Dear Friends of the GCGI,
Every year, the season of Christmas and New Year are celebrated by peoples and families in many parts of the world. People make the effort to unite, share time and express gratitude for the love they have received. Christmas and New Year messages, trees, lights and decorations, singing carols, lighting up candles, gifts, cards, wishes and meetings happen, reminding us of Love - the central message of the man in whose name the feast is celebrated.
At this season of goodwill, love and hope, we are called upon to speak and act from our deepest selves, wisdom, resources, vision and insight. We are called to lead, each in our own way, and to participate with others, all leading together, taking action in the interest of the common good. These times are actually a call to become fully alive, awake, and to participate in all aspects of Life. The tapestry of life continues to be woven. We must remain fearless and hopeful, steadfast in our actions and find the threads woven into the fabric of our lives that are beginning to create a beautiful tapestry. The tapestry of a better life, the better world.
At GCGI we share with our entire network and friends the challenges confronting humanity due to the growing values-free actions taken by many around the world. What the GCGI seeks to offer is a vision that positions the quest for economic and social justice, peace and ecological sustainability within the framework of a spiritual consciousness and a practice of open-heartedness, generosity and caring for others.
The GCGI has from the very beginning invited us to move beyond the struggle and confusion of a preoccupied economic and materialistic life to a meaningful and purposeful life of hope and joy, gratitude, compassion, and service for the good of all.
Looking forward and walking together: A Time to Weave a New Tapestry of Life
During this festive season, we want to thank you for all of your support and friendship.
Life, indeed, is certainly and unequivocally so precious that every second of it can create a new scope for doing something valuable, something worthwhile.
The optimum opportunity life offers is for us to enjoy the spiritual joy of fellowship, a blessing incomparable with anything else. As the great Persian poet Sa'di has reminded us:
‘If I be asked on the Doomsday to freely choose what I want [I would say] let friend be ours and all the bounties of Paradise be yours.’
And when we make an assessment of our past year, we see that we have been fortunate to have been able to maintain our companionship with those people we consider sincere, honest, greed-free and sympathetically understanding, friends and companions, like you.
We wish you and the rest of your beloved family a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. May you and yours enjoy Companionship, Joy and Wonder, and may the Peace spoken of in all faiths fill your hearts with Hope and Love.
With all our love,
Kamran and Annie
HOPE is the Tapestry that we are Weaving for Better Days at this Christmas Time
“Hope is the one good god remaining.”- The 6th century BC Greek poet, Theognis of Megara
Photo:factorydirectcraft.com
“We are being compelled…to take a quantum evolutionary leap. This leap could transfigure us and transform all social, economic, and political systems so that they honor equality, harmony with nature, justice for all sentient beings, and a sacred way of life that will bring peace to our earth. This is the Hope that illuminates my vision of Sacred Activism.”—Andrew Harvey, The Hope
‘We are all a living tapestry...Living threads...Being Sewn together…’
Tree of Life, William Morris. Photo:hinesofoxford.com
In these challenging and uncertain times for all beings on our Earth, we are called to speak and act from our deepest selves, our deepest wisdom, our deepest resources, vision and insight. We are called to lead, each in our own way, and to participate with others, all leading together, taking action in the interest of the common good. These times are actually a call to become fully alive, awake, and to participate in Life. The tapestry of life continues to be woven. We must remain fearless and hopeful, steadfast in our actions and find the threads woven into the fabric of our lives that are beginning to create a beautiful tapestry. The tapestry of a better life, the better world.
As many wise people have reminded us, we live in a time that deadens our souls with overload, targets after targets, stress, fear, and the addiction to speed and technology on the palms of our hands. We need to do everything we can to reawaken our life, nurture it, protect it and enrich it.The incredible gift of being alive must not be squandered to the destructive aspects hopelessness and helplessness, despair and worries.
We can do this. We have it within us. let us come together and seize the day. Carpe diem!
We Can Hope and Change the World for the Better, but only when we embark on Our Journey of Hope
There is no other way: “We Are Here for the Sake of One Another”
Photo:quotespictures.com
HOPE gives us life. HOPE connects us. HOPE fuels us. HOPE moves us. HOPE keeps us. HOPE grounds us. HOPE protects us. HOPE anchors us.
We are not mean people. We have hearts and minds, we care for each other still, we have our dreams, and in dreams begin responsibilities and possibilities…
As far back as the 6th century BC, the Greek poet Theognis of Megara said: “Hope is the one good god remaining.” The poet Theo Dorgan reminds us that, hope is a profound act of imagination, the most important and the most neglected of the civic virtues. In the face of the present societal and global crises we can lie down in despair, or we can choose hope — which means placing all our faith in each other and in the boundless capacity of the imagination to reinvent circumstance, to establish new truths.
Moreover, ‘Hope’- as many wise teachers have reminded us- is a driving force for transformation, innovation, economic and social betterment and personal wellbeing. Hope, often articulated as an endorsed desire for a future which is uncertain, has a clear economic significance as do the unfortunate opposites such as anxiety and inertness. Hence, hope is more than just an emotion or an optimistic attitude. It is related to reason and prudence in the sense of one’s rational assessment of a difficult situation, possible solutions and the prediction of changes. Hope is as complex and ambiguous as the human person itself. For many centuries philosophers and theologians have reflected on the meaning of hope. More recently hope has drawn attention of the young discipline of positive psychology. Also in economics, attempts are made to define the concept and measure its effects, opening up the way for policy interventions.
‘It is hope which can give meaning to life and which will give us the courage to continue on our way into the future together.’
And this is why HOPE is truly what the world is yearning for this Christmas
'In short, although, this is a turbulent era; paradoxically, it is also a period of tremendous opportunity, a time of enormous Hope for creating a much better future for ourselves, our children and grandchildren, our community, our country, our world. We need to see this Hope for a better future and play our part in building it.'
Keeping hope alive is precisely what Christmas is all about. Christmas celebrates the birth of a child who became the symbol of hope through the ages to billions of people who were/are faced with economic and socio-political/cultural oppression. Many Christians clung to the belief that this child, crucified as an adult by the Roman occupying army in Judea, would return and establish a new global reality of peace on earth. That hope gets renewed for many around Christmas, every year.
Christmas celebrate the possibility of a different kind of world. A world of kindness, justice and peace. The Christmas lights at the darkest moments of the year are a testimony to our capacity to hope. Don’t let the light go out!!!
I firmly believe that, in these dark times, when we are all in search of ways to heal our wounded world, we can nurture this light within ourselves, and help to cultivate it and share it with each other. Love, gratitude, kindness, empathy, beauty, wisdom and joy—by cultivating these feelings in our own hearts and minds, we find our own light within, discover our purpose, passion, and vocation and gain the strength to lift the weight of these dark times; enabling and empowering us to work with others in the interest of the common good, to build the better world we are all imagining.
And finally, a beautiful and inspiring story and image of Hope emanating from my hometown of Coventry at this Christmas Time
The Hope that Illuminates
