the 'do-gooders' in the US-- people who are blind to the poverty all around them and who focus on the entire world but never, ever, lift their own hand.
1
Durham must be a sad place to live. I live in Alexandria, VA and volunteer weekly at a local homeless shelter. Approximately 1300 of my neighbors also volunteer at this
Shelter. It’s nowhere near the commitment made by the family in this icee, but it’s nice to live in a community that wants to serve its neighbors.
3
I don't live in Durham, but a quick Google search located this: http://www.thevolunteercenter.org/tp42/Default.asp?ID=139710. You don't mention if you're personally engaged in your own community, working locally, to address the needs in Durham. If not, this volunteer center might be a great place to start.
1
Hmmm; an impossible dream w/o financial success?
The Dream is taking place and being turned into a goal not only in the Now but for the Future. 'I did not wish to mention that my grand-daughter was starring as young Nala on Broadway in The Lion King for fear that it would appear to be bragging', from a colleague and friend in the humanitarian community. Her grand-child died shortly afterward of a rare blood disorder. My friend later went on assignment to Italy, and she would like to read what David Brooks writes of Cometa and its Children.
For some of us it is Food for the Soul and a reminder that a lot of challenges are waiting to be answered.
Thank you for a nice, feeling good column, a well deserved reprieve from the ugliness of the current situation in the US.
5
Mr. Brooks, this is absolutely beautiful. No preaching, no scolding and no sly political jibes. Please continue, Sir.
6
David Brooks finds another way to not think about Republicans and Donald Trump.
4
The beautiful source of creative energy is demonstrably the very creator without whom creation can't matter. It's the light in our eyes, wind in our lungs, and life's stay on time; healthily sensitive to touch and heard forever in procreation. To be sure, all that literally matters is -- when factored in speed-of-light love -- is Alpha's higher bent on Omega's relative destiny.
Einstein's energy, if you will. Or especially if you don't!
After all, if the beginning had indeed been 'The Word,' lest the command's unanswered, our higher calling of word-made-flesh is the very order whence spacetime's perfect union between place and family can perpetually form. That in whose image creation came is manifest in the very children for whom creativity can't otherwise continue to reach.
I am not beautiful.
And you know what? That's OK.
I understand that it is human to admire beauty. But I believe that our culture places too much emphasis on it. Even the concept that we must look for the "inner beauty" of things that are not outwardly beautiful suggests that the only things that have value are those that are beautiful.
There is nothing wrong with being not beautiful. Those who do not have outward beauty should not be made to feel that they must cultivate "inner beauty" -- which often means suppressing their own needs and wants so that others can benefit from that "beauty" -- to be worthy of respect or love.
We should be mature enough as humans to recognize the innate dignity of every person, and to value them for that, irrespective of how not beautiful they are. But you don't do people any favors by making "beauty" a goal, and then twisting the meaning of the word so that "everyone" can claim to be beautiful.
Thank you for sharing this story. It was a refreshing read surrounded by the darkness of the news these days. Makes me want to visit Cometa and become a part of it.
1
My beautiful, mostly wealthy, Connecticut town would never allow such a thing! We’d rise up and fight, just as we fought off affordable housing. A whiff of the concept would boost sales of security systems and guns. This is our America, and the liberty we cherish is liberation from people in need, if there’s any chance we have to breathe the same air.
Some think Brooks is packaging Republican social theory here, but it really is outside of overt politics. Our kids, recently and deliberately deprived of vocational training with nary a protest, are, rich or not so much, training for a life of asocial combat in professional arenas. The idea that a religious or ethical revelation can alter behavior is reserved for fiction. Inscribed over the lintels of our best schools: “Devil Take the Hindmost”.
9
When respect for human dignity is a society's guiding principle, education, policing and, respect for each other and our environment look like Cometa, Italy.
3
Hoping this experience will help you see the childish nature of conservatism, being a disguise for benevolent dictatorships.
Beauty contains an innate justice, a perceived balance of forces.
Gentle reminder, affluence makes helping easier but no less appreciated.
A welcomed salve to the ever present negative focus on people's darker side. This community of caring without exclusion gives me hope. I too can do!
4
What a beautiful reminder that there is still good in the world and wonderful people who dedicate their lives to serving those most vulnerable individuals who otherwise would be cast aside and never know the loving kindness of adults who care.
5
An insightful article, uplifting & & contagious.
10
A breath of fresh air! Caring does make a difference. This (and another article about being an orphan ... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/well/family/on-being-an-orphan-freque... give pause to the otherwise toxic headlines of the day.
2
I've known several saints in my time, and, unfortunately, abusers also. Looked at from a distance, they were pretty similar. That's why we need laws and oversight, even of saints.
6
Always nice to read an uplifting, positive story with so much bad in the news.
5
Mr. Brooks, you describe an extraordinary example of how the generous sharing of wealth, education, and environmental shepherding can create a small heaven on earth. I'm confident that the vast majority of Americans would embrace such a vision, maybe minus the religion. However, those who control the wealth of our nation share only a meager fraction with others. Our Congressional representatives just gave away $1.5 Trillion to individuals and corporations who already have far more than they need, because the wealthy fund the campaigns of these officials in what is now an obvious quid-pro-quo arrangement. Leaders of our federal government have grown corrupt and blatantly value power over truth, justice, environmental sustainability, fairness, or any other truly human value. So, just how do you align your moral vision with your political stances?
