A New Sign for Compassion
Well here we are in 2017. The last weeks of 2016 spilled over with wonderful e-mails, incredible donations and a beautiful note from a Charter member in the Netherlands, Urmila Jagroep, who has created her own sign for “compassion.” Urmila has been using sign language for 40 years. She wrote “I would like Compassion to grow all over the world, with no hearing barriers or language barriers. Watch Urmila sign “compassion.” Please join Urmila in helping to spread the word about compassion and the work of the Charter. We need a few more volunteers to help us keep up with our city efforts, and we need some folks who would help with writing proposals.
A Great Opportunity
We’d like to announce an extraordinary opportunity that is being given to us by the Chili's Restaurant chain. There are 1600 restaurants in the U.S. and in 33 countries of the world. From the beginning of January to March 31, 2017 Chili's will give the Charter 15% of the price of your meal. You just need to print the coupons, available here and present them when you order at Chili's. You can have only one coupon per table but you can go to Chili's as often as you can with coupon in hand. Print coupons and give to your friends. Pass them out at events.
Charter for Compassion Education Institute
The Practice of Compassion: A Multifaith Guide
January 16 - February 23, 2017: A new e-course by Frank Rogers, Sally Taylor, Ted Falcon, Jamal Rahman, Philip Goldberg, and Thomas Moore
Our partners at Sprituality and Practice have been thinking long and hard about how best to focus attention on antidotes to divisive and violent forces at work in the world, and nothing meets this need more strongly than compassion. Compassion reminds us to find what we share in common rather than to focus on what polarizes us. It teaches us to return the great care that Earth always gives us. It shows us that when we have failed, we can hold ourselves gently and begin again, with a renewed understanding of what's important. In this e-course, six esteemed presenters who embody compassion offer the jewels of this vital practice from the viewpoint of their traditions. Read more and sign up here.
How to Bring Balance and Compassion to Life
Monday 1/23/2017. Registration opens 1/4/2017. Course instructor: Debra Scholten
Find out more by clicking HERE.
Resolve to bring compassion to yourself. That’s how you can be a more powerful participant in transforming the world into a compassionate place.
Lao-tzu said, “When you are compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.”
Bring more compassion into the world by first learning how to bring it to yourself.
Mark Your Calendars. Join Us With Special Webinars for Two Free Charter Education Institute Offerings
Martin Luther King Jr. 'Teach-In'. January 11, 8 a.m. PT, Register here. The legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the power of his philosophy in the world today; how injustice and moral outrage can energize, organize and mobilize communities for service and change. Register here. Hear from:
- Dr. Bernard LaFayette, a longtime civil rights activist and organizer, who played a leading role in organizing the Selma Voting Rights movement, worked with SNCC, SCLC and AFSC.
- Rev. Gerald Durley, former Dean of Clark Atlanta University, who has worked with Interfaith Power and Light, the Sierra Club, Eco-America, and many more organizations. Currently he is working to eradicate fluoride from toothpaste and drinking water, testifying before EPA on the clean power plan, and is assisting with Pope Frances’ upcoming visit to the United States.
- Kathy Kelly, American peace activist, pacifist and author, who is one of the founding members of Voices in the Wilderness, and currently a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. As part of peace team work in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq twenty-six times. Her recent travel has focused on Afghanistan and Gaza. She has been arrested more than sixty times at home and abroad
- Moderated by Lora O'Conner
First Global Read of 2017: How Fast Can You Run
Join author Harriet Levin Millan and Michael Majok Kuch in a Book Discussion. February 22, 2017, 9 a.m. PT. Register here. Available on Amazon Smile
Set across the backdrop of refugee migration that spans East Africa, The US and Australia, How Fast Can You Run is the inspiring true story of a five-year-old boy's flight from war in Southern Sudan and his journey to find his mother. When the US grants approximately 4,000 unaccompanied minors political asylum, Majok becomes Michael, and he is given a new start in the US. Yet his new life is not without trauma, culminating when a fellow student betrays him. This is the story of a survivor who summons the courageous spirit of millions of refugees throughout history—and it lives on today.
Originally excerpted in The Kenyon Review (currently the #1 literary journal in the US), How Fast Can You Run is written with a poet's ear and by an activist who immersed herself in the refugee community and started, with her son, an eleventh grade high school student, and her students at Drexel University an organization that reunited several Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan with their mothers living abroad, some after an absence of twenty years. South Sudanese author and editor Nyuol Lueth Tong, editor, There is a Country: New Writing from the New Nation of South Sudan, calls How Fast Can You Run, "The best war novel written from a young boy's perspective since Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird.
Welcome New Cities and Partners
- The Great Compassion March (N. Tustin, CA, USA)
- Global Transition (Maidstone, UK)
- JLS Vision Services, LLC (Atlanta, GA, USA)
- Meditate Your Action (Philadelphia, PA, USA)
- Meditation Summer (New York, NY)
- Oxherds Interfaith Contemplative Prayer Group (Boulder, CO, USA)
- St. Luke Presbyterian Church (Auckland, New Zealand)
- Threshold Choir (Santa Rosa, CA)
- Traditional Roots Healthcare (St. Paul, MN, USA)
We've Made Changes
We are no longer using PayPal for donations (though we will be keeping the relationship open for the new next few months), but are now working with CommitChange. CommitChange is a cloud based service that allows nonprofits and donors to work together on a single platform. Features include: donation processing, event ticketing, social promotion, and donor management. We are thrilled with the help we have received with the CommitChange team and excited about this transition. You'll see our new DONATE button at the lower right hand on each of our website pages.
