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The logic of charisms/10 - It is necessary to be able to imagine new forms of life in common, more nomadic and fluid.
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire  21/11/2021
"And each time my system was beautiful, vast, spacious, comfortable, clean and above all smooth. And each time a spontaneous and unexpected product of universal vitality came to deny my childish and antiquated science, the deplorable daughter of utopia".
Charles Baudelaire, Exposition Universelle, 1855
There is no Christianity without community, even when communities fall ill and become difficult. Forgetting this means denying the humanism of the Bible and the Gospels.
I am very fascinated by the figure of the prophet Jeremiah. While everyone - priests, kings, and court prophets - denied that Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonians would destroy the temple and conquer Jerusalem, Jeremiah persistently insisted that Israel would be defeated and deported to a long exile. However then, with the same prophetic certainty, he added: in the end a remnant will return, our history will continue, because one story is over, but our story is not over.

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The Church has already been in exile for some time, although many are not aware of it. Jerusalem and the temple have already been occupied by new Babylonians. They have not been destroyed, simply put to earn and make a profit for the new insatiable gods of consumption and merit. And within this exile, Jeremiah, and with him the whole Bible, continue to repeat to us: one story is over, but history is not over, because a faithful remnant will continue living it. This is our non-futile hope. The other hopes are mere illusions from false prophets, registered on the payroll of the Babylonians.
It is within this time of exile that I have also chosen to place this reflection on charismatic communities. And it is with that spirit that they should be read, along the rivers of Babylon. I did not hang my pen on the willows, but I tried to write, to sing in the land of exile. Pages that have not denied exile, but have tried to look beyond the great rivers. Today we know that the Jews wrote their most beautiful books while in Babylon, the Bible was born there and it was there that they were able to talk about the Covenant and the Promised Land when they could no longer see them and they had only become a bitter memory. We too need talk about communities and charisms, about their pains and their problems, without ever taking our eyes off the covenant and the Promised Land.
Communities that are born around a charism are among the most sublime and exalting realities on earth. They are vulnerable and fragile, because it is always the deepest and most intimate part of life that is inherently vulnerable, fragile, and exposed to tragedy. The promise of the Bible and the Gospels will always be a community promise; it will always take place among us, not only within our hearts. If you want to kill the Bible and the Gospels, kill the communities - and many are trying, trying to transform Christian life into an individual matter without any strong affiliations, an emotional and solitary spiritual consumerism, finally turned harmless.
The Church was born as a community. Jesus called twelve men, twelve friends, and immediately other men and women. With them, he gave life to an extraordinary community experience that neither the betrayal of Judas nor that of Peter nor Golgotha ​​managed to defeat. The first gesture of Jesus in Capernaum was a call to his disciples, to his companions, to tell us that that history is a collective history, the history of "two or more". The first name of Christians was a plural name. Then we have the apostles, and then the thousands of charisms that over the centuries have fertilized and enriched the earth with their communities. The letters of St. Paul speak to us of communities with problems no less serious than those highlighted in this series (and in the four other of previous years). It was the historical closeness to Christ and to a charismatic man like Paul that created the preconditions for getting out of excess, errors and exaggerations of various kinds in his churches. For this same reason, it is much more likely that the problematic phenomena we have spoken of are more common in communities with a living (or recently deceased) founder than in those of ancient and very ancient charisms.
Community vocations are something immense and this immensity is precisely what makes them so risky. It is a game of multiple mirrors between the people, the community, and the charism. An admirable, fantastic, sublime game, which explains much of the irresistible power and charm of these experiences. There is an admirable coincidence between the inside and outside, between the individual and collective soul. What comes from outside is perceived as already existing within. The more you dig into the soul, the more you find the community, the more you deepen the community, and the more you find your own soul recognizing it in the souls of our companions. When say "I" and someone else answers "we", we say "we" and I hear my own name pronounced, returning to me, now immense like the world, infinite like heaven. The thrill of such an experience is truly fantastic and unique, and those who experience it would not give it up for anything in the world. Herein lies the extraordinary aspect of charismatic communities, together with their risks and problems, as in all wonderful experiences because, like mountain climbs, they take place on the edge of the precipice.
An important element in this entire individual and collective dynamic, perhaps the most decisive and neglected one, is time. Because a vocational experience in youth and in adult life are different, very different, and at times they can become too much. Sunrise and sunset are separated by a very bright noon, and so they do not recognize each other as moments of the same day, as different shades of the same light. There is a profound elective affinity between youth and charismatic communities. A young person is generous, goes beyond the limits of the ordinary and loves fantastic, radical, exaggerated and extreme experiences, because he or she wants to savour life to its very core. Young people are pure, they love and live gratuitousness and have a genuine and non-ideological faith. Hence, when they encounter the infinite energy released by a charism, they begin to take flight. They take off and never stop. They believe everything, they hope for everything, and they endures anything in order not to return from that mad flight, in order to be shipwrecked in that sea. Community life almost always strengthens the qualities of the young, it makes them flourish, blossom, bear the first tasty fruits. Few things on earth are more beautiful and pure than a young person in love with a charism. Especially if that young person holds a spiritual vocation, a true calling.
Hence, the first effect of a spiritual vocation, especially when it grows within a community, is lengthening the time of youth, perhaps also of childhood. One remains young - an evangelical child - for a long time, and some dimensions of youth remain throughout one's life - a certain beautiful naivety, seeing through eyes of a child, the ability to be moved when faced with beauty, the amazement when met with excessive goodness or wickedness. Due to the extraordinary experience that one lives as a young person, it is therefore rather comprehensible why becoming an adult within a charismatic community can be particularly difficult, and sometimes, if not often, something breaks during the passage. First of all, as young people it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand that the marvellous things that are happening to us are merely the feast of the wedding day, and hence destined to be short-lived. It is difficult or impossible, because if we were truly aware of it we would stop before even starting the journey. A providential unconsciousness is essential in order to take the first step. However, if adequate accompaniment is lacking in the second years of community life, the inevitable impact with the principle of reality can be devastating. Because if the maturation process is not experienced as a passage towards even greater awareness and truth, it will only be interpreted as a decline and not infrequently as betrayal and deception.
