[Europe.justus] Fwd: Jerome's Comments on Cavalletti's death

[Vicky]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Godly Play Resources" <Godly_Play_Resources at mail.vresp.com>
> Date: 25 août 2011 22:11:20 HAEC
> To: office at tec-europe.org
> Subject: Jerome's Comments on Cavalletti's death
> Reply-To: "Godly Play Resources" <reply-e29dfb3ebd-c0e842bcea-7bf3 at u.cts.vresp.com>
> 
> 		
> Dear Trainers, Board Members, and Friends,
> Sofia Cavalletti died about ten minutes after midnight on Tuesday, August 23 in Rome. She used to say, “Friends share bad news as well as good news,” and this is both bad and good news. She was 94.  Yesterday, August 24, was her funeral mass.
> Sofia added enormously to the work begun by Maria Montessori (1870-1952) in the early decades of the twentieth century. E. M. (Ted) Standing was a leading Montessori religious educator as well as an advocate for Montessori education in the second generation and Sofia was without question the leader of the third generation of Montessori religious educators. She began her work in 1954 in Rome in the apartment where she was born, near the Piazza Navona. 
> My gratitude is especially deep for her addition of the parables to Montessori’s and Standing’s work and for her shifting of the focus of the mass from the sacrifice to the Good Shepherd and The True Vine from the Gospel of John. As she often said, “It only took me twenty-five years to think of this.” I am not quite sure about the number of years she spoke about, my memory fails, but it took a long time and taught me to be patient in the development of teaching materials. 
> One of my most beloved memories of her was how she treated Thea’s and my girls, Alyda and Coleen, whenever we met. We stopped to see her in Rome on our way home after a year in Bergamo, where I studied Montessori. She had come there from Rome to give a day’s lecture about Montessori religious education. In Rome we walked into her apartment and began our visit in Italian until she clapped her hands with delight and exclaimed, “The girls are speaking Italian with a North Italian accent! Now let’s speak English.” She was always interested in and inquired about “the girls.” 
> Cavalletti stopped in Houston in the late 1970s to visit us on her way to Mexico to present workshops and lectures. I eagerly showed her my version of the parables, which is quite different from her approach. I enthusiastically told her that I was going “to do” every parable and she quietly asked “Why?” This is why in Godly Play there are only six, key parables in gold boxes to guide the children into the art of their use and then the synthesis lesson about all the parables and I Am statements in a large basket. 
> The last time I saw Sofia for a good visit was in 1991, when I was in Rome for a month, thanks to Lilly Endowment, and met with her each weekday and observed her classes with children. I will miss her, but her mentoring of me, the art and commitment of her work, and her appreciation and respect for children and their spirituality, remains.
> With love, always love,
> Jerome     
> 
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