austraLasia 1257
A Salesian Blog worth seeing - and a new approach to
sharing spirituality
Go to http://www.gravasco.blogspot.com
SIHANOUKVILLE: 23rd September 2005 -- A blog from
Sihanoukville? And what is a blog anyway? The second
question needs answering before the first, and if 'seeing is
believing', then following the given link will largely answer the first
anyway! But given the increasing number who are asking for a
definition/description of a blog, the one indicated here is as good as
you can get to support the answer that follows.
If you have been following the Rector Major's 'open
forum' discussions as reported in these pages, whenever he visits a
province or region, you will have noted his regular insistence on the
sharing of our faith, confrere to confrere, and especially in the
context of 'the community'. Now blogging can be a contemporary
form of this sharing, since it is essentially an online diary. Of
its very nature it is not meant to be the kind of journalling hidden in
a book to be discovered after death. It is meant to be read,
shared, even responded to. Of course blogging (a word derived
from a longer form, 'web-log' or a record kept online, then shortened
to 'blog') is as open to all the negative uses you can imagine, but
when used as a plain channel for shared reflection, along with a
modicum of writing ability and a bit of taste, it takes on a distinct
beauty.
Enter, at this point, one Salesian missionary, Fr
Gerard Ravasco, Salesian missionary to Cambodia. In the
journalist's business, they say that personal stories attract
readers. You cannot help but be attracted by this particular
example of blogging. It wasn't easy at Poipet, where he had to
rely on internet cafes to keep up any online contact. But in
Sihanoukville, at the Don Bosco Technical School there, he has 24/7
online capacity, which in plain language means they are always
connected, if electricty and phones are working.
Our good missionary puts up regular reflections
under the general title of 'journey'. It's his journey, but it
can be ours too, and there's a sense of privilege from the moment you
open the site; privilege that you are entering into where aesthetics,
simplicity and faith have created a place, not just a space, in this
case a little online home, parish, school....you know the sort of thing
I am driving at.
Now I'm sure Gerard (he calls himself Gigi to
friends), isn't Albert Einstein, despite the 'photo' in his complete
profile, but he does have his MCP or Microsoft Certified Professional
[certificate] and that must help, in this blogging business. But
you should also read his blog entry on that too, since it is an insight
into a man who is prepared to gvie things another go. If at first
you don't succeed....
Really there's nothing more to say. Just go
there and see for yourself....and believe that this is, well, really
something.
___________________________
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