Saturday, June 28
I had breakfast with Victor and Peter. Peter had been the Creative Director for the
opening, closing, and evening plenary sessions at the 2009 Parliament of the
World’s Religions in Melbourne, Australia
(http://paninternational.com.au/portfolio-item/parliament-world-religions/). We discussed how the closeness of the relationship
between the URI and the Parliament has waxed
and waned over the years and what we could do to make sure the relationship
remained close and strong.
After breakfast, during the short break before the next
Global Council session, Peter held chorus practice. He would grab just about anyone who walked by
and include then, necessitating a rearrangement of singers and parts. I kept getting moved back and forth between
baritone and tenor (even bass, sometimes) and got thoroughly confused. Peter is a very talented conductor, but we
were mostly very amateur singers.
We gathered together as a joint GC/GSS meeting and were
joined by several members of the President’s Council: John and Maria Weiser,
Biff Barnard, and Bill Fuller. At
Kiran’s invitation people called out the names of those not with us. Some were absent due to health issues – like
North America Trustee Rebecca Tobias (Jewish / USA). Some were unable to get visas in time – like
MENA Trustees Tareq al-Tamimi (Muslim / Palestine)
and Ashraf Samir (Muslim / United Arab Emirates). Some had passed on and were now considered to
be members of the “Celestial CC”. Some
had business conflicts – Like NorAm Trustee Sam Wazan (Muslim / USA). Some were Trustees whose terms had ended and
were no longer on the Global Council – like former GC Chair Yoland Trevino
(indigenous Maya / Guatemala and USA), former Trustee PK McCary (Christian /
USA), and former Exec. Director Charles Gibbs (Christian / USA). Many people remembered family members and those
yet to come who would be sitting where we were then.
The opening blessing was offered by the contingent from South
East Asia and the Pacific (SEAPac):
* Dr. Potre Diampuan (Muslim / the Philippines)
– Regional Coordinator, offered a Muslim prayer.
* Mr. Musa Sanguila (Muslim / the Philippines)
– Trustee, did the same.
* Mr. Ros Sam An (Buddhist / Cambodia)
– Trustee, read a Buddhist teaching.
* Mr. Peter Mousaferiadis (Orthodox Christian / Australia)
– Trustee, acknowledged the first peoples of his native Australia
and o the place where we were meeting.
He then sang a Kyrie Eleison
from his tradition, followed by leading us all in an “Omm…”
They have 36 Cooperation Circles and two more staff persons who couldn't attend.
Kiran invited us to imagine that it is the year 2020 – only
six years away – and what the URI would look
like. Highlights…
* We are celebrating our 10 millionth member. (Currently, about 2.5 million people
participate in URI programs.)
* There is a Cooperation Circle
in every city.
* We have 10,000 CCs.
(The CC Approval Committee said it would need more members if we were
going to grow that rapidly.)
* There is a URI TV
channel.
* There is a “Royals CC”, made up of royal families from
around the world.
* We’ve reached our goal of a $100 million endowment to
cover our basic operating expenses. (Our current annual budget for the Global
Support System is about $3.2 million.)
* Everyone knows about the URI.
* We have finally bridged the gap to those who have opposed
us.
* There are fewer headlines about religious violence and
more about religious peacebuilding.
* The work of the Global Indigenous Initiative has
integrated the indigenous voice into the URI.
* We have a global interfaith university.
* The URI has won the
Nobel Peace Prize.
* Any CC can easily reach any other CC.
* Funders and investors seek us out.
* The Regions are strong and self-sufficient.
* The Multiregion holds a Regional Assembly on Mars. ;-)
We then broke into small groups to come up with three
concrete steps we could take towards making these dreams a reality. My group included Despina, Qutub, Musa,
Peter, Diana, and Swamini. (Despina’s
first suggestion was that we create a “Trustee-for-Life” position so we could
keep me on the Global Council. I was
very flattered.) We came up with:
1) Investigate and understand local cultures of giving and fundraising
(rather than just projecting outwards from the Bay Area) and so provide locally
relevant and useful assistance to CCs around the world. (This followed-up on conversations we had
started at the previous face-2-face GC meeting we had in 2013.)
