austraLasia #3166
ROME: 7 December 2012 --
Yes, we know it's been quiet on the news front this past
fortnight, but
that's not your fault! The 'fault' is e-devotion!
A word of
explanation and an invitation.
Some two years
ago now, at a meeting of webmasters from various parts of the
Salesian
world, a lay person, a female wbemaster who is not Catholic
but very
much part of the Salesian enterprise and quite epxlicitly
engrossed
with and engaged in Don Bosco's charism, made this simple
point: "My
job requires that I often visit Salesian sites in a range of
languages
around the world [she speaks English, Spanish and Italian in
addition
to her own language, German]. I have noted that they
have wonderful
amounts of information but in almost no instance do they offer
what I,
as a Christian and a person deeply involved in Salesian
matters, might
really be looking for - I am looking for help with my
spirituality, and
I want it to be a Salesian spirituality as well".
That
comment struck home, but the real wuaesiton was how to respond
to it.
It has taken two years, but e-devotion is, for now, the
response.
E-devotion
is in five languages for now; it could be in others, but it
would need
the people who are willing to translate and also find material
in that
language, no easy task. It is not so muhc invitation
about prayer as
an invitation to prayer. Just getting to this point has
been almost a
24/7 job for a month, which explains a vertain hiatus in other
activities, but at least we can say it is up and running.
Now, it is not perfect, and you can of course (and are invited
to)
offer constructive criticism, but what we really want is to
ask your
solid help by way of practical (and practicable) idea and
materials.
Our Region is not short of people who have already taken a
leap into
all kinds of "e" approaches, from blogs, to lectio divina to -
you name
it. But a handful (it boils down to two) people here
simply cannot do
all the work of hunting up material in 5 languages, then
coding it and
so forth. We are happy to code it - but we need the
material in the
first place.
So
- an
open invitation - at least for English. If you
are also a native
speaker of Spanish or Italian, French or Portuguese,
feel free to offer
material for those languages too. Do you have
something that could be
suitable? Send it or a link to it, please. Have
you put helpful videos
or audio material online? Could we have/use it (better
to have it than
to link to it )?
Why not take
your own tour through the material and try to
see what is there, what is lacking and what you could
suggest.
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