I thought a lot about how the focal art has impacted me as a person. I am very um grateful for the past four decades and some change of the life experiences that I've had through which so much if not all of the experiences that I'm able to look back on um when I think of these moments of difficulty and suffering when I talk about the focal art and the impact it's had on my life it's helped me to see suffering differently because we I think you aren't human if you haven't experienced loss.
Having language um that's not focalari oriented has been a challenge of my of my time uh as someone who's grown up with focalari principles. But finding the way to convey what is so formative and so important to me is um is something that I think is like part of my journey moving forward. But when I talk about the folkari and why it shaped and impacted me, I think it's it's helped me stay connected to my faith.
I've really struggled being Catholic in this in in this age in this country if not for the focalari's this lens of collectivism and that the way that I the way that we all can play a role and have the gift to play a role to renew really society at large but through our own day-to-day choices is um and those choices being those choices made with our neighbor in mind. I I just feel very grateful that it was the focalari's communitarian spirituality. communitarian for me meaning like it is it is in relationship with the other and relationship with myself and this idea of love for my neighbor as I love myself and you know that especially in the context of really difficult moments that we all experience in life moments of suffering I feel is like where I've learned and felt uh I've deepened in that the most there's so much I think that we talk about now how you know to to really look at the experiences that one has had that lead and form
you know each and every one of us to where we are present day like I feel that the focalari spirituality has given me like an additional dimension to like what that means like that suffering yes certainly happened for a reason but but there's a way that I can now connect with others because I was given the gift of that really difficult experience myself and now I can know my neighbor in a deeper way in a very firsthand way that allows me to have that relationship.