34
The key to this is a simple but revolutionary shift: from a focus on "needs" and problems to the premise that everyone is gifted, and what is most important is to focus on the gifts and help them shine. ABCD - Asset Based Community Development - is changing everything - social services, education, counseling, social entrepreneurship - and for the better!
7
How sad one has to go all the way to Cometa, Italy to find such a loving place. We have places of love here, as well, but most would be better described as places providing basic needs only to the poor or unwanted. Your fine piece, David, makes me wonder why we can't unite and help find a place in a pregnant woman's heart to deliver full term her unwanted child, knowing that there are many others able to love and raise the child. Over 60,000,000 unborn humankind never got the chance. Perhaps some small group who truly care about life for the unborn, unwanted, will start a Cometa II to save and serve them. Journeys of love and life begin with these single steps.
5
Maybe you, since you seem so concerned could be the one to start a Cometa in Minnesota. And remember, some women have abortions because of complications that could kill them as well as the child. And at least some of those women already have children that need a mother. Finally, when society quits condemning women for getting pregnant at the wrong time while not condemning the men who are the contributors to those pregnancies and making them support that child, things might change.
3
Maybe one day when we also, like Italy and the rest of the developed world, have universal health care coverage and no one has to bankrupt themselves paying for life saving care for these unplanned, unwanted children with HIV and disabilities, it will become more likely.
60 million unborns, eh? Where would we put them all when we can't even provide the ones we have with basic human needs?
4
Perhaps. But who would fund these unborn children's lives?
Not the Congress. They just want them to be born and then be done with it.
Not Ben Carson. He wants to triple the rent of poor people.
Who wants people living in Public Housing at a rent that they can barely pay afford, to keep a roof over their families head with heat and hot water. Ben is determined to get rid of Public Housing and then erase HUD from Government.
Not Betsy deVos. She would take Public Education away from poor kids, by not funding it. By funding only Charter Schools. The only education that poor children can attain is a public one.
Then there is the Congress and Paul Ryan who would do away with SNAP, the program that helps feed poor families.
And of course Medicaid funding will be nil, the only program that supplies Health Care to these poor children.
And the Religious Right would not allow birth control to be publicly funded and the result is many unwanted babies.
These are only a few examples of how the poor are condemned in our society.
Perhaps you can start a "Cometa". I sure do not see any wealthy people stepping up.
This would need to be a grass roots efforts, one worth taking, if there was the public will to make it happen.
You sure cannot depend on anyone in power at the moment.
6
But isn't this Arcadia very similar to the Republican ideal of private charity only, with no governmental assistance for the poor, the sick, the children, the cheated and the abandoned?
Put down the tissue box and unpack this uplifting sermon. Brooks is carefully, lovingly, deceitfully demonstrating the Republican fantasy of no collective social responsibility. The ideal is just a few noble souls, exhausted and striving, saving a few while the rest of the "community" goes about its business, feeling good about themselves that there is "somebody doing something. (Just not me or my money.)"
It's about as perfect a Republican manipulation piece as can be imagined.
96
And if social services in the US disappear, and our government abdicates responsibility for the needy, would you prefer that private individuals NOT do this extraordinary effort on behalf of the children?
What a gorgeous story, what an inspirational tale, and how rarely we focus on beauty as something essential to our souls and our success.
1
Brooks doesn't mention this, but Italy does have national health service that provides care for all, a very un-Republican tenet of society. Especially when taking in children with life threatening, expensive to treat illnesses and disabilities, that is a huge weight they don't have to bear. In that respect, they are ahead of us.
21
Not much beauty in this kind of cynicism. There's no mention of the public sector here because that's not what this article is about. The government can fund streetlights and I can still help a little old lady across the street.
4
I like when Brooks gets outside the political sphere. Very thought-provoking. So my apologies for this question: It takes a village?
6
This story isn't about poverty alleviation, refugees, or welfare policy. This story is about how acts of love transform both the adults and the children who partake. It encourages those who have the time and resources to find a way to give love to somebody else. You can't love a society, and society won't love you back. Neither can you send love by writing a check. Love is given one person and one interaction at a time.
.
Our complicated lives, in an atomistic society that values freedom and independent action, often lead us away from extended or even nuclear families where we could most easily give and receive that love. This article should encourage us, particularly those whose lives are not currently occupied with child-rearing, to find a place in our community to give of ourselves generously, with no quid pro quo. It is those investments in love that pay the greatest dividends.
8
Writing a check can help those who have the time and inclination to give that love directly in places of need. I have donated monthly now for over 48 years to Child Fund, formerly Christian Children's Fund. The name has changed because they are not just church missionaries anymore and take care of children from other religions as well. I started with two girls in the Favela of Rio de Janiero, Brazil and now support two boys, one in West Africa and one in Texas. As these boys grow and age out of the program, having graduated from school it will be most interesting to see who I get to sponsor next. But being aware of the needs here I will always have one in the US.
Along the way I have also mentored and tutored some minority children in my community. Lots of ways to get involved. When you see a child who was failing go to and graduate from college it is an amazing reward.
1
The "lesson" Brooks is trying to convey with this piece, that as opposed to "a lot of us" who are aware of the problems around us, that is problems that are part and parcel of the world we live in, some people are willing to transform their lives to address them.
And the example he gives is of 2 couples who are sticking to their vows that they would never have children to decide to start a major project to address the problem posed to children who have never had a loving home, precisely because of the "worldwide decline in family", that is couples who are too selfish to have a family.