2) Create a global action in which each CC can participate
with achievable and inspirational results (like the “72 Hours for Peace we did
at the turn of the millennium) which we can promote to demonstrate our ability
to create global change.
3) Develop a global marketing strategy that can be applied
locally.
Other groups had very similar ideas, but many mentioned
greater engagement with academia, including offering some sort of certification
in interfaith work.
Bill gave us all an explanation of the President’s Council (http://www.uri.org/about_uri/presidents_council). The President’s Council is mostly made up of
“friends of Bill” and their fundraising efforts have been the source of 80-90%
of the URI’s global funding. (The CCs themselves are self-funding. The global budget covers the Global Support
Office in San Francisco, the
Regional Support Offices and Regional Coordinators around the world, and
Regional support for things like Regional Assemblies.) At the age of 79, Bill said, he and the rest
of the President’s Council are giving serious thought to th3e long-term funding
of the URI.
It had long been Bill’s hope that the President’s Council could put
together a $100 million endowment, the interest income on which could cover the
global budget, so the Global Support staff could focus more on developing local
sources of funding for CC efforts around the world. This has proven to be harder than expected.
However, as we have grown, “we have touched more and more
hearts”. Two years ago, one man promised
Bill that he would donate $1 million a year to the URI
for the next five years. When Bill told
the story to another man, that man also promised to donate $5 million to the URI,
but figured “Why wait?” and just gave it to us all at once. So… we are in a much more comfortable
position for the next five years than we have been in the past, but “the cliff
is out there”. We have three more
years. Now, when we have successfully
transitioned from our first Executive Director (Charles Gibbs) to a new one
(Victor Kazanjian), when we are in the middle of the 4-year term of our fourth
elected Global Council (I have served on all four.), when we have had two
Global Assemblies (in 2002 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
and in 2008 in Mayapur, India),
we have a track record that suggests permanence. When at a recent meeting, Bill talked to the
rest of the Council about raising $60-80 million from within the SF Bay Area
and no one flinched, he thought that the time had come to re-start the campaign
for a $100 million endowment.
He said that we have a listed membership of over 600,000
people in our CCs. If each person gave
$1 a year to a dedicated fund, in two years we could afford to hold a Global
Assembly somewhere in the world. If we
kept that up, we could hold Global Assemblies every two years.
Principle 17 states that: “We have the responsibility to
develop financial and other resources to meet the needs of our part, and to
share financial and other resources to help meet the needs of other
parts.” We’ve got the first part of that
covered. All of the 640+ CCs are
self-funding. But, as Bill put it, the
money isn’t circulating. It needs to be
flowing throughout the system, from CC to CC, from Region to Region. (During the next break, I told Bill that my CC
– the Spirituality & the Earth CC – exists to create exactly the kind of
“flow” he mentioned. We have raised
money for CCs in Latin America to provide English
lessons, computers and internet connectivity, travel to the Parliaments to
engage in international networking, and more, AND
we’ve been doing it since being a founding CC back in 2000. He was surprised and pleased.)
Bill pointed out that our 600,000-member+ organization has a
paid staff of only 37 people! That’s
unheard of and shows that we are successful as a grass-roots organization. Bill acknowledged that the greatest givers
are those who give all of their time without any recompense.
Victor said that we would ritualize Genivalda’s idea of each
contributing 1$, which would go towards holding a Global Assembly. I said that if it was meaningful for donors
to hear that all of our Board contributes, how much more so would it be to be
able to say that every one pf our 600,000+ members contribute!
Victor said that the cost of doing business at the Global
Support Office had reached a relatively stable state at a little over $3
million annually. He would like to grow
the core budget so we could provide more support to the Regions. He would like to see us with a core budget of
around $5 million in three years. A $100
million endowment would almost guarantee that.
