Deep roots

I write these lines while I am standing near a room that houses about 30 people who have been forced to abandon their homes where they were constantly in danger of being attacked by the Russian army.
I write shortly after two men, on a military base thousands of kilometres far from this country, discussed the lives of thousands of people as if they were clauses in a real estate contract.

Images of these days move quickly before my eyes: we fill them up with meetings, work activities alongside this welcoming and organized religious community, along the young people who every year organize a summer camp for children and gatherings for the youth in a small inland town called Kazanka. Even those who study far away come back every summer to keep the group active and offer the summer camp together with young men and women from Mykolaiv who usually divide their time between studying, volunteering, and hanging out with friends.
I think about the summer when busy people or tourists gather in Mykolaiv and Odessa whose cafes and bars are crowded and you can see live music along the river. But they warn me, nothing is over. We can delude ourselves, perhaps for a moment, but the situation is grim.
No one deludes themselves into thinking that the reasoning of diplomacy can truly reflect the people's interests, that the disseminated hatred will be eradicated very soon.
Ukraine has suffered greatly in recent years, but if it is still standing, it is not only due to weapons, rather the solidarity of its people who have not abandon the last and keep communities together despite dangers and sufferings.
You can clearly recognise it in the tormented city of Kherson, where the solidarity networks of religious communities are still active in spite of the incessant attacks by Russian drones and artillery.
The resistance of those people is comparable with the plants’ one which grow even through the concrete, despite everything around them is hostile.
Their roots are deep enough to undermine those of hatred, and with this conviction we will keep on supporting them, now and even when (hopefully soon) the weapons fall silent.

E.