The only way to truly provide children with a loving home is to live within a family of their own. Instead these people take children who had never had a loving home by the hundreds and provide them with a pleasant couple of years in their lives.
So far from this being an act of solving the problems of the world, they are using their wealth to provide children with some happiness as a means to not have to "suffer" having children of their own.
The rest of the world on the other hand provides a loving home to children by having children of their own, which transforms their lives a lot more than using ones wealth to set up a program for children.
And in general the idea of comparing rich people who do some good because they have wealth that needs to be disposed of in part to do good to people who do not "transform" their lives to do good when they don't have wealth is ridiculous.
8
What a sad comment. The world is overpopulated as it is and choosing to care for and love children who do not come out of our own bodies is not something to be denigrated. Unfortunately, there are far too many people who have children they neither want nor care for.
And just why is having children of your own having to "suffer?" Is it because you think one can only truly love their own flesh and blood? Besides, many of those transforming their lives to do good do not and never had wealth.
1
You do not have to be a parent to love and treat children with respect and to be a beacon of life for them.
There are so many parents who abuse their children, bereft them of love. Do you really believe that the answer is for everyone to be a parent.
Families can be a combination of things besides being a biological mother or father.
2
Our days will be better after reading your wonderful column. Italy is an inspiration. We can sing "Sorridy amore vay" from the movie "Life is beautiful". Many thanks.
5
This article extols the central place of beauty in nurturing children's sense of place, security and community, but Mr. Brooks supports a party that believes it is more important to remove the art, drama and music programs from schools in poor neighborhoods than it is to establish sufficient revenues (through --gasp -- higher taxes on those who can afford it) to not only continue those vital purveyors of beauty, but to improve the buildings, furnishings and campuses so that low-income families come to feel their value as contributing - if struggling - members of the community.
24
A famous woman candidate for President of the United States wrote a book about raising children called, "It takes a village." The ideas in it were very close to what Mr. Brooks writes here.
It's America, so her words were, of course, immediately taken out of context. Right-wingers said she was promoting the idea that the State take children away from their parents and raise them. She had said no such thing, of course. She had said things that appear in this column. It didn't matter. She was relentlessly mocked and hounded by those on the Right.
Mr. Brooks, you'd better watch out.
21
If we are waiting for consensus to proceed, we will never find it. Move forward, find the slim majority votes. Pass it. Do it. Forget those who don't get it. Show them why they should get it.
2
The very fact that this piece is so moving illuminates the real problem: it is a RARE occurrence of humanity and decency in a sea of selfishness and greed. Mr. Brooks has always promoted the Republican myth that it's up to individuals, not the government, to improve society. You can always pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, make yourself healthy if you try hard enough. Keep government out of it. How is that working? While we all can do our part, it is essential that government defend the vulnerable for if not we will fail as a society. Greed and selfishness have become Republican hallmarks and they justify it with stories just like this one. They are moving fairy tales.
16
When I first read the title of this piece, it sounded like a book. After reading the article, I feel like it SHOULD be a book, so that it isn't limited to a one-day life span. Please expand it, Mr. Brooks. It's such a dramatic contrast to the page one article on how capitalism and monopolies have damaged society.
8
Thank you for sharing this place with us Mr. Brooks, I am grateful to know of it.
While I agree with the commenters who state that individual charity is insufficient to address the institutional lack of support for those in need, I suspect one helps give rise to the other, while also demonstrably helping individual human lives. If we can engage in helping our less-fortunate fellows in substantive and personal ways, even if they aren't the beautiful and radical ones of Cometa, that helps shift the collective expectation for how we *should* treat one another, and thereby, what we expect of our social structures.
4
This is a beautiful story, and these families clearly transformed the lives of the children in this op-ed.
That said, individual charity cannot be our response to the levels of systematic poverty and human misery we face: it is simply insufficient.
Here are are the statistics for Syrian refugees granted asylum in the United States for the last few years:
2016: 15,479
2017: 3,024
2018: 11
Of the five million Syrian refugees outside Syria, we have welcomed into our country 0.00022% in 2018 despite the worst levels of trauma and pain most of us have witnessed in our lifetimes.
Closer to home, there were roughly 554,000 homeless people in the US on any given day in 2017. 13% of all Americans were food insecure in 2015.
A brace of millionaire couples buying an Italian villa to live in and host orphans undeniably is an admirable thing which fundamentally improves the lives of several hundred children, and they should be admired. But it's not enough to solve the human anguish represented by the above statistics. We need to realise that to be charitable individuals in a globalised world, we must act to change our institutions - even if it is inconvenient or uncomfortable for us - to work towards a better society.
70
Yes, yet if each of us did as these people do, then we would not have people leaving their home countries for better lives. We save the world, one person at a time.
2
Now let's see, Brooks bemoans a world wide decline in community. Meanwhile, he supports a political party that believes in taking money from communities, education, worker education, children's nutrition programs, health care, community literacy projects and the like, and giving those monies to the rich via tax cuts and deregulation. Oh, Mr. Brooks, what a compassionate soul you have.
120
In such disenchanting times, a most enchanting lift—love will do that. It is good to be reminded that societies begin and end in direct proportion to how people love one another. That is the enduring potential across all peoples, places, and things. Love has more and enduring power over people than money or corporations ever will. Thank you for your witness, Mr. Brooks!