Faced with the first necessary crevices in the wall of that first youthful vocation and the concrete forms it takes, instead of letting the first surrounding wall collapse thereby discovering new gardens and meadows on which to run free, too often a builder is called instead to repair the leaks and restore the old building. Thus, when the day arrives when the patches no longer hold up and the building collapses, the inevitable and sudden collapse will not be seen as a possibility of a better, wider and brighter future, but as an earthquake and complete destruction. Instead of indicating new horizons for a new mature life, the landscape that the fall has opened up in front of our eyes will now only inspire fear, leaving us stuck in the midst of the remaining human, psychological and vocational rubble. If the reasoning made in these weeks contains something real, it is the realization that in order for charismatic communities to continue to attract people with vocations and thus experience a new spring, a remnant after exile, there is an immense and urgent need for courage and risk taking in letting the walls collapse. It is necessary to know how to imagine new forms of life in common, more nomadic and fluid, especially in the adult phase of people's lives. Generating more ways of living firmly belonging to the community, faithful to the spirit of the charism while at the same time being capable of changing the concrete and organizational forms it gave life to in the past. The vocation is one, but the forms a vocation can take are many. In the time of exiles and floods, only what is agile and small will survive.
One last note, one last, whispered, personal word. While you are living the adult time of exile, never forget the time of your first love, when your heart heard different and eternal words (Hosea 2,16) and your eyes saw another gaze. Because it is not a lie, it is just far away for now. You wanted to touch the sky and you touched your land, perhaps to finally be able to truly love it. Do not forget the first covenant; do not forget that great promise: it was all for you. Do not forget that at the beginning of a life that has now become complicated, there once was something truly wonderful. There was a young woman, a young man, who in the full splendour of their age, believed and left to follow an unconditional yes. In the beginning, there was something wonderful, great beauty, gratuitousness, and an infinite generosity. And if it was there in the beginning, it will be there forever. No disappointment, no pain, nothing in the world can erase this infinite beauty-gratuitousness-generosity. Do not let them erase it. And then try to rise again.
When the Son of man returns to earth will he still find faith in the community?
Dedicated to Friederike, who taught me that an adult vocation can be even more beautiful than the splendid one of youth.
Next Sunday I will return to the other strand of my collaboration with the Avvenire: biblical commentaries. With Hosea, a difficult and much loved prophet. Thanks you dear readers for following me in these ten episodes on communities, interrupted by an unexpected month of convalescence that perhaps gave another flavour to my words. Some people found them harsh, I understand this; I hope others found them useful too, written in the same spirit in which you say harsh but necessary words to a friend, or to yourself. Thank you to Marco Tarquinio, editor and dear friend, who continues to follow me, confident and courageous, in this difficult and wonderful weekly labour, wading into exile.
Thank you, always, to Luigino Bruni for his friendship, his generous tenacity even in trial and for his luminous fidelity to the Word, to the shared words and to the uncomfortable yet welcoming truth that gives meaning to the enterprises of life and nourishes our being a community. (MT)
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The logic of charisms/10 - It is necessary to be able to imagine new forms of life in common, more nomadic and fluid.
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire  21/11/2021
"And each time my system was beautiful, vast, spacious, comfortable, clean and above all smooth. And each time a spontaneous and unexpected product of universal vitality came to deny my childish and antiquated science, the deplorable daughter of utopia".
Charles Baudelaire, Exposition Universelle, 1855
There is no Christianity without community, even when communities fall ill and become difficult. Forgetting this means denying the humanism of the Bible and the Gospels.
I am very fascinated by the figure of the prophet Jeremiah. While everyone - priests, kings, and court prophets - denied that Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonians would destroy the temple and conquer Jerusalem, Jeremiah persistently insisted that Israel would be defeated and deported to a long exile. However then, with the same prophetic certainty, he added: in the end a remnant will return, our history will continue, because one story is over, but our story is not over.

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The logic of charisms/8 - Small personal thresholds of self-segregation can lead to high walls.
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire  07/11/2021
"It is precisely the subtle feeling of helplessness, the idea of ​​chasing something that continually escapes our understanding that lies at the roots of our discomfort today."
Mario Pomilio, Industrial notebook (Taccuino industriale, 1945-1980)
Unwanted phenomena occur at a collective level in society and in organizations that no one would want on an individual level. Phenomena that are also found in the dynamics of communities.
Our civilization has a great love for individual freedom and protects the private sphere of individual preferences with all its strength. For at least half a century, modern Western society itself has developed a series of theories and analyzes to study the failures of the sovereignty of the individual. Those cases in which the game of choices based on individual preferences ends up producing perverse collective effects. Because the "invisible hand" that transforms and aggregates the choices of individuals does not always generate good collective transformations, neither for individuals nor for societies.

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A classic and pioneer of these studies is the Nobel Prize winner in Economics Thomas Schelling, who has shown, among other things, that the culture that is established in a community is different from the preferences of the individual members that compose it. His study on involuntary racial self-segregation in housing choices ("Dynamic models of segregation", 1971) is well known. In it he demonstrated that in order for segregated neighborhoods of only whites and neighborhoods of only blacks to be formed in a city, there is no need for individuals to think: "I want to be in a neighborhood of only whites" or "only blacks." Instead, it is enough for white (or black) inhabitants to think: "I do not want to live in between two houses belonging to black (or white) families", and in some cases even, "I do not want to live next to three families that are different from mine", is enough. These individual preferences, which in themselves would not seem radical, produce a radical outcome, however, and we find ourselves in a world that no one would want or wished for.
All this applies to ethnic segregation but also to any form of collective intolerance, because a radically racist and intolerant culture can be generated by not so racist and intolerant people if taken one by one. That small "threshold" of closure that I impose on myself, which does not appear particularly intolerant to my conscience, ends up becoming a high wall combined with the small thresholds of others. As if a worm would insinuate itself in that limit that I put on my tolerance and diversity, interacting with the woodworms of others, thereby eroding the root of civil coexistence. To avoid these sad and involuntary outcomes, we need to educate ourselves to keep our thresholds of intolerance decisively low, perhaps even eliminate them - this is where every educational challenge lies in large part. Because these studies tell us that collectivities tend to amplify the barriers of their individuals, not reduce them. The speck of dust in the eye of the «I» becomes a beam in the eyes of the «we»; and once it has been created, that beam takes the place of the speck and prevents everyone from seeing.
