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.
___________________
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