8
Thx Mr. Brooks for sharing what's going right in this world. We are constantly hit with what's going wrong. There are still so many of us who are trying to live a helpful life. Your article helps with that.
9
Inspiring story. Thank you. Reminds me of the worldwide L'Arche communities and the work of Jean Vanier and Henri Nouwen. Going to what society considers the dark margins, and there to find a Light.
11
Thank you Mr. Brooks for writing about ardinary people and their empathy for the less fortunate. A breath of fresh air from the depressing coverage of Trump 24/7 by the media!
10
Can we solve our problems one tiny project at a time? I have to commend Cometa, and the love that has gone into trying to take a tiny chip at an enormous problem. Like the food bank at my Church, and the services for the elderly run here mostly by volunteers, the work is necessary.
But is it the model we need? Without the whole community contributing, we can't make a big dent. Churches no longer drive the largest social service - they don't run free schools staffed by nuns, or giant hospitals staffed the same.
We need to extend that love to large scale programs. Ones that assure education and assure healthcare. And for that? Cometas are wonderful, but social services, funded and expertly run, are necessary.
30
Social services, such as for the homeless, are now an industry, with duplicative agencies, very highly paid executives and multiple national conferences in cool cities. This is because society no longer takes responsibility, women have children without considering the demands or raising them and fathers are not present. It takes many responsible, caring adults, as shown in this piece, to raise children properly. This cannot be done by service providers.
2
But service providers were very helpful in the days of my childhood. My grandmother was on the board of directors of an orphanage run by her Presbyterian church in Louisville, Kentucky back in the 40s and 50s. Don't know if it still exists. But the "orphans "(sometimes children from poor families who couldn't afford them) were each sponsored by a church member or two who provided clothes and other needs. The church provided the shelter and I'm sure many of those like my grandmother were never paid a dime although we did occasionally eat with the orphans unannounced so my grandmother could be sure the food was proper and adequate and the care was good.
What Julie said, AND I suspect what was meant by social services in this case is more about providing the supports necessary for more families to raise their children in less stressed, more loving ways. Universal health care paid for by income tax so no one has to choose between whether to take their kid to the doctor, buy medicine or food (which Italians have), meaningful work that pays a living wage, affordable housing, etc.
1
In the political world where' we the people' are constantly being disappointed. Lies of being told by our president whose fragile uncaring, unloving mannerisms bleed into today's society. What a refreshing article, my heart and mind was lifted with the integrity of each sentence I read. Loving and being loved fill's one's heart; as I read this article I realized how long it's been since I've read a different perception of the world that I live in.
My local UU church that I joined three years ago fill's me with such down-to-earth love. I am proud to say I am part of the greater Boston international faith movement.One church can make a little difference, but 35 churches and synagogues make a huge difference when laws are being passed. I am loving and working for strangers behind bars that they might see and feel the light of the day.
6
What a beautiful island of caring and compassion within the sea greed and corruption. Yes, there are some good people in the world, and it would be wonderful if everyone (how about half? a quarter?) with more means than needs would reach out to help those with more needs than means, but that runs counter to capitalism's goading of greed.
That 'beauty heals' may indeed be true, but is there enough accessible beauty made available to enough people who need healing?
If the majority of Christians claiming to be pious actually followed Christ's teachings, wow, what a world this would be. Same goes for all (of the religious) following their best selves, the agnostics, and the atheists.
19
As I read this lovely article, I first became enraptured by the love of children and beauty (it’s the same love, I think) evinced by these spiritually mature people.
Then, oddly, my mind wandered to, of all places, Mar a Lago, with its “beautiful” chocolate cake and no kids to chomp into it.
24
Quite an enchanting and inspiring story. Almost Utopian. But I'm wondering how close to or far from the realities most children experience or will experience. After being ensconced in such beauty and warmth only, throughout childhood, would they have developed skills to handle realities that are far different and removed from what they've known, should that be thrust on them?
Sometimes, adversity too, shapes us into the right people.
2
Jacob, I think the short answer is: yes they will develop the skills. I would rather have someone approach certain realities from a base of stability and love rather than the opposite. Of course adversity can shape us in a positive way but I don't believe abuse can.
3
Something tells me that all of these children have already had their fair share of adversity, and then some.
3
So you recommend the school of hard knocks? Time to bring back the draft and make it universal? Or maybe a stint in Nigeria?
1
Reading this enchanting story reminds me that life is an infinitesimal light, a holiday on earth, sandwiched between two eternities of darkness.
What do we do with our lives during the precious interval?
13
A wonderful story of truth, and love, in action. The sad truth is that most children, even in affluent neighborhoods, are not watched closely by the parents, not old enough to navigate the streets, and often one mother unwillingly has to speak to the parents that their children are in danger from the traffic, the driveways, etc. Parenting isn't a right, as we are animals, but when they arrive, it is so sad, that those who bore them, have neither the ability, interest, time, or money to take care of them, and too many of them become casualties in everyday life.
6
Goodness me, so many snarky comments.
Thank you, Mr. Brooks, for sharing a lovely story of redemption, for the children and the adults.
In Pauline theology we call a community like Cometa the Body of Christ. One body made of many parts, serving one another. Perhaps the beauty of Northern Italy is the blood in the veins of this body.
39
Hey, Reverend! Those "realistic" comments ain't snarky. They are realistically echoing Jesus: 'I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." And in the wonders of wonder, Jesus may have been building on a reference to commentary on the Song of Songs: "
A Midrash uses the phrase to speak of God's willingness and ability beyond comparison, to accomplish the salvation of a sinner: 'The Holy One said, open for me a door as big as a needle's eye and I will open for you a door through which may enter tents and [camels?].'