Victor started the ceremony that Genivalda had suggested
days before. She rearranged the altar
table in the middle of the room so that the components more closely resembled
the Quarters as she understood them in Brazil. Going deosil:
Tibetan singing bowl (East), candle, basket for $ (South), candle, flowers
(West), small Peace Pole (North), candle.
A URI logo was in the center. Victor rang the bowl and passed the basket
around clockwise, starting in the East. We each put $1 into the basket while Genivalda
prayed over the logo in the center.
Time for lunch. I sat
first with Biff and Peter and talked finance, especially the need to understand
local cultures on money. I then sat with
Rachael, Patrick, Karen Barensche, and Monica.
Someone brought up the “Royals CC” idea and I gave them a long story
about Prince Charles’s support for interfaith work, including Paganism. This was news to them and we discussed
following-up with the Prince’s Trust. I
went off to explore the campus bookstore and found a book on world religions
with a surprisingly decent section on Wicca - Religion 101 by Peter Archer - and a book on haunted college
campuses (Santa Clara isn’t).
We met again briefly for Liam to pass around evaluation
forms for us to fill out. Everyone felt
that this had been one of the best Global Council meetings ever!
Announcements:
* Victor explained about that night’s special dinner
followed by a talent show.
* Maria announced that we now had 649 Cooperation Circles,
with the approval on-site of Kiran’s Compassion for Animals CC in the
Multiregion.
We had some free time to get ready for dinner – a chance for
a shower and to get into some nicer clothes.
Dinner was downstairs in the student union building, in a fancier room
with a stage. Dinner was fancier, too.
(L to R: Victor, Elisha, Alejandrino, me - Picture credit for this and all following: Barbara Hartford)
The talent show started with our chorus. We rose out of seats all around the room and
made our way to the stage singing “URI. We are one.
Re-u-nit-ed, We be-come.” This
continued as a background between several folks offering blessings from their
traditions.
(L to R: Sande (USA), Patrick (Geermany), Emmanuel (Nigeria), me (USA), Brian (USA), Marianne (Germany), Karimah (Germany), Maria (Argentina), Dianna (USA), Enoe (Venezuela), Karen (South Africa), Genivalda (Brazil), Despina (Uganda), Becky (USA), Luz (Mexico), conductor Peter (Australia) with back to camera)
I had originally prepared a blessing for the meal, but at
the last minute was told that the blessings would be after the meal. Instead, I invoked the memory of my blessing
at the founding of the URI, explaining that
the God and Goddess of the Wicca are present for my coven as Hermes, God of Travelers, and Hekate, Goddess of the
Crossroads. And so, I invoked their
blessing over the URI as we passed through
this time of transition and found our way into the future. … Or some improvised
words to that effect that I can’t quite remember.
The evening included:
* Karen doing modern dance to Beat poetry read by Sally.
* Enoe and Diana singing a Spanish love song.
* Ros Sam An doing a traditional dance from Cambodia.
* Krithika singing a Tamil love song, accompanied by
Biswadeb.
* Despina and Elisha doing a skit about strange interfaith
visitors at the court of an African king.
* Luz doing a Spanish dance.
* Alejandrino telling jokes, translated into English by
Maria.
* Musa (the Philippines)
singing Bob Dylan songs, with back-up vocals by Karen (South
Africa, Vrajapati (India),
Hawa (Kenya),
and Karimah (Germany)
* Bart teaching us all to sing “Hup, Holland,
Hup!” whenever the Netherlands
was playing in the World Cup.
* Fr. James Channon doing stand-up comedy about life in Pakistan.
* Victor playing guitar and leading us all in Beatles and
Carole King songs (with lyrics held by Sally).
This is really what it’s all about… the reason we are here:
Interfaith relationships becoming lasting friendships becoming an ever-growing
global family.
After this part of the evening wound down, Alejandrino and I
made our goodbyes, packed our bags, and headed out. I got him to the Mercy
Center in San
Mateo – midway point in his journey to the Global
Indigenous Initiative meeting – around midnight. After sorting out his room, I made back to my
home in Berkeley around 2am.
Next up, the Global Indigenous Initiative.
Blessed Be,
Don Frew
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