austraLasia 1607
The Empire Strikes Back - 800 years after Genghis Khan
ULAAN BAATAR: 9th July 2006 -- They say Rome burned while Nero fiddled. In Ulaan Baatar, today's capital of Genghis Khan's ancient empire, Nadaam - an event not a person, the most important event on the Mongolian calendar - is about to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the empire, which will include 800 morin huur players - the 'morin huur' being a two-stringed fiddle. The main events will be on July 11th and 12th, but 1,000 horsemen will put on an equestrian show to beat all equestrian shows on the 10th. There will be archers, wrestling - and of course horse racing.
Since all of Mongolia will be caught up in celebrations, so too will the Salesians - and they have their own little reasons for celebrating, as the current Rector Major's dream of planting Don Bosco's charism across Mongolia's vaste steppes (but really in the wide open hearts of its young) is being firmly realised.
It may take a 4x4 to move around Mongolia, but the Salesian Community, canonically only one, has adopted a 3x3 formula to 'plant' the charism. 3 confreres in Ulaan Baatar where there is a school up and running, another 3 now in Amgalang, some five or so kilometres out of the city and where former street-kids (steam tunnel kids might be a better description) are cared for, and a third presence up North near the Russian border at Darkhan, of which austraLasia has written earlier this year.
Now comes the news that a tenth confrere will be added to the mix, and it is indeed a wonderful mix with all the joys and tribulations of truly international communities. Fr Paul Leung from China province will join the community a little later in the year. Salesian Mongolia, then, witnesses to the internationality of the Congregation with its Vietnamese, Filipino, Brazilian, Polish, Indian, Korean and now Chinese membership. Seven nations amongst ten confreres! The community also represents a growing sense of the Salesian Family in all its richness. There is a Brother, a practical trainee as well as priests, and the Salesian Sisters have announced their intent to develop a community in Mongolia too.
Perhaps it's all a reminder of the wide embrace of the former Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan. There was hardly an empire to rival it, certainly not in the West. A kind of Charlemagne with obvious differences, he once ruled or conquered large parts of Russia, China, Korea, Vietnam in the East and Perisa, what is today's Iran, Iraq, Turkey then on to Hungary and Poland in the West, and this latter precisely when Christendom was busy fighting the Crusades and worried about the Muslims! Genghis Khan may have a personal reputation for bloddthirstiness, but his empire actually had a reputation for religious tolerance, something passed on to today's Mongols
While we watch Mongolia's Nadaam celebrations at a distance, our prayers are with Don Bosco's nomads, sometimes 3x3, often in a 4x4 and certainly in need of 20/20 to plan the future with clarity.
___________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com Try out BoscoWiki to be interactive. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xm A separate service entirely is called F/OSSERVATORE to help us keep abreast of trends in the digital world.
The Empire Strikes Back - 800 years after Genghis Khan
ULAAN BAATAR: 9th July 2006 -- They say Rome burned while Nero fiddled. In Ulaan Baatar, today's capital of Genghis Khan's ancient empire, Nadaam - an event not a person, the most important event on the Mongolian calendar - is about to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the empire, which will include 800 morin huur players - the 'morin huur' being a two-stringed fiddle. The main events will be on July 11th and 12th, but 1,000 horsemen will put on an equestrian show to beat all equestrian shows on the 10th. There will be archers, wrestling - and of course horse racing.
Since all of Mongolia will be caught up in celebrations, so too will the Salesians - and they have their own little reasons for celebrating, as the current Rector Major's dream of planting Don Bosco's charism across Mongolia's vaste steppes (but really in the wide open hearts of its young) is being firmly realised.
It may take a 4x4 to move around Mongolia, but the Salesian Community, canonically only one, has adopted a 3x3 formula to 'plant' the charism. 3 confreres in Ulaan Baatar where there is a school up and running, another 3 now in Amgalang, some five or so kilometres out of the city and where former street-kids (steam tunnel kids might be a better description) are cared for, and a third presence up North near the Russian border at Darkhan, of which austraLasia has written earlier this year.
Now comes the news that a tenth confrere will be added to the mix, and it is indeed a wonderful mix with all the joys and tribulations of truly international communities. Fr Paul Leung from China province will join the community a little later in the year. Salesian Mongolia, then, witnesses to the internationality of the Congregation with its Vietnamese, Filipino, Brazilian, Polish, Indian, Korean and now Chinese membership. Seven nations amongst ten confreres! The community also represents a growing sense of the Salesian Family in all its richness. There is a Brother, a practical trainee as well as priests, and the Salesian Sisters have announced their intent to develop a community in Mongolia too.
Perhaps it's all a reminder of the wide embrace of the former Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan. There was hardly an empire to rival it, certainly not in the West. A kind of Charlemagne with obvious differences, he once ruled or conquered large parts of Russia, China, Korea, Vietnam in the East and Perisa, what is today's Iran, Iraq, Turkey then on to Hungary and Poland in the West, and this latter precisely when Christendom was busy fighting the Crusades and worried about the Muslims! Genghis Khan may have a personal reputation for bloddthirstiness, but his empire actually had a reputation for religious tolerance, something passed on to today's Mongols
While we watch Mongolia's Nadaam celebrations at a distance, our prayers are with Don Bosco's nomads, sometimes 3x3, often in a 4x4 and certainly in need of 20/20 to plan the future with clarity.
___________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com Try out BoscoWiki to be interactive. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xm A separate service entirely is called F/OSSERVATORE to help us keep abreast of trends in the digital world.