So, dearly beloved, let's not call "snarky" thems what are dismayed by thems what at the same time smile at other faraway people's generosity while they tighten their fists around their own fat wallets and avert their eyes from the daily pain in their own United States.
Brooks opens a needle eye here, now it's for US to augment it to allow a renovation of kindness and generosity.
5
Goodness me, so many illusions.
3
David didn’t suggest what he thinks the moral is to his tale. Some take it to be encouragement to depend on individual charity rather than try to fix the bigger problems that require government. Others may see the tale as what we are driven to do when government is not working. Government might work better if more of us were motivated like the exemplary individuals David describes.
6
We have many people of similar bent in this country, usually called "foster parents." Every child in foster care is entitled to the equivalent of SSA/SSI benefits.
1
Wonderful reporting. Sounds exactly like heaven on earth. Very inspiring. Thank you, Mr. Brooks.
11
That’s all very nice, David, but if you contrast the quantity of good done, suffering relieved and the number of lives fulfilled by the secular social welfare state, wherever and whenever it has been in effect, to the good done by people of faith acting as individuals, there’s simply no contest. Social democracy wins hands down. And in your hands and those of conservatives like you, anecdotes of private charity amount to propaganda spreading the fiction that private citizens can pick up the slack of a failing or nonexistent system of public welfare.
278
It only took the very next comment.
5
Where does Brook comment on public welfare? In this column, he describes the rescue of children who have suffered from unloving homes, not the rescue of children from “the state”. He also describes the improtance of beauty and civility — a lesson I think many of us could consider when we think about our own homes and about how we live and interact with children (and adults) around us.
22
LD,
One of the most harrowing movies watched recently was 'Good-Night, Mr. Tom', taking place in England during WWII with a visit to London. The British appear to have an edge when it comes to Child Welfare, and this based on the participation of the U.K. during The International Year of The Child in 1979.
Let us not give up hope or inspiration when a child in need is knocking at our door. A young voice woke this reader in the middle of the night. I hedged for a moment and listened to what she had to say, before recognizing that it was a friend in sorrow on hearing of a loss.
'Even Dad was impressed when I told him that the President is going to miss me'. She was once the Representative for a Children's International Welfare Agency in the Philippines a decade ago, while thirty years ago, my supervisor from Manila was the Special Representative for our Team.
Both these women came from modest backgrounds with an abundance of parental love, reminding us that a privileged child is a 'Loved One'.
We continue and care that David Brooks wrote to us about the love given by the People in Cometa to these children, and some beauty shared, reminding us that we have miles to go in the face of a near world-wide emergency situation.
Remembering Dr. Fanny Aldaba-Lim, the first clinical psychologist female of the Philippines, she would have had much to add to what David Brooks has to say on the state of our children today.
On reading the entire column, there will be commenters who lambaste David for suggesting that effective social change can be energized by individuals from the ground-up, as opposed to immense centralized government efforts with hard, universal targets (that they never meet, despite the expenditure of trillions over decades). David is less nuanced than usual here (and he’s becoming less so over time) in his “Find Waldo” method of introducing religion and community into the conversation; but, the couples’ religious transformation aside, this is a story of individual contribution that is essentially conservative in nature, and both effective and heartwarming in result.
And I thank David profusely for not mentioning Trump even once.
9
Mr. Luettgen,
What these people in Como are doing is wonderful. Como is one of the wealthiest, and most beautiful places in the world.
You say "effective social change can be energized by individuals from the ground-up," which is true; however, you leave out how rare it is, and both you and Brooks gloss over the incredible disparity of wealth (read access to beauty for most, some, a few more,...) among Como and its neighbors.
When you, Brooks, and others on the conservative side manage to get a plurality of those in need the necessary 'beauty' in their lives via religious piety (or any form of organized and sustained altruism), I will join your camp. An island of goodness within a sea of greed-based rationales does not convince me more than the broken clock being right twice per day.
13
Luettgen Who says this is going to produce great change? And no one has ever said change can't ever be produced 'from the ground up', but if 'hard universal targets' of 'centralized govts' have never worked -- well, guess why they persist, Luettgen? Because any smaller from-the-ground-up efforts have never eliminated poverty or any other social ill, either. Have they?
Are you so self-encased that you didn't even notice that this place only contains a few score of kids????? How can we be sure it will be adopted -- Oh wait, you say "energized" (?) what exactly do you mean by that? Begun? Supported? -- by the wider society, much less the world?
How can anyone be sure this little example will spread -- Oh wait, you say "energized" (?) what exactly do you mean by that? Begun? Supported? -- to the wider society, much less the world?
How long do we have to wait for the potential 'social change'? How many homeless kids would remain homeless for how long without governmental social services, while they wait on small personal efforts to get around to their need?
By all means, let all these charitable people do what they can & hope their efforts bear wider fruit. But we should thank massive centralized govt for whatever it can do to stem the massive tide of need in the meantime. Obviously.
Geez, the flimsy points you conservatives make in your comments...
Thank you for this refreshing reminder of goodness in our world. With all the reporting of constant turmoil, bloodshed and injustice, we sometimes forget that there are still islands of beauty among us that are indifferent to political rancour.
18
There's a saying, "beauty will save the world," which I have struggled to understand. This article explains a little more.