Schelling's analyzes are among the most important in contemporary social sciences. Today they are also applied to climatic phenomena and consumer choices, where we find ourselves with very serious and unsustainable collective and global situations even when the preferences of individual people would be more ecological. These outcomes do not depend only on the indirect effects of our choices (the known "externalities"), but on more complex phenomena that are triggered by aggregating the preferences of single individuals.
All of this is also particularly relevant for all types of organizations and communities. Each community generates its own collective culture and an identity that is very evident to those who observe it from the outside - a little less so to those who look at it from within. Here too, the culture and practices generated tend to come out more radicalized than the preferences of each individual member. The community culture that we observe is not a picture of the culture of individuals. Each community develops its own style, its own spiritual personality, its own language and jargon with specific features and expressions that can only be understood by the members of the community; it generates ways of praying, of moving, with winks, gestures, a particular style of clothing... which are also self-reinforcing with the passage of time. These collective traits are neither the average nor the sum nor the product of the behavior of individuals, nor the result of the imitation that everyone does of a specific leader (like what happens with fashion trends instead). Certainly, unlike other institutions and organizations, in charismatic communities the founder has a special role, but the collective culture is not the founder's blow-up, nor is it wanted by him - in these processes the founder certainly has more weight and importance than the rest, but not enough to determine the collective culture. The same internal currents that are formed in communities, i.e. the minor circles and sub-groups, which characterize all levels including the very composition of the tables in the canteen, are often generated by people who, taken one by one, would be more open and dialogic than in the closed groups to which they give life. Isolation and self-referentiality, which appear on the outside as important and characteristic traits of charismatic communities, are often phenomena of involuntary self-isolation.
In order for segregated communities to be born, where members only meet with and socialize with the people of their own community, there is no need for people who do not like having social relations outside the community. In keeping with the parameters of Schelling's model and extending its logic, it is enough that individual members start thinking: "I like to hang out with people from other groups and communities, but every two or three meetings I would like to do at least one only within my community". Once again, an individual preference, that is not particularly close-minded or anti-social which, however, can involuntarily end up generating strong collective closures and self-segregation. This explains, among other things, a common and for many mysterious fact, namely communities that as a whole present themselves (and often are) closeted and self-referential, however when you meet with individual members and enter into a relationship of confidence with them, you find that individually they are very open and sociable. To the point where one will sometimes exclaim: "But how did such a person end up in such a community?" To this exclamation, Schelling would reply: "Look, the community didn't want to end up in this community either! It ended up there unintentionally".
However, are these diseases and neuroses preventable or curable? First of all, to be honest, charismatic communities almost inevitably develop these results anyway, they are in fact forms of auto-immune diseases, but they can be more or less serious depending to the measures that are adopted. To really prevent them - since an ex-post cure is almost impossible - we would need people with very low opening thresholds (1 in a scale of 1 to 5, for example), or with zero thresholds. Nevertheless, no community can be born if the members do not meet each other and do not renounce to some degree of freedom of their former sociality. The more a community needs to develop particularly strong bonds of belonging, the more likely self-segregation will be, where the degree of initial partial openness of the individual will collectively become closure. Thus, many people enter communities with a genuine desire to continue belonging to other vital worlds and social circles and to continue cultivating other external relationships, and then end up finding themselves in communities where they only meet people from the same community; moreover – and this is an interesting point - it happens without people having changed their individual preferences. Although with the passage of time, it is both possible and probable that individual preferences will eventually change day by day unconsciously, and align themselves with collective practice.
Finally, these involuntary mechanisms can help to explain (or at least offer an insight into) other similar phenomena that occur at the level of single individuals and within communities. Sometimes I have come across religious communities where it was very difficult to "reach" into the soul of individual members, who preferred to spend many hours in prayer or adoration rather than talking a few minutes with me or with other members of their own community. Prayer became a sort of immunitas that protected them from communitas, an invisible curtain that immunized them from an authentic and immediate encounter with others. These outcomes can (in part) be explained with the same logic. For a community to find itself only with people who no longer interact with each other but instead spend all their free time in the chapel, it is sufficient that each member cultivates this type of preference: "I like being with the other people in the community, of course, but every two or three meetings, I want to have a 'meeting' alone in the chapel". Again, "slight" individual preferences, once aggregated collectively, generate self-segregated people - another form of "death" or serious illness in a community. Hence, it is also understandable why it is common for members of charismatic communities to reduce their network of deeper friendship relationships, both within and outside the community, over the years.
Social norms, good rules and community regulations are also meant to prevent these diseases. But in a time when the sovereignty of the individual and the (necessary) respect for privacy have finally become important even within spiritual communities, it is becoming increasingly difficult to implement actions and rules that break these involuntary traps. The real possible prevention is then to work on the awareness of the existence of similar involuntary closing mechanisms. All members of a community should regularly ask themselves: What are the invisible stakes I have placed on my relationships? How many relationships am I living with "inner thresholds"? How many vital communities or groups of my past am I progressively losing? What is the variance of my relations? What and how many degrees of intolerance am I cultivating within myself? Difficult self-tests of discernment, but not impossible, especially if the community offers tools to carry them out, perhaps together, even when there is no discernable need. Communities should include procedures similar to the health "screenings" that people must do when they pass a certain age, regardless of symptoms, for preventive purposes only. Not an easy choice for those responsible, because of the perceived risk that someone could discover the disease after doing the test, that by answering these difficult questions people could go into a crisis and maybe end up leaving the community.
However, their awareness of the potential damage that could be caused by the lack of this kind of prevention should be stronger, including the extinction of the community itself. Because, while in the first phase of community development, the preferences of the individual members are usually less rigid than the collective culture, starting from the second generation, people are attracted above all to the collective culture that has been generated involuntarily. Therefore, without anyone wanting it, the few new "vocations" that come will generally be more closed than the early members were - once we become a "white only" neighbourhood we will only have new white neighbours. Newcomers with higher thresholds increase community closure, giving rise to a degenerative vicious circle. This is how communities often disappear involuntarily, if we do not intervene decisively and in time, in an obstinate and opposite direction.
