My wife Susan, and I just returned from our 37th CL Family Summer Vacation with both the New York and other regional communities. What a beautiful experience once again.

The form was the same as all the previous years: a hike that I must say I was huffing and puffing through all the way. The games were devised mercifully to include seniors without asking too much from our, let’s say, diminishing physical abilities, while letting the kids run with all their hearts and energy. Genius as far as I was concerned.

Our community really includes four generations of people. Luca, our responsible, is very sensitive to that.

The path of the days we lived together was well articulated.

The Fourth of July marked the 249th birthday of America and the presentation on American history was gripping in many ways though synthetic. There is a lot of ground to cover. At one point, an audio recording of the I have a Dream speech of Martin Luther King Jr. was played. I remember being 11 years old and hearing this speech live. I was not religious at the time, but the power of this speech resounded like thunder to me as a kid. When I heard it again I was reminded of how powerful the American ideal was expressed.

We sang The Times They Are A-Changing by Bob Dylan. Ken, who sang it, said when you sing about a truth that something happens to you deep inside. I remembered the urgency for an American promised land and the struggle for freedom that Dylan wrote about.

When I met the Movement, Fr. Luigi Giussani spoke with the same passion for this ideal that I already recognized and knew. America, with all of its both greatness and depth of its sins, found resonance for me in the great expression of the Catholic faith that I encountered through Father Giussani.

The path of the vacation was to look deeply at the unique American experiment and how only an encounter with a friendship ultimately saves. This is the deep desire and yearning born in our American souls.

Father Rich and I wrote A New Creation 30 years ago. The experience of the vacation once again proved to me that I do not live that song as a nostalgia, but as something that keeps happening. It is always new.

Susan and I left the vacation with a deeper sense of belonging and familiarity across the generations. It was an encounter, once again, with a friendship that continues through all the vicissitudes of life’s journey . We are grateful.

Jonathan, Brooklyn