21
There are many, many such wonderful places in the world. There are even some in the US -- one of the earlier comments mentioned Boys' Town. But there have been many elsewhere in the world. About 40 years ago I visited Bemposta, a large foster home and circus school whose children performed all over Europe. (Which reminds me of Berkeley's own Wavy Gravy, who established Camp Winnarainbow, dedicated to "circus arts and peace," who's about to celebrate his 82nd birthday.) At John Holt's recommendation I read "Letter to a Teacher." a book written by the schoolboys of Barbiana, a school started by a local priest because the public school was terrible, and terribly classist. A few years ago I visited a school in Bangkok dedicated to "Constructionism": kids learning by building artifacts. What I haven't seen yet is a wonderful place for kids paid for by a government. But it's not because we don't know how to do it.
7
Brian,
"What I haven't seen yet is a wonderful place for kids paid for by a government."
That is so sad.
Might I suggest you hop on down to your local school and volunteer your time and energy so you too can experience the safe, loving, enrichment that our teachers bring to their classrooms every day.
You could go and visit most any of our libraries. Wonderful places to sit and learn and be entertained by the best stories ever written. Our kid loved the library.
Take the family and experience Nature at its finest. Possibly some of the best in the world. Our National Parks. Heck, even our State Parks are top notch. Getting a little crowded at some of the more popular spots, but our get away locals are still true escapes.
Again, our kid and neighbor children we used to bring loved it.
But hey, we each experience life differently and through different eyes eh?! Our American Gov. truly leaves much to be desired. But it seems to me we still have a lot to offer and can change for the better.
54
"Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it" (Confucius)
Cometa and its staff see it and help others do so, especially in those in whom this is not readily apparent.
Outstanding project and thank you Mr. Brooks for writing about it.
25
Thank you for telling us about this place. Every child needs love and safety, time to play and have friends. Such simple things that not every child has. Think how much suffering could be alleviated if we adults devoted ourselves to creating Cometas. True, life with children can be chaotic, but it can also be a happy surrender to seeing things from their point of view and remembering our own child selves. There is no shortage of such care work needed. It is the work of peace and the 21st century will depend on it.
15
Years ago I traveled to Vietnam and had the chance to visit an orphanage originally set up for orphans following the Vietnam War. My friend's Vietnamese mother helps raise money for the school. She had to flee during the war because her father was a high ranking official in the former South Vietnamese government, both her parents were killed during the war I believe.
I spent a week with a group of kids that had grown up in the orphanage, then in their mid twenties. One thing I noticed was how close they were to each other, not unlike brothers and sisters. Family can be created I saw, it is not a status unique to biological relationships. A large number of these kids would regularly come back to the orphanage to work and spend time with current kids living there, providing care and community, similar to what you witnessed in Italy I think.
Having been loved and cared for by the original founders and caretakers themselves, these kids grew up and are now caring for other kids. One person can show love to many, and those many each are more likely to show love to many more themselves.
When I picture generations of this family, this chain of love and care continuing and growing, you're right, it is truly beautiful.
30
America could do better by its children. We elect politicians and espouse views about children and spending money on them that are not compatible with children, beauty, or love. Our views, especially those expressed and acted upon by the GOP, are more along the lines of how cheaply something can be done, how difficult we can make it for people to get the help they need, and how little most of us are worth unless we have a ton of money to donate to, you guessed it, our political system.
Children do not have a lot of money to give. Therefore they do not have a true place in the minds of most politicians. They are expected to make do with inadequate foster care systems if their parents cannot care for them. They are expected to accept dilapidated school buildings as places to learn. Children in America are loved in theory but not in practice.
67
My favorite line:
If a toy breaks at Cometa, it is fixed right away. Likewise, every child is recoverable.
This is such simple wisdom. I will remember this as I help my kids with their kids. Respect. Lots of it, in lots of ways.
41
Not having children is the most beautiful act a human can do. To rise above the biological imperative, to spare others from having to endure this world. Doing this while taking care of others already born into hopeless situations only compounds the beauty.
42
'It had been years since I had thought of Patricia, a young girl resting across the paws of a great lion in the Savanna of Kenya, where all is so beautiful in our united community of humans and nature'.
The above attempt at writing an essay, based on Joseph Kessel's story, will be for Kristof at The New York Times, who wrote of love for humanity. Kessel was also a journalist and author, a pilot during WWI; and his 'Lion' written for children is not only about beauty, but love and conflict, where courageous choices have to be made on occasion.
Every day a report is circulated from a global international children's organization about what is happening to our World and it is sobering news.
It helps to read of this loving Italian couple who are helping these children, and not a day goes by, where I do not remember how difficult it can be for some of us to be a child.
Thanking The People in Cometa for caring, and being teachers and students of life, and David Brooks for giving his readership a moment to pause and reflect of what at times is in plain view.
22
I am so thankful that the recent federal tax cuts will now allow hundreds, maybe thousands, of wealthy Real Americans to open similar private facilities for children in need, of all classes and races. Please write about them when they open.
420
Yes, indeed! All of that goodness and generosity will soon be trickling down upon the impoverished and needy children of America! Thank God for these mighty tax cuts which will unleash the compassion the rich in America have been withholding for so many years!
57
Maybe they will and maybe they won't, and it shouldn't be a personal choice but a collective one, and that means these so-called tax breaks are a rotten deal for us as a group. But for some individuals, it can be uplifting of their greed and vanity.