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The logic of charisms/8 - Small personal thresholds of self-segregation can lead to high walls.
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire  07/11/2021
"It is precisely the subtle feeling of helplessness, the idea of ​​chasing something that continually escapes our understanding that lies at the roots of our discomfort today."
Mario Pomilio, Industrial notebook (Taccuino industriale, 1945-1980)
Unwanted phenomena occur at a collective level in society and in organizations that no one would want on an individual level. Phenomena that are also found in the dynamics of communities.
Our civilization has a great love for individual freedom and protects the private sphere of individual preferences with all its strength. For at least half a century, modern Western society itself has developed a series of theories and analyzes to study the failures of the sovereignty of the individual. Those cases in which the game of choices based on individual preferences ends up producing perverse collective effects. Because the "invisible hand" that transforms and aggregates the choices of individuals does not always generate good collective transformations, neither for individuals nor for societies.

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The logic of charisms/6 - The maturity of a community lies in freeing itself from the myth of the perfect founder.
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire  26/09/2021
«And you, Moshe, why do you pray?» «I pray the God who is in me to give me the strength to be able to ask him some real questions»
Elie Wiesel, Night
The generative (and humble) use of a past heritage is a decisive task in order not to compromise the future, and unfortunately, one often makes mistakes in trying to identify what the best yeast really is.
«Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod!» (Mark 8,15) This is a word (loghion) of Jesus. Not easy to interpret, and about which many pages have been written, starting with the Fathers of the Church. Yeast is a strong word in the Bible, just think of the unleavened bread of Easter. It is a symbol of life, but also of contamination. Yeast is used for speech, for teaching, but most of all as a principle for world change. In the New Testament we find it as a synonym of the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 13,13). The reference to the yeast of Herod, of the Pharisees, of the "Sadducees" (Matthew 16,6) therefore has to do with the type of kingdom that the Messiah will bring to earth. At the time of Jesus, messianism had taken on a strong apocalyptic connotation, reinforced by the Roman occupation.

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To the Pharisees the advent of the Messiah had to be accompanied by spectacular events, by signs that would confirm the imminent arrival of the new kingdom: «Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you» (Matthew 12.38). The anti-Roman political reign desired by Herod is something different. Jesus definitely warns his apostles, shocked and overwhelmed by the signs of Jesus, not to embrace the messianic and apocalyptic theories: «For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect» (Mark 13,22). The Gospels bring us dialogues of Jesus with the disciples on the understanding of his identity ("who do you say that I am?"), and the people closest to him were inside this process of revelation of identity. And so Jesus does everything he can not to make his sign-miracles spectacular, and as soon as he realizes that people stop at the sign and misunderstand the message, he slips away or dismisses the crowd.
So far the Gospels. If the temptation to follow the wrong kind of yeast affected even the first community of Jesus, it is likely that it is a phenomenon that can be repeated in the charismatic communities generated by the Church; that is, that "beware of the yeast of the Pharisees" is still valid and will continue to be so forever. Indeed, it is not uncommon in charismatic experiences that (in general) the first phase produces forms of messianic and apocalyptic theories, different readings of what the nature of the movement that is being started really is, of the meaning of the "signs" that are happening. The great successes and extraordinary events that accompany many charismatic beginnings generate various interpretations of the destiny and real task of that new "prophet" and his movement. The beginning, in fact, is often extraordinary, an anticipated Eskaton, and thus, almost inevitably, a spiritual-charismatic intoxication is triggered where everything seems possible. A sort of omnipotence is experienced, daring scenarios are dreamed of, apocalyptic destinies of universal salvation are prefigured for the group. Herod's political yeast and that of the Pharisees, come back to life (one also feels invested with a task of political and social change) where the signs are interpreted as messianic signals of the new era. The end of time feels close. Seen from the outside, these phenomena may appear delusions, but for those who experience them they are the most normal thing, and the misunderstanding of the world outside only serves to increase the self-belief of the messianic task.
In the beginning (and not only) of charismatic movements, there are many kinds of "yeasts" acting inside. However, unlike Mark's phrase where the yeasts of Herod and the Pharisees are only bad news, in charismatic communities even these apocalyptic yeasts can contain some positive elements, they resemble the "mother" yeast of the charism, and hence it is very easy to confuse them. However, if the apocalyptic and spectacular yeasts prevail, they can become very dangerous, actual neuroses that generate a lot of damage (economic damage, manipulation, abuse), even when everything happens in good faith. There is also another decisive element in charismatic communities. The founders of these communities, in general - these arguments must always be taken as tendencies not as theorems - do not interpret the part of Jesus where he invites the disciples to be careful with other kinds of yeast. Not infrequently they are like the apostles who "do not understand", and end up getting involved in the same apocalyptic scenarios.
In many concrete historical experiences, the first person being deceived by the wrong type of yeast may very well be the founder himself who, when while honest (and in general he or she is), takes a long time to understand that his "kingdom" does not lie in the great things he has seen happen, that the signs are only grace, they are the beautiful room of the honeymoon hotel suite not a room at home. He does not immediately understand that the fulfillment of his charisma does not lie in conquering the world, but in resizing, while becoming a small flock, in following a career that culminates in Golgotha. The founder is the first spectator of the signs he sees happening around him. He is stunned and astonished, enchanted by his own spells, healed by his own healings. Thus, the members of the charismatic communities find themselves the first victims of the yeast of the Pharisees, because they have no one to protect them, but rather everyone, in agreement, to convince them, everyone convincing one another. The founder knows that these signs are not his work, but he also knows that he has received a gift-charism without which those signs would not exist.
