In a recent publication, psychologist Paloma Carrasco reflected on the importance of leaving a margin of error in everything we do, of not pretending to have everything under control.
The Omicron tsunami has forced us to live without knowing what will happen tomorrow. If I test positive, who will take my daughters to school? And if one of them is infected, how will I go to work, who will I leave her with, will I infect my classmates?
The obsession with security has made us run out of antigen tests at prices far above their cost to the delight of those who have made a killing on fear; but the reality is that their effectiveness is relative and not even PCR tests assure us one hundred percent that we are not infected and that we are not infecting our loved ones.
In order not to become obsessed with the control of our lives, Carrasco proposes introducing in our language phrases such as "in theory", "in principle", or "God willing". In this way, our mind gets used to understanding that what we have in our hands is not absolutely certain and opens up to the surprise factor.
I have to admit that the best things in my life came by surprise, unplanned, without me intervening at all. No one ever asked me if I wanted to be born. I suddenly found myself surrounded by a family that took me in, took care of me... and to this day.
By surprise I met my wife, who is now my partner in marriage vocation, and by surprise she said yes when I asked her out. I wanted to study journalism when in my city there was no such career and my family could not pay me to study abroad; but just the year I was preparing for selectivity, I read in the newspaper that the following year would open the Faculty of Information Sciences. Surprise!
By surprise I started working in that great school of journalism that is Diario Sur and, by surprise, I contacted the teacher José Luis Arranz who introduced me to the then Media Delegate of the Diocese of Malaga who, by surprise, asked me to work in diocesan communication. I had never seen me writing about ecclesiastical matters and it has been 25 years already!
Each one of my seven children came by surprise, when they wanted to, and each one of them comes to surprise me every day with their particular personality. Where did they come from?
There have been many other surprises that the Lord has been giving me personally, spiritually and professionally throughout my life, and one of the most satisfying ones lately is my collaboration with Omnes.
A space that came to me suddenly, without expecting it, when I had other plans, and that has shown me that the God of surprises, as Pope Francis often calls him, always surprises us for the better, because his will is always the best for us. Here I have felt at home, I have been able to express myself freely, tell my stories and receive the affection of many readers.
In this first year of life of Omnes, I have seen a media with a clear vocation of universality, as its name indicates, where everything that happens in the Church and in the world has a place; a convergent media in which traditional journalism in paper and digital join to reach everyone, to leave no one behind; a Catholic media that does not allow itself to be pigeonholed and that, from its identity, has open doors and windows to the ecclesial plurality; a medium in which, as in so many other evangelical projects, resources are used to the maximum, yielding a hundredfold; a medium made with great faith and, I know, with great effort on the part of a dedicated editorial staff; a medium, in short, destined to be a point of reference in the ecclesial communications panorama of the coming years.
In the face of the uncertainty about the future that the psychologist was talking about, the Spanish language has a precious word. It is the term "ojalá", with which we express the wish for something to happen that is not in our hands, and which many people do not know has a believing origin.
The Royal Academy Dictionary explains that its etymology is Hispanic Arabic "law šá lláh" (If God wills-God wills it); which means that, when we say it, we are entrusting its fulfillment to God.
So, as I said, hopefully this first year of Omnes and this, my first year with Omnes, is just one among many, many more.
It will be, God willing.
Journalist. Graduate in Communication Sciences and Bachelor in Religious Sciences. He works in the Diocesan Delegation of Media in Malaga. His numerous "threads" on Twitter about faith and daily life have a great popularity.
