austraLasia 757
FIJI: LIVING LITURGY AND A 'CALL TO THE ISLANDS'
SUVA: 23rd November '03 - It took almost one year to construct, and one mahogony tree felled (unavoidably) just before the Feast of Don Bosco 2003, but Don Bosco House, Suva, now boasts a remarkable mahogany trio in altar, lectern and tabernacle.
They are not just any altar, lectern and tabernacle. All three combine to present a powerful message that this is Fiji, the Pacific, and from the outset a place of youthful and vibrant Salesian-Pacific-styled liturgy. The altar is a large fish, the lectern a canoe and the tabernacle a 'bure Kalou' or, literally God's House, reaching several metres to the ceiling.
Of the three, the lectern is perhaps the most striking in its joint Salesian, Christian and Fijian symbolism. Pacific nations were populated by means of the canoe. The Fijian canoe's single central mast (with triangular sail) is tipped with three prongs - and these represent the 'call to the islands', the social communication concept, if you like, from three thousand years ago! What better symbol, then, as a resting place for the Word of God. Readers do not merely approach the lectern but appear to be stepping into the canoe to proclaim the Word of God.
The three concepts were designed from within Don Bosco House but executed by Fiji's best known wood-carver, known simply as 'Tawake', since his other names are a little long and complicated.
There is a further symbolism to all this that would not be lost on local Salesians and those who know Fiji's recent turbulent history. The choice of mahogany was not only a pragmatic one. The new elements in DBH chapel are symbols of the triple unity of sacrifice, priesthood and community called together by the Word. Mahogany, in the Year 2000, sparked off a Coup D'etat in Fiji, and brought untold division and misery to thousands.
In the 1950's, the former British colonial administration instituted two large-scale mahogany plantation projects. By the Year 2000 these were ready for harvesting. The head of another of Fiji's plantation projects, Fiji Pine, was the now infamous George Speight. Speight had hoped to be the harvesting company, but the political party backing him lost the elections in 1999 and the new Prime Minister, an Indo-Fijian called Mahendra Chaudry gave the contract to a British Firm....mainly because he needed British financial support for Fiji's main but ailing export industry, sugar. It is complicated. The plantations also involve land, and land ownership then begins to separate indigenous Fijians from Indo-Fijians. The rest is history and George Speight, Napoleon-like, now 'enjoys' shackled solitude on his own prison island in the Bay of Suva.
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