In the first phase the awareness of being only an instrument of an Elsewhere is very strong, but then a fundamental passage occurs, almost always without anyone really wanting it. The splendor and strength of the extraordinary signs end up convincing the founder that although he is merely a small and simple instrument, it is the charisma that is truly extraordinary, unique, the definitive answer to all questions. It is evident that praising and exalting the charism is a way to exalt and praise the Giver of the charism; but in the meantime over time this "third party" between the founder and the Spirit (the charism) grows and takes on a life of its own. The founder, then, gradually ends up identifying himself with the charism, thanks above all to his disciples who end up attributing all the prerogatives of the charism to him, which make him his own hypostasis, and them the hypostases of the hypostasis. Everyone knows in the beginning that the charism is penultimate in the order of things, and that by serving the charism the divine is being served, but in the meantime the charism and founder grow, and continue to grow, on and on. The people around the founder, seeing the same signs with increased amazement, therefore perform the decisive function of confirming his conviction of having received a task of salvation for the Church and for the world, giving way to a circuit of admirable and unshakable self-conviction. And everyone proceeds to forget, in good faith, that the founders - like the biblical prophets - are human beings, and therefore make mistakes. They deceive themselves, they are not always good interpreters of the "voice" that inhabits them, and they need their whole life and many encounters with it to learn to recognize it among the many voices available.
The coexistence of several different kinds of yeasts is an inevitable phase for many charisms. The problem of this phase does not lie with the founder, but in the ability (generally low) that the following generations have to distinguish the various types of yeast. And so the process goes on, until (and if) one day someone begins to realize that the charism has taken the place of the Giver of the charism. In what sense? The followers only know the words of the Scripture promoted by the charism, they only pray the prayers of the charism, they only know the "stories of salvation" told by the charism, everyone speaks and loves only in the ways and forms of the charism, and they only read the books of the charism. If not defused these mechanisms, often put in place in perfect good faith, are among the main causes of extinction of charismatic communities once their founders are gone (sometimes even before this happens), especially when dealing with very rich charisms.
Finally, there is also another decisive aspect. If it is true that the various yeasts coexist in the first days of a charismatic community, then it is also true that among the words and acts of the beginnings of a charism there are also immature words not borne from the mother yeast, which - when things go well - time will correct, through encounters, disappointments and tests. Hence, an important consequence: when subsequent generations return to the DNA of the charism to attempt the necessary reforms, it is essential that they identify the good original yeast, distinguishing it from that of the Pharisees. However, more often than not this is a highly complicated operation, because by now the good yeast has been superimposed on the other yeasts, and they are all very similar. The other yeasts have also generated life and fruits, often constituting intermediate stages necessary for the good fruits that came later at a later phase. Over time they have contaminated each other, hence we must avoid the risk of taking all yeasts for good ones, while also avoiding the opposite risk of throwing them all away, including the mother yeast.
In communities that find themselves in a post-founder phase, it is essential that the reflection on the good hard core of the charism becomes a plural and antagonistic experience, because the ideas regarding the good yeast are and must be varied and diversified; and the people in charge need to apply a special kind of meekness to keep this tension alive without creating heresies and orthodoxies, nor agencies intent on a single authentic and unique interpretation of what a good yeast is. Because when this internal pluralistic dialogue is lacking and only one reading of the past is affirmed, we will inexorably find ourselves inside an ideological creation, and that single reading will be wrong. The truth is symphonic: the four Gospels, Paul and the other letters, not to mention the apocryphal Gospels, had various messianic-apocalyptic theories about Jesus, and this is where the Church found its balance over time. Judging from the history of charisms, we know that it is highly unlikely that the good mother yeast is constituted by the spectacular events, the great apocalyptic perspectives, the extraordinary visions, the earthquakes, the fire, instead it is most probably found in the small, in the ordinary, in the simple, in Elijah's "subtle voice of silence".
This long conversation has two practical consequences. First of all, there are always wrong, partial, unripe theses right from the start among the words of a founder and the maturity of a community lies in being able to admit that they can be wrong (and not just misinterpreted). This is a decisive exercise that frees communities from the myth of the perfect founder that almost always blocks them in their generative growth and prevents them from approaching the humanity of the founder while veiled by his myth. Making a mistake in the relationship with the heritage of a charism means compromising the quality and existence of its future. Furthermore, going back to the words of the beginnings of a charism is not in itself a guarantee of reaching the heart of the charism in question, because the various yeasts begin to develop at a very early stage. The most important words may arrive later, when events and history have caused the charism to mature. The decisive words of Jesus were his last. Being able to discern and differentiate between different kinds of yeast is the most important occupation of communities capable of a future.
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The logic of charisms/6 - The maturity of a community lies in freeing itself from the myth of the perfect founder.
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire  26/09/2021
«And you, Moshe, why do you pray?» «I pray the God who is in me to give me the strength to be able to ask him some real questions»
Elie Wiesel, Night
The generative (and humble) use of a past heritage is a decisive task in order not to compromise the future, and unfortunately, one often makes mistakes in trying to identify what the best yeast really is.
«Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod!» (Mark 8,15) This is a word (loghion) of Jesus. Not easy to interpret, and about which many pages have been written, starting with the Fathers of the Church. Yeast is a strong word in the Bible, just think of the unleavened bread of Easter. It is a symbol of life, but also of contamination. Yeast is used for speech, for teaching, but most of all as a principle for world change. In the New Testament we find it as a synonym of the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 13,13). The reference to the yeast of Herod, of the Pharisees, of the "Sadducees" (Matthew 16,6) therefore has to do with the type of kingdom that the Messiah will bring to earth. At the time of Jesus, messianism had taken on a strong apocalyptic connotation, reinforced by the Roman occupation.

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The logic of charisms/4 - Christians are the ones about the way and the encounter, not always happy ones but decisive.
by Luigino Bruni
Published in the Avvenire 12/09/2021
"It is not so necessary to educate children to grow up quickly, as to educate adults to know how to be – or turn – children again."
Igino Giordani, The republic of the brats/ La repubblica dei marmocchi
There was no money during the journey of the followers of Jesus, but they had what was essential. What is essential is the Word. The result is a condition of dependence on others, because proclamation is a gift and welcoming others.
We continue with the analogy between the early days of Christianity and our charismatic communities or spiritual movements today - two expressions that I use as synonyms, as collective realities born and nourished by a charism and therefore by one or more founders, who are the first bearers and the first image of that charisma. Hence, analogy, which, as scholastic philosophy teaches us, is a parallelism between two realities where similarities coexist with dissimilarities, and the latter are generally greater than the former. The analogical method, especially in history, must always be taken with significant precautions, but like any method, it can be a way to start a journey in a new territory to be explored. Analogies can be generative, if the term of comparison is rich and fruitful: the Bible and the first Christian communities certainly are. The analogy suggests, hints, points out, always softly and in a whisper; it is the dawn of speech, always fragile and vulnerable. Hence, it knows the typical virtues of vulnerability.

