For the AustraLasia 5000

By A long-time reader of, contributor to aLa

EAO, 31 January 2019 -- Today, on a feast day so cherished by Salesians, the wider Salesian Family, and countless 'friends' of Don Bosco, this writer also notices that one twenty-two-year-old friend (called austraLasia) is about to register its 5,000th edition since November 7, 1997. So, first of all, a word or two on this friendship:

• Not all good friends stand by you through your joys and sorrows, but you have always been there for me. Thank you.


• You have been a friend who has given me a thousand other friends. Nothing makes our region so spacious as having all these friends at a distance. Thank you.


• You are up to 5,000 editions, 1,000,000 or more 'hits' since you went truly digital (you were merely a random email 22 years ago!), but what are numbers, after all? Since social media came to the scene (hardly thought of 22 years ago), the superficiality of numbers has been even more apparent. What are '10,000 followers, likes, dislikes etc.', when it's all said and done? But, if numbers are important at all, I'd like to think of 10,000 as a good one. I've done my share of contributing to your 'life', and since it takes me hours to write something, I am sure I've put more than ten thousand hours into you. They say it takes a minimum of ten thousand hours before you achieve real mastery of anything. Could anyone count the number of hours your editors and contributors have put into your success as a communication tool? Probably not, but my thanks to all of them too.


• A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future. You have been a connection to the life of the EAO region now for 22 years - that makes you a tie to the past, and I thank you for that. Will you be a road to the future? That depends on all of us, and maybe it is now time to involve the region beyond just a handful of correspondents. You are about Don Bosco's expansive spirit, community, good news, quality communication, formation, connections, connections, connections! The world has moved on in twenty-two years, the Region has too, in its sense of organization but also in its sense of Salesian Family, of interchange and exchange between its members, its circumscriptions, and young people too, who know no boundaries of the kind we normally set for ourselves. It is time for a regional communications plan and people to manage it, where you, my good friend, are a key player for intercommunication at every level. I thank you in anticipation, and know that I will still be there to read, write, help.


• You have been a formator! Yes, really! We normally think of formators as people, but I am addressing you as a person because that is how you have been a friend for me, and a friend who has helped form me and I imagine many others too. As our current Rector Major, Fr Ángel F. Artime says, writing about you and encouraging you to continue doing what you do so well: 'Never forget our Salesian identity in the way we see and judge, as Don Bosco did, always as the educator, seeing things from God's point of view.' When you do that, you are a formator. Thank you!

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And just one final thought, though this comes from someone we all know very well. Here is what he has to say that I believe speaks directly to austraLasia, Bosco.Link: "We sense the challenge of finding and sharing a 'mystique' of living together, of mingling and encounter, of embracing and supporting one another, of stepping into this flood tide which, while chaotic, can become a genuine experience of fraternity, a caravan of solidarity, a sacred pilgrimage (Italics are mine; the words, though, are from Pope Francis, EG no. 87). AustraLasia Bosco.Link as an experience ... caravan ... pilgrimage. I like it!

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