We threw God out the window

(By John Blackeye) When you have important deadlines to respect and you do not want to end insolvents, even in coronavirus times you are forced to print the right self-certification and get in line to enter the Post Office. I haven't been there for more than a month, since this "quarantine for all" started.

What until a few months ago presented itself as an infernal bedlam in which, among numbers, elderly people queuing for retirement and impatient people who cursed for the time lost to pay a bill, today presents itself as a surreal environment. How surreal is all the external surroundings that I had to go through to get to that place.

The cars around are very few, the shops are closed except for food and in total silence, under a spring sun, which, however, does not warm up as it should, dozens of people are in an Indian row, spaced a few meters, with the mask on face, waiting to enter the Post Office one at a time, to do some operations necessary for their survival.

I'm in line too. The Director of the Office is out like Charon, ready to ferry customers one by one from outside to inside. Everything is limited, everything is protected, even the employees who with their mask and gloves stoically do their job trying to give a sense of normality to a world that has changed its connotations in a few weeks.

Behind me a lady seems to be talking alone but then I realize that she has a miniature dog in a bag that carries over the shoulder. At this point two ways open in the evaluations that I am making in my mind: or the dog is a phenomenon of nature because it speaks Italian or the lady is not doing really well. Yes, because he is making long speeches aloud to the dog, keeping him "prisoner" in that bag.

The little dog complains that he would like to walk - as is normal for animals - and she warns him as women once did with children. Now they do it with dogs because children are an impediment to the modern lifestyle, gyms, cocktails, shopping, meetings, phone calls, weekends outside the city etc. Or perhaps it would be appropriate to talk about the lifestyle before the virus. Because it is hoped that everything will not return as before but that everything will improve.

Too bad that the virus turned up unexpectedly at the rendezvous with the world and drove everyone back home. Powerful, less powerful, intellectual, ignorant, career women and housewives, young and old, they are holed up at home for fear of to lose the greatest good you have: life.

But while the lady continues to talk to the dog trying at all costs to attract the attention of the other characters in a row, a man sitting on the side steps, who seems not to be there to do something important, is enjoying those rays of Lukewarm sun as he laughs and mumbles from a distance, expressing his disappointment at that scene where he is seeing something wrong. And who can blame him.

Tired of seeing the lady intent on performing her little theatrical show, that man, with an Eastern accent, dark in complexion and XXL size, leaning on a stick, start telling people in line that you shouldn't be afraid if you have God. Without shouting, quietly and with a broken Italian, he is inviting everyone to have faith in God, adding that those who have faith need not fear anything. A lady in front of me moves her head in disappointment and hints at something that is not understood. Between me and me I think it will be another one of those who for centuries has been saying around being a believer but not a practitioner.

Thus, the lady with the little dog in the bag is seen to be stolen from the man who probably comes from the Balkans and is saying sacrosanct things this morning. 

He is telling everyone that we have lost sight of God, indeed, that we have thrown him out of the windows of our lives. That man is saying that if we turned to God everything would work out - and it is true - but while he says this I look around and I see that outside the balconies there are many tricolor flags placed "to protect" the house. A sign that the average Italian, including his wife and children, stuffed with football and television, believes he can use an insignificant sports show to solve all problems, even pandemics. I wouldn't be surprised if we also found the Fantastic Four or some other Marvel superhero outside those balconies, so much is the alienation that has surpassed and pierced our consciences.

The man continues to speak peacefully and with a smile on his mouth and tells everyone that if we pray to the Holy Spirit, things will change on earth. But the people around me now speak a whole other language. They don't understand it. For almost everyone, God, the Holy Spirit, Our Lady are characters of whom we heard, at best, during the catechism when we were children. Now, all those people, in addition to the tricolor flags blindly entrust their lives to science, the same science that because of a virus that is raging on the world, has shown itself for what it is: impotent.

My turn comes, the Director nods to me that under certain conditions I can enter. I leave the man behind. I do the important operation that I had to do, in a dream post office, that is, empty and efficient. Then I go out and can't find that man anymore. He's gone, maybe he's somewhere else trying to talk to people about God. Or disappointed by the prevailing atheism that has now pervaded all Italians, has left that battlefield, feeling defeated.

Too bad, going out, I wanted to see him out there while preaching. I would have liked to thank him for his testimony of faith and then, I would have liked to tell him that perhaps it is not all lost. Maybe we can still do it. Maybe approaching his ear I would have whispered to him that a few minutes earlier, when he started talking about God, someone in the row was reciting the Rosary.

We threw God out the window