oday was a day filled with information and input. There were lots of talks, several interviews, a couple of homilies, and one instance of native dancing, each of which had a “point” to make or a personal motivation to touch. I would call it the classroom day for the Lasallian Youth. And like a full school day anywhere, by the end of the day the studednts were quite ready to be finished.
The day began at Federation Square in Melbourne, where the OMI youth had organized an ecumenical “Peace by Piece” event in which we would be participating. (During the event, our Lasallian Youth folks seemed to be much more visible and as numerous as the OMI groups there.) Br. Richard Galvin and I made our way to the square on foot, arriving in time to see that the Vietnamese had taken advantage of the free time before the 
start of the event to organize one of their large-group games / community builders. Their energy and enthusiasm is usually expressed through a large circle of people moving and dancing, lots of clapping of the hands, some running around, and a whole bunch of fun for the people involved. You certainly cannot fail to notice them. I also ran into Br. Phong from San Jose who, as usual, was having a great time himself. This went on for about half an hour and then things settled down, groups assembled on stage, and the speeches began.
First, large posters of the symbols of various world religions were brought forward – most by various Lasallian Youth – and placed in front of the stage. This was followed by an Aboriginal series of dances, the point of which seemed to be to either bless the stage and/or to invoke the spirits of peace. Then individual representatives of the religions represented came forward to speak about the pursuit of peace in their tradition and to read from one of their holy books on the same topic. After one or two of these, a number of folks in attendance (not too many) found it to be somewhat repetitive and wandered away. I have to ad
mit that I ended up being one of these towards the end of the ceremony. The whole event had been an optional one for us, and a good number of our group had apparently decided to do something else or to simply sleep in this morning. I was impressed, however, at the respectful attention that was given by the 500+ attendees to each of the speakers during the 45 – 60 minute ceremony.Towards the end of the ceremony, I went for a walk across the nearby river and down along the river path, getting a good view of the
Melbourne skyline in the process. The weather was not overcast, although not warm either, but it was a great day for walking. About half a mile away I went into a rather fancy looking building and found myself is a very upscale mall surrounding a huge casino. When I went in – after following the request that I drop off my backpack at the coat room – I found lots and lots of slot machines (many with 2-cent or 5-cent slots) and Blackjack tables that seemed to start at a $20 minimum and quickly moved up from there. The real action seemed to be at the roulette tables, which were surrounded by crowds of people who reached across to drop their new bets as soon as the old bets had been cleared. It seemed as if they couldn’t wait to part with their chips. And not one person I saw either at the tables or at the slots was smiling – even when they won. It kind of makes you think about the whole thing… In a more plush section, separated by fancy metal grating, was a room obviously for the really wealthy, where one or two people per table were playing with brightly-colored chips that certainly went from $1,000 up. They seemed especially bored / serious / not having fun.I didn’t stay long and happily picked up my backpack in the cloak room to escape to the outside and the generally smiling and happy folks and families walking along the river.
By about 1:30 PM, I’d made my way via train back to Malvern, stopping to have lunch in a small restaurant along the way. The city has a very large numb
er of Asian places to eat, and the ones I’ve samples are uniformly excellent. The classes/presentations for the afternoon had just started. (During their lunch, apparently, they had had great fun building things with their lunch boxes, and Br. Lawrence gave me a couple of pictures that he had taken during that time.) Br. Adrian Watson had told me earlier (that’s him in the picture above with Roberto Martinez and me) that they had decided that the logistics of getting
500 kids to and from various venues in the school was impractical and they would have everything in the gym as a large group. So we were in the gym, pretty much, from 1 PM to 8:30 PM, with breaks for tea, Mass, and dinner.
The presentations (all of which went longer than planned) were these:1) Lasallian Vocation – Given by a Lasallian Volunteer, Br. Ambrose Payne, and Br. David Hawke. Experiences of the Lasallian vocation – stories and examples of the Lasallian vocation in action plus an invitation to consider a religious and/or Lasallian vocation.
2) Education under Occupation – Bethlehem University students showed two videos and gave a short introduction. One was an overview of the school, its history, its components and its mission (very nice video), and the other was a slide-and-music look at the holy sites in that part of the world (a bit too passive – the natives started to get restless during it).