3
Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to depend on a small number of improbably self-sacrificing people to protect, nurture and educate children? But Mr. Brooks is always highlighting individuals who take on the task of doing what a modern democracy should be doing.
Instead of economically abandoning neighborhoods and creating generations of desperate, uneducated and hopeless people, why not spend a little energy and money refurbishing schools and providing decent wages for parents?
Rather than finding God, why not help people find the resources to dig their way out of poverty and despair? When illness or developmental disabilities strike, should medical care and support be the responsibility of individuals who can’t afford the cost of properly caring for such a child?
Bill Gates just provided 20,000 teens with a free college education. Why can a wealthy private citizen do it, while our government supports a usurious college-loan system that ensures many graduates may never repay their debt?
Uplifting stories are fine, and much credit goes to the few who can provide the time and energy to take care of needy children. But those few children must be multiplied by several million to encompass the national scale of the problem.
This isn’t a job for volunteers. It’s the job of government to provide for the safety, security, health and education of its population. And it’s not a job that Republicans choose to do.
456
Roger Williams, the one who founded Providence, Rhode Island, disagreed with you Gemli. Williams once wrote a book on the subject of whether government should hire the ministers to handle the moral and charitable needs of the people. Then as now the folks who ran Boston thought the government should hire and pay and control those people. Williams thought otherwise. His work was entitled: "Hireling Ministry -- None of Christ's."
We have separation of church and state in the US largely thanks to Williams' viewpoint. Eliminating the role for churches and privately funded public expressions of charity and moral virtue, requiring that all must be controlled by the government-funded bureaucrats, will guarantee no charity or moral virtue.
12
While I agree that our government should provide for the safety, security, health, and education of its population, the article is about more than that. It's about the provision of beauty, home, self-worth, and love. And for this you need intimacy, community, family.
31
This is a hard truth, but the evidence for it is everywhere. Governments and bureaucracies and organizational strategists of all kinds work with controls and policies and incentives and rewards that become internalized as motivations. For us this is a necessary rational formation. It's how we think and do things. A specific rationalist notion of truth as what allows prediction and control rules over this formation.
Beauty is something else. So is love. So is another kind of truth.
In America there is that New England, Puritan strain of "character" that distrusts beauty, that holds to a belief that suffering builds character, and that if you give away too much to deprived young people, they will be spoiled and lazy.
But there in Cometa, are people who aren't fearful of human need, who act with faith that the more they can give, the more others will be blessed And that we all crave beauty on our surroundings. We thrive knowing that we have worth, that we aren't broken beyond repair or throwaways.
Thanks - - for sharing a glimpse of beauty.
115
I heard the definition of Puritanism was that uneasy feeling that someone, somewhere is actually enjoying themselves.
8
Except on that balance scale you should also factor that heirs of the Puritans were the fiercest American defenders of common good prevailing over individual interest, that they endowed civic institutions, and built and designed public and private buildings with great care for beauty, and fought for the idea that that government has social cares with its it proper remit - free public schools, free public libraries, subways and park systems et cet. This is not the simple caricature of Puritanism we're used to.
4
The Loving Place For Billionaires That Celebrates Selfishness.
Some of the people who do the most harm have a willingness to be radical. They're insensitive to the problems around them and happy to make them worse for an extra buck. I see many such sociopaths at a swamp near here called Republistan.
38 years ago, a band of political thieves stumbled upon a phony Hollywood pitchman to sell their Snake Oil and kill their country.
They were spiritually and intellectually dead inside, but money animated their spirits in a psychopathic way.
They pretended religiosity and preached a perverted prosperity gospel as if God were a greedy narcissist instead a decent fellow.
They began a Know Nothing Tax Cut Revolution that celebrated private gain and demonized public good. They were so happy with their tax-cut-greedy-gravy that they ignored thousands dying in front of them from AIDS.
Soon, the tax-cut hysteria spread on TV and radio propaganda outlets and half the nation believed in the fairy-dust magical powers of tax cuts for rich people even as their own fortunes rapidly declined, their wages, pensions, healthcare, education, opportunities and futures all destroyed for millionaire welfare.
Selfishness decapitates; it turns a society into a bunch of ignorant, deprived lemmings walking to their own economic and spiritual slaughter.
All embodied in a catastrophic philosophy that 'greed is good' and expressed in every conceivable way in America's crumbled, failing nation state.
236
Great comment, as usual.
I just want to point out that greedy people, or generous people, for that matter, cannot help themselves: We are all totally controlled by a combination of DNA and environment. (Thus, we should neither be denigrated nor lauded for good or bad behavior, at least not in an ultimate sense of cosmic judgment; but that's not my point here.)
Those people that luckily have somehow developed helpful social personalities must stop the plundering of our society for the benefit of a relative few. And they will no doubt try; nonetheless, they may not win this epic battle. All we can do is be ourselves and watch how things fall out. You and other commenters here are doing your assigned parts, just as the Trump loyalists are doing theirs. It's the greatest show on earth, and it's got me on the edge of my seat and losing sleep at night. I deeply care about how this human drama unfolds. (Spoiler Alert: Usually, after much pain, suffering, bloodshed, and financial loss, the good guys win, e.g., as in WWII. But the devil is in the details, so every move taken or avoided matters greatly, even though Fate already knows the whole story.)
Later, gator.