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How did the first community around Jesus develop? Mark describes it to us like this: «Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village. Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure spirits. These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff - no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra shirt. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them» (Mark 6,6-13).
In John, the first disciples come from the Baptist's movement; according to Mark and the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus calls upon them along the Sea of Galilee. Once back from Judea, at the end of his experience with the Baptist, his first gesture is calling disciples, companions, friends, to tell us that this extraordinary story is collective, communitarian, social history, it is the story of the "two or three”, an immediately ecclesial story. Jesus immediately begins his mission by associating his name with other names: Peter, Andrew, James, John. The first name of "Christians" is a plural name. Elijah, very present in these stories by Mark, calls upon Elisha at the end of his mission, Jesus calls them at the beginning; he calls them in pairs, in pairs of brothers. "Woe to the sun", the wise Qoheleth sang a few centuries earlier, and if brotherhood in spirit is not a brotherhood of blood, this beginning tells us that sometimes the two can meet. Mark says that the first disciples are called by Jesus while they are working, in their activity as fishermen. Fishermen, hence workers trained in collective team action - sea or lake fishing is necessarily a work for "two or three". 
In the beginnings of the community of Jesus there is work. Moreover, there is continuity with a constant note from the Bible, which in this shows the humanism of work. In the Bible, some decisive calls take place while people are working. Amos, Gideon, Judith, David, all receive their calling while working. Jesus calls his friends and calls them to become "fishermen of men". That technical skill they had learned by learning the difficult trade of fishing for fish, Jesus now asks them to use it for another task, for a different profession. Proclaiming the Kingdom is a vocation, not a profession, but it resembles a profession, because it requires competence, skill, commitment and apprenticeship. One does not become a professional of the calling, but competent, yes; and without people who know how to "catch men" at least as well they know how to catch fish, no movement can be born, no great adventure like the Christian one.
From time to time, the apostles are seen by the Gospels as they fish, even during the years they live next to Jesus (think of the miraculous catch); telling us that leaving the fishnets to handle those of men does not necessarily mean to leaving their first boats for the boat of the Church definitively or materially. In the history of the Church, some apostles left the first boats and their first nets, even materially, and never took them back; other apostles left them only in spirit, and continued to handle the same boats as before gathering both fish and men, often with the same nets, when the work remained the same after the vocation. There have always been many ways of being an apostle. So in our communities and movements: their members are not professionals of the spirit, much less employees of a company; but they are competent, sometimes even in work, and the lay competence in their work nourishes and supports the other apostolic competence. The risk to be avoided is that the invitation to leave the old nets should cause the loss of the old skills and competence without generating any new ones.
Why does Jesus order his apostles to take «no bag, no bread, no money...» on their journey? Jesus is creating a new type of man and hence a new type of community. Here we understand why Christians in the beginning were called "those of the way", those who walked. The community of Jesus was a mobile one, a following, a walking behind, a going back to being a "Wandering Aramean". Tent, encampment, precariousness, being non-permanent. And Christian communities remained like that for decades, the decades that changed history.
When you walk a lot, the choice of clothing and equipment is decisive. As we know as well when we have to start a long journey or a pilgrimage: it is a good idea to bring only the essentials; and the longer the journey, the more essential you need to become. For a long journey to be sustainable, you only need to bring what you really need, not the superfluous, and it is therefore essential to know how to identify the essential and distinguish it from what is superfluous. The journey of the apostles was something similar: the essential thing they brought was the announcement of a different Word, the advent of another Kingdom. They were not leaving, like merchants, to sell and buy things, they were not soldiers, they were not seasonal workers, nor representatives of a company paid by commission. The essential was therefore a single tunic, not a second one. They did not bring bread because the biblical God provides our daily bread, as he did in the desert, and as he continues to do with his "workers" who are entitled to their wages. There is a strong imperative not to even bring money, which is the basis of the charism of St. Francis, who in order to imitate this dimension of the apostolate forbade his friars to bring money into their begging.
These requests from the apostolate create a condition of dependence on others, which is perhaps the most important message. If you do not have a home, if you do not have bread or money with you, in order to live you need the hospitality of someone who welcomes you and gives you food. The Christian message is then essentially an experience of reciprocity from the very beginning: the apostles bring the proclamation of the Gospel, the true treasure, and receive a bed and a loaf of bread in return. This reciprocity of material goods is part of the apostle's experience, and if it is lacking he cannot, nor must he, proclaim the Gospel. This is why when there is no reciprocity «leave that place and shake the dust off your feet» (Mark 6,11). Because if those who must receive the proclamation of the Gospel do not immediately place themselves in an attitude of welcoming and of gift, they cannot understand that announced Gospel. The Gospel of love opens to those who are already find themselves in love. And the new commandment, that of mutual love, is lived already from its announcement: the disciple needs the reciprocity of the listener, who loves him even before converting, simply by listening and welcoming. If, however, he does not, you move on. The opposite, would be throwing away a treasure.
This reciprocity is almost as essential as the message itself. Whoever listens to the Gospel must first give. Whoever announces the Gospel knows that the first gift he can give to the listener is to give him the possibility of giving, in order to receive and then, perhaps, understand. Whoever announces the Gospel knows that he is a beggar of this reciprocity. In the Oikonomia of the Gospel, the donor has an essential need for a donee. The great skill of any announcement is to put the people to whom you want to give good news into an attitude of giving.
These missionary indications belong to the sources of Mark, probably dating back to the primitive teaching of Jesus. And they tell us something important for our communities. The first Gospel was lived above all through the feet, through walking. It was all about leaving, about being sent. The following should not in fact be overemphasized: as soon as the apostles began to follow Jesus, he sent them "two by two", and they began to do with others exactly what he was doing with them. The first community grew by budding, plural, bio diversified; so much so that immediately after the death of Jesus, which arrived a few years after the beginning of his public life, the various communities already found themselves being rather different from one another. Each with their specific characteristics and "theologies", where the different apostles and disciples left the imprint of their personality. The first Church was not born monolithic or compact because Jesus sent his disciples around, made them nomadic and non-residential, as he himself was.