3) Lasallian Youth Ministry in Australia,
New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea (the areas covered by the District). Examples of the kinds of work and summer opportunities are provided for those interested in LY in Australia. Lots of talking.A nice tea-time break to process all of this information, to get some exercise, to meet some new people, and to get the juices flowing again. In other words, recess.
4) The Rights of the Child – Lasallian Foundation. A narrated slide presentation of the Lasallian Foundation and its work throughout the District by Br. Paul Smith. The presentation was clearly the standard development office one, given lots of facts and figures about the world’s situation (mostly quite bad), the various works touched by the Brothers, and the like. Natives getting a bit restless again.
5) Interview with a Brother. Three Brothers were interviewed by a moderator about their vocation (how it began, what it’s like, etc.) and contemporary religious life issues (aging population of Brothers, new Brothers today, and the like). It ended with an appeal again for the guys to think about the vocation. One of the members of our LY group mentioned that some of them were reminded of “The Actor’s Studio.” Although perhaps good for select students, most of the natives continued to be restless. At one point (I believe it was during this presentation), all of the Brothers in the room were asked to stand up. This received an enthusiastic response from the rest of the folks in attendance.
6) International Council of Young Lasallians. A member of their international board spoke about this group. Unfortunately, he and his message didn’t connect with the group, especially coming at the end of five presentations that had allowed for little if any interaction among the kids. His slides were very wordy and in a small font, and his message was more of a description of organizational strategies, results of past conferences, and the like. Quite dry and esoteric for die-hard Lasallians. Natives respectful but you could tell that most were talking softly with friends, amusing themselves with their phones, and the like.7) Liturgy in St. Joseph’s Church. The parish church that we’ve been using is pretty much next to the property, and we now made our way over to it for a Mass that was similar to the one we had yesterday – loud modern Christian music, lots of hand-clapping, a song by the celebrant during the homily, acclamations that we sort of didn’t know, etc.
The only difference was that when the servers (which included two guys from our group) knelt down after the Sanctus, so did most of the rest of the church.
Then we had dinner. We walked over the to large Town Hall that was about a block away, where lunch had been held as well, and lined up for dinner. The line stretched into and through the eating hall, snaked through the lobby, and extended out to the street. They were as efficient as possible with this process, but feeding over 550 folks dinner is quite a task and took some time. The kids and adults, of course, were amazing, having great fun just standing in line and continuing the positive attitude that they’ve been displaying throughout our time together.By now the schedule was a bit out of kilter, but eventually we all ended up back in the gym of the school for the evening’s presentation.
8) An overview of De La Salle and his life by Br. Michael Broughton from Singapore. He was engaging, humorous, relaxed, and had a good sense of the kids and what would appeal to them about De La Salle’s story. Although near the end of the day, he was able to make some very good connections between DLS’s story and the one that each of us has within the Lasallian family.
9) The final talk was by Br. Thomas Johnson. He was also well-prepared and even included a short time during which students could talk with two or three in their area about their service experiences in the past and what they had learned from that experience. The kids were VERY eager to talk at this point, and the five or so minutes that followed was some of the liveliest time in the room today.Mercifully, the organizers had decided not to have Night Prayer back in the church. Instead, we had a “short” 10-15 minutes prayer service in the gym at the end of Br. Thomas Johnson’s presentation. I had told some of the guys that I would probably go back after the last presentation, skipping out on night prayer, and some of them had been interested in this as well. But when we got to the back doors of the gym, they were locked and barred. The only exit was the front door. Apparently, others had had the same idea because there were a bunch or people at the back who didn’t quite want to walk to the front, in view of everyone, and walk out just as the prayer was beginning. At the end of the prayer, however, there was a wave of people that went for the doors lickety-split. Clearly, there were other folks who were ready for the end of class.
On the platform at the Malvern train station, Robb wanted to see when the next train would come. He walked over to a unit with two buttons, a blue one to hear what the next train would be and a red one in case of emergency. He pushed the red button. Immediately, he heard a phone ringing through the speaker and he realized what he’d done. But there was nothing for it, so he went back with Chris and spoke with the operator who came on and somehow was able to find out when the next train would arrive. I think we were all pretty tired by now and happy to finally return to our abode for the night.Note: These are some of the pictures taken today. All the pictures for any one of the days are uploaded to http://picasaweb.google.com/gvangrie
Below is the YouTube video of part of the opening ceremony from yesterday, as promised.