4
I think this is one of your best comments. You have nailed the problems in this country with great accuracy. Maybe the Times should give you a column. But since they always publish your comments, maybe they already have. Thanks.
14
But Saint Ronnie was, well, a saint. He alerted the economic elites to the fact that it wasn't their job to help support America. It was their job and right to take the money and run with it. Run it to offshore accounts, use it to lobby Congress to cut taxes or let them pollute more, be free from those pesky regulations that protect air, water, land, us. Surely a few billionaires and big corporations deserve to be able to kill off average Americans who, in their eyes, don't deserve decent lives anyway. At least that's what the GOP tells us when it shoves foolish and frivolous tax cuts through Congress, accuses people of wanting to be unemployed, and loves life in its prenatal form.
14
One of my good friends, a medical researcher into the qualities that assist survival under stress or medical difficulties. He has found that there are 5 qualities that science has seen statistically linked to survival success:
1. An understanding that life is change--nothing too good or too bad last too long.
2. An understanding that while change is inevitable, one has the ability to direct that change, sometimes in ways only small, in others large.
3. A belief that life has purpose and meaning, whatever one's circumstances are.
4. A awareness that one is not alone, that family, friends, a belief in a higher power can help sustain.
5. A resolute sense of humor throughout, even if difficult to summon at will.
One cannot work with children without seeing most of these elements every day of one's life. But I would invariably retell these elements to my rehab patients, following stroke, spinal cord injury, whatever life catastrophe might have brought them to my care. None of these attitudes and beliefs are genetic, and all are within one's own ability to refine, recreate, and further develop and all have been shown useful through well-designed scientific studies. There is survival value in giving, sharing and smiles.
74
As the chaplain in a (physical) rehab hospital for thirty years, I agree with everything in this post. "...all are within one's own ability to refine, recreate, and further develop...."
There is indeed actual, real and measurable survival value in giving, sharing and smiles.
18
These five qualities comprise the face of resiliency and vitality.
However, they are NOT all within "one's own ability" - we soak them up through our experience with other people; through how we are nurtured - or neglected - by parent figures when we are children; through what we are exposed to from the womb through our early years.
Going all the way back to H F Harlow's experiments with baby monkeys deprived of mothering, we can see that chronic depression, apathy and hopelessness are triggered from the earliest experiences. Later catastrophic events can overwhelm our ability to recover.
The founders of Cometa understood that for children to develop those qualities, they needed a beautiful environment, with caring people, where they would be encouraged to develop whatever talent they have.
11
This essay and the comments thus far is beautiful and good beyond any words i can come up with. Thank you all.
16
Nightwood, this might also give us hope when the sun rises and the children remind us of beauty in this world of ours:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CxcnB16Tyk
(Black Orpheus)
2
This article echoes a PBS program I saw years ago about Boys Town. The founding priest, like these wonderful people, had cozy homes built for the children, only a few per house, with a set of adults also living in the house. To make it a home, lovely furnishings, flowers in the yards, etc. When asked why so much attention to the physical setting he responded. "Beauty is a silent teacher." That simple truth has stayed with me for decades.
181
Yes,
I thought about Boystown too.
I hoped that all at Cometa remember, among all the love and beauty can be pedophiles. If a child is being abused, no amount of beauty can take away the pain. Please teach these children to speak out about abuse. And that he or she will be believed no matter how "good" the abuser may seem.
2
Beautiful, indeed.
Now if only we, the richest country in the history of earth, could do the same with every woebegone middle school, every desperate day care.
As you say it's a matter of will, and for now we seem to have the will only to take more and more from our children and hand it worship-fully to people with so much they have forgotten what they own.
191
When one personally surrounds oneself with beauty and pays for it rather than that new BMW, collectively we are doing the same. When we accept ugly freeways, ugly office buildings and ugly streets in the name of some "efficiency," we're just saying we don't care about anything of value.
3
Beauty, truth and goodness...isn’t that what the Greeks once taught us? It isn’t a bad philosophy for life.
25
Grazie, Senore Brooks. How I wish my parents and grandparents were still alive to read about their compadres in the north of Italy, but perhaps they already "know." These are the unsung heroes of our world, seeing the beauty and purity in a child's soul and then finding the beauty in their own hearts to reach out and give back to these innocents an unconditional love.
Just as profound as the nobility of character revealed above is the willingness and desire to not hoard wealth and all its trappings. The Figini's were humble and honest enough to face themselves with the fact that all the money in the world does not buy them happiness or fulfillment. On the contrary. We only have to look at many of our own affluent to understand the path that greed takes one down..."down," in all meanings of the word. Beauty and love is dynamic, alive, and will grow and live to infinity. I wish this family and their "children" all the best.
34
Our human race is blessed by those who do so much more for all of us, than most of us could even imagine in a fairy tale.
They not only do immeasurable good, but they remind us and inspire us on what we in fact are capable of. We may not "transform" our lives to do what they so effectively do. But they keep on showing us that steps that have real positive impact on other humans, are possible for all of us.
Even if we can all just very partially rise to what they show us we can do, how much better we can make this place!
12
Yes, when you are rich you can do beautiful things in a beautiful setting. Good that you have noticed.
113
You only need to be rich in the heart to do beautiful things
7
This article is a reminder to all of us to treasure the children we have.
26
Loved the article. I read the book "Beauty" by John O'Donohue over last lent. It was the opposite of sacrificing. This op ed manifests the workings of Beauty that we so deeply feel that brings joy and truth to our lives.
10