The community, this community, is not a messianic court; it is not an esoteric community, but a missionary and nomadic community, which now and then gets together, only to immediately leave again. It is a community of heralds, and it is the message and the experience itself that founded the community, not cohabitation or insisting on the need to stand on common ground. They were not together because they were looking for the warmth of a home, they preferred being cold out in the streets before the comfort zone of a house. And on that bare and poor road the disciples, sent out two by two in pairs, proceeded to evangelize and heal. They did not leave dreaming of returning to Ithaca, their Ithaca was the road: this is why there is a lot of Christian humanism in Dante's Ulysses, even if he puts him in Hell, because the whole Divine Comedy is paradise thanks to the gaze of pietas of Dante.
Only in this way could a Church be born capable of quickly reaching all corners of the earth, because its columns had been formed by the art of the street. Spiritual communities, certainly the most authentic and healthy ones, are born in the streets. However, during the course of time, it is almost inevitable that the warmth of a home eventually should win over being cold in the streets. Hence, little by little, from communities made up of heralds, they turn into communities of consumers of spiritual goods, and sometimes this internal consumption becomes so important that they no longer able to feel the cold felt by those who are out in the streets. This is how communities die, but they can be resurrected, if one day they relearn the discipline of the road. When the community becomes a labyrinth of the soul, either we take off like Icarus (taking on all the risks of flying) or we look within the charism for an Ariadne who left a thread of salvation for us.
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The logic of charisms/4 - Christians are the ones about the way and the encounter, not always happy ones but decisive.
by Luigino Bruni
Published in the Avvenire 12/09/2021
"It is not so necessary to educate children to grow up quickly, as to educate adults to know how to be – or turn – children again."
Igino Giordani, The republic of the brats/ La repubblica dei marmocchi
There was no money during the journey of the followers of Jesus, but they had what was essential. What is essential is the Word. The result is a condition of dependence on others, because proclamation is a gift and welcoming others.
We continue with the analogy between the early days of Christianity and our charismatic communities or spiritual movements today - two expressions that I use as synonyms, as collective realities born and nourished by a charism and therefore by one or more founders, who are the first bearers and the first image of that charisma. Hence, analogy, which, as scholastic philosophy teaches us, is a parallelism between two realities where similarities coexist with dissimilarities, and the latter are generally greater than the former. The analogical method, especially in history, must always be taken with significant precautions, but like any method, it can be a way to start a journey in a new territory to be explored. Analogies can be generative, if the term of comparison is rich and fruitful: the Bible and the first Christian communities certainly are. The analogy suggests, hints, points out, always softly and in a whisper; it is the dawn of speech, always fragile and vulnerable. Hence, it knows the typical virtues of vulnerability.

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The logic of charisms/2 - The value of first and second vocations in community experiences
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire  29/08/2021
"But Herod continued seeking John. (2) And he sent his servants to Zachariah at the altar, saying to him, "Where did you hide your son?... Outraged, Herod said, "Is his son destined to rule Israel?"
The Protoevangelium of James XXIII
The analogy with the early days of Christianity helps us to grasp some new dimensions of communities born as a way out of the original one.
The relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist is essential in order to understand the birth of Christianity. According to the Gospel of John (unlike the other synoptic Gospels), not only did Jesus frequent the Baptist movement, but some of the first apostles were disciples of John (among them Peter, Andrew and the anonymous "disciple whom he loved" (John 13,23). In an ancient Ethiopian text we read: «A disciple of John said that the Messiah was John and not Jesus» (Pseudo-Clemens, Book of Recognitions I, 60, edition by Silvano Cola). The Apollo of whom Paul speaks regarding some disagreements in Corinth - «My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you…“I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ”» (1 Corinthians 1,11-12) - was a disciple of the Baptist (Acts 18,24-25) . These are signs that the dialogue-controversy between the two movements lasted well beyond the death of the founders. We also know from the Gospel of John that Jesus and his disciples baptized people in Judea (John 3,22).

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The activity of Jesus as a baptizer is a very uncomfortable fact for John's theology, so much so that shortly after he corrects it: «Although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples» (John 4,2). Corrections that point out controversies on this aspect (baptizing) within the Christian communities, where many (not all) of the Baptist's disciples had converged: «Jesus certainly acted as a baptizer alongside John for a certain period» (Encounters with Jesus/Il Battista e Jesus, A. Destro and M. Pesce, p. 165). We do not know how long Jesus' "Baptist" phase lasted, but from the Gospels we can deduce that it was not brief - he probably continued to baptize all his life, since the apostles continued to baptize even after that. Perhaps at an early stage Jesus also shared John's wild life, as the account of temptations in the wilderness may suggest. In Mark we then read an important detail: Jesus leaves the community of the Baptist and returns to Galilee «After John was put in prison» (Mark 1,14). That arrest, whose historical veracity is also testified by the Jewish-Roman historian Flavius ​​Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, XVIII), represented a turning point in the relationship between Jesus and the Baptist. The Gospel of John gives a different explanation of Jesus' return to Galilee, but it is also linked to the relationship with the Baptist: «Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John… So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee» (John 4,1-3).
So far the story of John and Jesus. There are communities that are born from scratch. Others, on the other hand, are first preceded by discipleship, a following that can last a long time - it is difficult to become a good guide without first having learned to follow someone. In these cases, at first the person is sincerely convinced that the community where he or she incardinated his or her vocation is the one where he or she will remain forever. They do not experience it as a transitory community, because in the beginning authentic vocations are found in an eternal present, where there is no place for anything other than "forever". A gifted innocence, spiritual children with no past or future. The person will then recognize himself perfectly in that charism and feel an absolute ontological spiritual consonance. He will not feel like a guest, but one of the house, sometimes even as the master of the house. It is neither the sea nor the desert, but the Promised Land. There he will begin his spiritual life, there he will learn the ABC of community life, and there he will learn the grammar of the "voice". And if that vocation should generate another community tomorrow, that future community will carry traces of the first one, even if the person should not be fully aware of it or, if the exit from the first one was difficult, he should deny it (or the disciples deny it).
