by Cynthia on April 1, 2012
The UUCLC Lending Library’s Book of the Month for April 2012 is Twelve Steps to A Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong.
Armstrong’s newest book has direct relevance to contemporary happenings in the County of Lake. The Lake County Board of Supervisors has designated June 22 to Sept. 21 as the Summer of Peace and Sept. 21, 2012 as the International Day of Peace in Lake County. And on March 22, 2011, the Lake County Board of Supervisors issued a proclamation in support for the Lake County Charter for Compassion.
Armstrong was awarded the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Prize in February 2008 for her proposal that leading thinkers create the original Charter for Compassion. Created online via a multi-lingual website, the charter was signed in November 2009 by 1,000 religious and secular leaders. The final version incorporated input by individuals from Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Conficianism.
In Twelve Steps to A Compassionate Life (Knopf Books), Armstrong sets out a program to help people cultivate and expand their capacity for compassion.
Armstrong presented the Ware Lecture during UUA General Assembly for 2011. In her lecture, she argues that compassion and the Golden Rule have been central to all major faiths and that an ideology that does not restore compassion to the center of the spiritual, religious and ethical life fails the test of our time.
For more information about the Ware Lecture’s featured speakers, visit http://www.uua.org/ga/programming/14600.shtml. To learn more about the Charter for Compassion, visit www.charterforcompassion.org
Cynthia Parkhill
UUCLC Lending Library
April 2012
by UUCLC Web Guru on March 10, 2012
Thanks to all of you who attended this retreat. We all agreed it was a totally amazing meeting – the three working groups after a breakout session all came back to each joint session with almost identical results! AND, those of you who took the time to fill in the 2012 Planning Survey will note you were in tune with what the groups came up with, too. Looks like we’re all singing off the same (grey or teal) hymn sheet!
The groups’ first task was to create a motivating, inspiring Vision for 2017.
We agreed we wouldn’t “wordsmith” the Vision during the meeting. However, we can use the “comments” area below to hone this vision down where it’s a bit cleaner.
Here’s what we ended up with:
Our 2017 Vision - Rough Cut
And, here’s my take on this based on the discussions we had afterward (I’d put parentheses around the phrase ” that’s known throughout the region” to emphasize the importance of the rest of the vision (and decrease the importance of the enclosed phrase)
2017 Vision Revised
Next, we came up with the following 2012-2013 UUCLC Goals to move us forward towards achieving our 2017 vision:
2012- 2013 UUCLC Goals
The goals are in black. The committees responsible for achieving the goals are in brown above the goals. (You’ll note the group decided to form a new body – “PET” (the Public Event Taskforce) co-headed by Bruce Maxwell and Deon Pollett. Stay tuned for more information from them about this group and how you might want to get involved).
Our next step was to take these goals and split again into three groups. Each group was responsible for coming up with a list of ideas for our committees to ponder, and to write these ideas on filecards so they could be distributed to committee chairs. I have these cards and will be distributing them to the respective committees so they can use them to aid with the creation of a committee-specific “Action Plan”. Here is the link to the “Action Plan” form.
So, what do you think? Any ideas as to how committees can implement these goals? Any discussion on how we can word the Vision better? Add your comments below!
Peace,
Carol
Carol Cole-Lewis
