"The concept of " holy " appears indefinable today because, never presenting itself independently, it can be considered a quality proper to various things: places, rituals, people, actions.
"Defend the holy"  is a reportage that tells about the sacredness of the Equiazione association, as a quality of social recovery of people and animals, as the construction of a community and in the relationship between man and territory, man and man, man and animal.
Buttero Contemporaneo is an internal project of the Equiazione association, which runs a social farm in the Castelli Romani in a valley at the foot of Mount Artemisio, a few kilometers from Rome. This area was originally territory where animals were stationed in semi-wild management, for a few months during the
changing seasons, on a long transhumance journey from Abruzzo to the Pontine sea. The Buttero, from which the brand name "contemporary buttero" takes its name, is a shepherd originally from the Maremma, an area of Italy stretching from southern Tuscany to lower Lazio, who works with horses moving large herds of cattle and wild horses. The association in fact recovers abused, impounded or destined for slaughter horses that are first lashed and then moved to huge paddocks(pens) where they graze freely in herds. They thus begin a journey of recovery of natural outdoor and social life and in parallel, through their sensitivity, help the
children with physical and motor disabilities and to anyone who wants to have new experiences of relationship with the animal. The village also has a social inn ( a pre-employment training project) and a cohousing, which started 2 years ago. The young people housed, having completed their intensive rehabilitation process, have begun a path of work experience, or para-work experience, at Equiazione which, is based not only on the relationship with the horse but also on experiences of working on the farm and stimulating social reintegration through inclusion.
The path of contact with the self, of disabled and non-disabled individuals, passes through the observation of the horse and nature, the community dynamics of horses in the herd and in the construction of a mutual relationship of respect and trust with the animal, trying not just to be on the horse but together with the horse.
This interaction produces a new way of riding: the focus of the activity is no longer performance with its automatisms, but the relationship and its becoming, in space and time. One can thus come to discover how, in this ride alongside an animal, new avenues of perception and experience of the world open up, both in relationships with other humans and in the herds in which we live every day.
A social farm where individuals, nature and animals of different breeds and particularities, manages to live together with serenity in a peace far from the frenzy of today's life.
The sacred is understood in this experience as a celebration of relationship in which everyone is an active subject in his or her own particularity and identity.

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