Manalive! English Newsletter Nov/Dec 2019

NUMBER 2 / 2019

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019

Manalive!

Newsletter for the Friends of the Scuola Libera G.K. Chesterton

NE Minneapolis Stronghold Fr. Spencer Howe is the initiator of our relationship and is the pastor of a lively Catholic community in North East Minneapolis!

Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, a true disciple of Jesus.

26 Years of the Community of Tipi Loschi Every year on November 1st the Tipi Loschi from San Benedetto make a pilgrimage to Loreto, the city with the Holy House of Blessed Virgin Mary, to celebrate the foundation of the community.

The Community of the Tipi Loschi of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati was born in 1993 out of the simple desire for intentional friendship and joyful work for the Kingdom of God. The community has grown now into a group of more than 100 people who work, pray, and live together in the charism of Blessed Pier Giorgio

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26 Y. O. TIPI LOSCHI

CHESTERTON AND CHOOSING JOY

THE IDEAL DINER...

The Community is 26 years old and Loreto was the place of this celebration...

‌ and the Italians, also in North East Minneapolis, across the Pond.

Gratitude was the theme of Christmas Spiritual Exercises...

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Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati was born in Turin (Italy) in 1901, the son of a distinguished Italian family. His father was Italian Senator and Ambassador, founder of a daily newspaper and his mother a painter with a strong attitude. His life was brief as a comet but just as sparkling. He left a very strong mark that has come down to us. His life was full of adamant faith and unending charity.

Frassati. Today the community has a wide array of activities that were born out the desire to live and work together. Among the many things that the community has come together to build is a middle school and a high school, together called "The Scuola Chesterton", a cooperative that allows many members of the community to work together, a sporting association that creates teams and trains young athletes, and numerous after - school and summertime activities for children. The day to day life of the community is built around working together, and various meetings that take place weekly between groups. The boys group meets every Tuesday, the girls group meets every Thursday and a group that is for university students and working adults meets every Friday. Besides these groups meetings, the Tipi Loschi come together each Wednesday evening for dinner and rosary, and then on Saturday afternoons to play and work together before mass. The community tries to always practice the charism of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati: joyful service of others, for God, together with friends. ☩

Chesterton and Choosing Joy Around Christmastime in San Benedetto, the community organizes a series of retreats to prepare for the coming of Christ. There is a weekend retreat for the young students, a day for the small children, and a weekend for adults and university students. This year the theme across all the retreats was gratitude. Gratitude seems at first a rather commonplace theme for the holiday season, but during these retreats everyone was asked to think about gratitude in a different way. It is important to think about two things when thinking about gratitude: one must make the realization that one is alive, and the realization that one could just as easily not be alive. It is between these two realizations that gratitude is born. It is very simple to say that one is grateful for one’s family, one’s friends, one’s house, but it is perhaps a little out of the ordinary for a person to be actively grateful for their legs, or for their eyes - the things taken for granted, the things that get forgotten in the movement of daily life. Alongside the concept of gratitude comes the concept of joy. Perhaps we think about joy as an innate, childlike sentiment that some are lucky to experience and others not. Joy is sometimes talked about as a feeling that comes and goes as it pleases - but this is not the case. Chesterton asks us to look at joy in another light. Joy is a choice - and not a choice that one "MEN DID NOT LOVE ROME makes once, facing all the options. It is a choice that one must make in BECAUSE SHE WAS GREAT. the small moments and in the large moments. It is fundamental to wake SHE WAS GREAT BECAUSE up and choose joy, to see pain and suffering and choose joy, and to go THEY HAD LOVED HER." to bed at night choosing joy for everything and anything that that day has brought to fruition. It is in this choice that gratitude becomes fundamental. The moment in which one realizes that everything he has, from his legs to his eyes to the grass in his garden is a gift, he has no choice but to be grateful for these things, and see them as marvelous in every moment. In Chesterton’s book Manalive the protagonist Innocent Smith comes into a vacation home of sad, pacified people and transforms their lives from boring, placid existences into thrilling, hopeful adventures. He does this by utilizing his unique perspective of wonder and joy - he does not change the fabric of their lives, but their

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perspective on the world - and it is this changed attitude that has profound impact on their lives.

This book is one that the entire community of the Tipi Loschi is reading this year, to better learn about the power of decisive joy, both when confronted with difficulty and when one must face mundane, everyday life. In his book Orthodoxy, Chesterton described an example of the transformative property of joy, and of choosing to delight in something, as he talked about the desperately ugly, rundown city of Pimlico.

COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT: THE BENEDICT OPTION AND LA BENISSON-DIEU

Rod Dreher is the author of The Benedict Option, the best-selling book that discusses the current cultural crisis and the state of the modern church.

Dreher writes about the necessity of creating small, faithful communities that are based on a rule of life involving prayer, service, stability, and hospitality. It is his thesis that these communities will become strongholds in the midst of the moral chaos of our modern day life - that just as the monastery of Saint Benedict in Norcia stood firm as a pillar of culture and stability in the midst of the dark ages, so too can small communities create havens of goodness, order, and beauty. Dreher recently explored one of these small communities in France, and interviewed a founding member of this community. Here is a link to check out his story - and at the bottom of his article he mentions the Tipi Loschi in San Benedetto! Dreher is a good friend to the Community of the Tipi Loschi, and offers valuable insight into other communities that are striving to live “The Benedict Option”.

from your friends in San Benedetto del Tronto! ☩

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“Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing – say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne of the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico; in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico; for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico; to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles… If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy Chapter 5) This can be our task, looking out into the decade ahead of us - to love what is in front of us, to be grateful for what we have been given, and to be decisively joyful in all things both great and small. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Help Our School!

Unicredit (an Italian bank) has promised to donate to certain nonprofit associations that are voted for by the public. It is possible to donate to the Scuola Chesterton by voting for “La Cooperativa Capitani Coraggiosi”! This is the name of the cooperative in San Benedetto that encompasses the school.

Via the bank Unicredit everyone can give their vote to the cooperative, and thus support the school at no cost to themselves. We would like to ask you all to go online and vote for our cooperative, to help sustain the Scuola Chesterton! The process to vote takes less than a minute, and it helps us sustain all of the activities of the Scuola Chesterton - if you have any questions about our little school please feel free to email us. Every vote gives our school about 2 euro, and it is absolutely free to vote. Please tell all your friends about this opportunity to help sustain the Scuola Chesterton. All you must do is follow the link, which will ask you how you wish to vote - either by email or through social media. All you must do is enter your email and your name. Then you will receive an email from Unicredit. Sometimes the email will wind up in the spam folder, so it is always good to check there. The vote isn’t valid until you confirm it through your email! Once you receive the email from IlMioDono it will say "GRAZIE per aver dato il tuo contributo votando la tua Organizzazione Non Profit preferita. Il tuo voto sarà valido solo dopo aver cliccato qui per confermare.” This means “Thank you for having given your contribution, voting for your favorite nonprofit organization. Your vote will be valid only after clicking here to confirm.”

As soon as you click on the link, you will be directed to a page that will thank you for your contribution. Our school is very important to us, and we thank you in advance for your help. https://www.ilmiodono.it/it/votazione.html? organizzazione=/content/ilmiodono/it/organizzazioni/ marche/capitani_coraggiosiscs_17 Thank you for helping us support our school! ☩

TO SUPPORT THE SCUOLA CHESTERTON TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS CAN BE MADE TO THE TIPI LOSCHI FOUNDATION: 1855 Noble Drive, Golden Valley, MN USA 55422 | tipiloschi.usa@gmail.com

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Merry Christmas from the American Tipi Loschi!

"Tipi loschi to me means family. But not just any family, the family I get to choose to be a part of. It’s a wonderful community, where we share the same aim, which is friendship in Christ. Because our aim is friendship in Christ, there is no Italian tipi loschi, or American tipi loschi, just tipi loschi in Italy, and America. We are one and the same, which makes it so much more beautiful that we are able to be together through our faith. In this Advent and Christmas season I am immensely grateful for my family, the Tipi Loschi." - Julia Hertelendy, Minneapolis MN

The Ideal Diner and the Italians Marco and Francesca and their children Riccardo, Giacomo and Alessia spent part of their Christmas Vacations in Minneapolis with the Hertelendys and the local Tipi Loschi Community. Here’s a nice picture at The Ideal Diner, “where regular people feel special and special people feel regular”, a real landmark in Northeast Minneapolis. They’re with Fr. Spencer Howe, the parish priest of Holy Cross and one of the makers of our friendship, and the landlady (with a black cap in the picture) is aware of the recurring presence of Italians...

Some month ago a group of Italian Tipi Loschi spent a fortnight in Minneapolis, and some of them went and had some American speciality at the Diner. All this is a beautiful proof of the intense hustle and bustle across the Pond...

Marco and Francesca are first hour members of the Italian Tipi Loschi Community and were curious about the American Tipi Loschi Community, so they went and spent some time for a sort of full immersion time. We love to remain solidly in touch. ☩

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