Opera Pia Dei Poveri Mendicanti (wikipedia)

The Opera Pia Dei Poveri Mendicanti was a service offered in Italy in the 1500s. Apparently Jesus' teachings included something about 'helping the poor and the weak' so the ruling patricians of the time organized hostels, infirmeries, and orphanages in order to do just that.

"The plan was to ameliorate the poor through discipline, education, and by finding them sufficient work; thus, helping the people escape their perpetual poverty in a modern sense."

The girls were kept outside the city, and the boys within. Interestingly, among the organizers, the women were frequently criticized for wasting money on "lavish festivals and dinners".

Ok. There's plenty of options here, but let's break it down and then build it up: A service offered at the latter end of the middle ages, honoring a higher power by helping the weak. A gender divide placing women seperate from the population centers while nevertheless allowing them to create community with their lavish festivals.

Well, that's just confounding!

But here's what I think:

The Opera Pia Dei Poveri Mendicanti is a young girl, taking care of a small dog given to her by her parents. "You have to learn responsibility if you want to grow up," said the parents, and what little girl doesn't want to grow up? Some children will ignore the dog, figuring that they can please their parents in other ways, by dressing nicely, cleaning the house, or saying "Good morning, wonderful parents" each day. They don't realize that it is not the parents who make the child grow up, but the child. Taking care of the dog isn't a chore with adulthood as the payment, but a step down the path. Just as the girls of the Opera are kept seperate from the city while the women throw parties to support it, so too does the little girl befriend her dog in private while her mother invites her friends over to meet him. In a sense, the pressure created by the visiting adults drives the little girl further into her possessiveness of the canine, seperating her from the adults yet paradoxically pulling her down her own unique route towards adulthood.

The beautiful thing about a metaphor is that it can go both ways. Though it's clearly the Opera which represents the little girl as opposed to the other way around, we can also gain perspective into religious charity by looking at the little girl. Do we get into Heaven by pleasing God enough that he lets us in, or is Heaven, like adulthood, a place/state that we come into naturally, in our own way, in our own time?
Contraversely, if we take the metaphor in its proper direction, and look at the fact that the Opera was a modern attempt (modern to those in the 1500s at least) to ameliorate the situation of the poor, then we can also posit that the first little girl to take care of a dog did so after seeing unhappy, uncared for dogs for all too long, and perhaps witnessed her parents' unhappiness there. Like the ruling patricians of the time, the little girl realized that the dogs would need to be taken care of, and so she did her best to do so.
That's hardly a significant insight. I'm going to have to apologize, I'm overhearing a fellow playing middle-man over the phone to conflict resolve between two friends. One more step towards heaven, one more step towards adulthood. Loud, noisy, beautiful steps which are distracting me from my intentional stumble towards hopeful epiphanies.

Let me remark more honestly, avidly, on metaphors, cutting out a bit of the bullshit that I've been spouting (sincere, well-meaning bullshit, please don't get me wrong).
I've long thought that a two-way metaphor has a lot of potential. Clearly it's kind of a joke to say the the patricians and the poor are a metaphor for the little girl and the dog, because the relevant thought here is that about pleasing god/pleasing the parents. But if a metaphor's direction is from the simple to the meaningful, then what if we find meaning in the simple? What if valuable lessons about parenting could be learned by watching Sixteenth Century rich attempting to please their god? And we've already seen that they can: As parents, we need to realize that child-raising is not about getting our child to do what we want, to please us, to agree with us, but to help them find their own path to adulthood. This is why we might get them a dog, even when we may prefer say, a pet rock. This is not to say that parents, or God, cannot have a personal relationship with their children, but that the joy from an interpersonal connection is a part, but not necessarily a whole, of the assisted path towards adulthood.
Yes, I may have strayed back into the b.s.-ing towards the end there, but forgiveness is a virtue and I'm tired, so please forgive me. However- please-
encourage growth; do not selfishly hoard affection and power.

Unless that helps you grow, of course. Far be it for me to tell you your best path.