“Imagine there’s no countries | It isn’t hard to do | Nothing to kill or die for | And no religion too | Imagine all the people | Living life in peace”. This is how John Lennon expressed his anti-war message through music in his famous song Imagine, which quickly became a worldwide hit symbol of peace. The song by the British singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, artist and activist once again succeeded in conveying strong and profound emotions, this time to the young students of class 1G of the secondary school of the Comprehensive Institute Gioele Solari, in Abbazia, a neighbourhood in the municipality of Albino in the province of Bergamo. The teacher and Rebirth/Third Paradise ambassadress Katia Greco played them John Lennon’s song, in order to make her students approach the Russian-Ukrainian crisis from a different perspective. “Our teacher made us listen to Imagine, a song that really struck a chord with us,” said the students, “the notes made us dream of a world of peace and when we translated the lyrics we were deeply moved by the meaning of the sentence ‘Imagine there’s no countries it isn’t hard to do’. Well, it’s not hard to imagine the world without borders! In fact, if you look at pictures of the Earth from space, you don’t see any”. The school in Albino is actually located in a place ‘rich in differences’, as it welcomes students from different areas, even quite far apart, this way becoming not only an educational institution, but a point of intersection for friendship and social aggregation, which activates an educational process that takes shape through continuous relational exchanges and sharing.
During their school break on 7 March¹, the pupils of 1G therefore decided to make Michelangelo Pistoletto’s symbol-sign themselves in the school courtyard, as a way of sending out a message of solidarity in the light of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis. “Some time ago,” the pupils explained, “our teacher Katia described to us the principles of the Third Paradise, a symbol that resembles the mathematical symbol of infinity, but which opens up at the intersection to become like a big belly where the future is born. As a game, during our break, we started drawing a big circle using wool threads and chalks. We had to try a few times, but in the end, with great satisfaction, we had our Third Paradise in the courtyard”. In the students’ work, the peace symbol and a red heart were drawn in the two outer circles, and our planet in the central one. The teacher was impressed by this artistic approach inspired by the trinamic symbol, which had generated a sort of hymn to peace: “With the onset of a climate of war in Europe,” commented the ambassadress, “we have seen children eager to express their desire for peace. The symbol of the Third Paradise thus became a way of conveying and manifesting their dream”.