Anjezë entered the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (or Sisters of Loreto) in Albania as a young girl. There she took the name of Teresa. She remained there for eighteen years, until the 10th of September 1946, when in a dusty train «I opened my eyes to suffering and fully understood the essence of my vocation». It was at that moment that Teresa sensed the true essence of her vocation. To go deeper, until touching the heart within the heart. She needed eighteen years before having this realisation. In 1950, she founded the Missionaries of Charity. Teresa did not change her name again, but the name remained that of her first vocation. Like Silvia Lubich who remained Chiara, the name she had taken upon entering the Third Order Secular of St. Francis, when a few years later she understood the essence of her vocation and gave birth to a new community. The essence does not wish for a third name; the second is quite enough, sometimes even the first. Because the new vocation is a penetration into the essence of the first one, to the point of smelling its unique perfume. Teresa left the Sisters of Loreto to find something that truly conformed to her essence, but there are traces of the Sisters of Loreto in the Missionaries of Charity. There she came to know India, falling in love with it; she gave her yes to the poor and learned the art of following. If in the theophany of the baptism of Jesus there is a memory of something historical (and it is probable), it is more likely that it was the manifestation of the first vocation of Jesus, not of the second.
The discovery of the essence of one's vocation can take many different forms, some of which can be quite traumatic. Sometimes it generates a new branch from the same tree - just think of the hundreds of Franciscan families, or community reformers. Other times, the exit gives birth to a new tree, which grows next to the first one, often linked to it through the roots. Sometimes the tree grows beyond the realms of the woods and everyone's oxygen increases. The discovery of the essence is an experience of both great light and great pain. Many experience it with a feeling of betrayal that can last for years, sometimes turning into a wound-scar that stays for life. At a certain point, however, a day arrives when you understand that the time has come and you have to get up and leave. A decisive moment, because if we do not start at the right time and the process of coexistence between vocation and the essence of the vocation lasts too long, the second vocation runs the risk of failing. A process that is never easy, because those who stay behind tend to do everything in their power to stop those who wish to leave, using arguments such as: "What exactly is missing here to allow you to do what you want to do?" Highly effective words because for many people they ring true, but only nearly true for those with a second vocation. The difficulty in discerning consists in being able to grasp the difference between the truth and a quasi-truth, an imperceptible difference when you do not have a specific vocation - or experts and honest companions with you.
The John-Jesus analogy suggests that the departure of the person who personified the first charism can become the turning point. We find ourselves in the objective condition of freedom to be able to take flight, without the fear of disappointing those we love. If the person has great spiritual talents (and this is often the case), the first community had projects, expectations, hopes about him or her, which then risk becoming yet other bonds that can block the flight towards other projects and hopes. It is not about the child's well-known need to ‘kill’ his father in order to become an adult. These dynamics are also common in communities, but this is not what we are analyzing right now. Here the person who seeks his own essence after the founder's exit does go on and kill anyone’s father. It is the objective condition of absence of the key person in the first community that creates the space necessary to start the new one. As in the case when a disease, that was not wanted or sought, generates a new maturity in us that perhaps we would never reached without it. The death of the Baptist, however, may suggest something else too. It is a fact that the death or departure of the founder gives way to a period in which a large number of people (if compared to before) leave the community. They do so for various reasons, many related to the new space created by the absence. Among those who leave, we may also find some "Teresa" who set out to create a new wonderful collective adventure - even if it may "only" be a family. Moreover, as the story of Jesus suggests, the discovery of the new vocation often brings along some of the companions from the first community - a further reason for disagreements and tensions.
An interesting message can be taken from this. Founders would not have to wait for their death or retirement to create this space of freedom. Too many communities (but also businesses) born in the last century are struggling today because they have grown as a single trunk without branches and without generating other trees. Because, whenever they caught a glimpse of a "beautiful soul", the temptation to turn it a source of income for the development of the community was too strong. Hence, the greatest talents are all oriented to its organizational needs, all their creativity directed towards the objectives defined in detail by the founder. While this operation is (almost) inevitable in the first generation, if it continues in the second and subsequent generations as well, the communities risk becoming isolated and bare trunks, which progressively lose all their leaves, flowers and then their fruits. Only a charismatic forest of tomorrow can save the first tree of today. Going beyond the metaphor, however, that wood is not going to be formed without a "staff policy" which allows Jesus - a man who was not only a man - to flourish even outside the movement of the Baptist. In part because it is rare for the founders to be active only during three or four years, as was the case with John and with Jesus himself - it cannot be excluded that this is part of the reason behind the great generativity and variety of the first primitive Church.
The name of this policy is "community chastity", the one that allows you to see a beautiful person arrive, nurture them while they are with you and then help them understand who they really are, whether inside that first community or outside of it. A very difficult form of chastity, because some of the people left free to leave never come back. However, there will also be branches growing out of the trunk and other trees in the same woods that will allow the charism to continue to grow and flourish. Without being willing to waste, in a generous surplus, part of the seeds, no seeds of the charism will ever reach good soil and grow. A wise founder is the he who, when he sees a new person arriving, sets himself as his first goal to identify which branch or tree that this person will be able to generate, instead of immediately putting him to work as the gardener caring for the only large beautiful tree of the community. A tree that is presented like an already accomplished and unchangeable tree that only needs maintenance and water - even if that person should be exceptionally talented at watering. Many crises, and withering and non-generative branches and exits, could have been avoided if only people had been close to someone capable of reading their discomfort and the effort of getting to the essence of their vocation. In the Kingdom of Heaven, the blossoms are free, varied, excessive, colored, plural, and symphonic.
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The logic of charisms/2 - The value of first and second vocations in community experiences
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire  29/08/2021
"But Herod continued seeking John. (2) And he sent his servants to Zachariah at the altar, saying to him, "Where did you hide your son?... Outraged, Herod said, "Is his son destined to rule Israel?"
The Protoevangelium of James XXIII
The analogy with the early days of Christianity helps us to grasp some new dimensions of communities born as a way out of the original one.
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