Reorientation to the Inner Work Program 2008 (TIWC 01/15/08)

Infinite Peace!

Last Jan. 15, 2008, the second session of the Peacemakers’ Tuesday Inner Work Circle (TIWC) for this New Year took place with the participation of 16 old and new friends.

After returning to the regular format of starting with body-silencing (through relaxation exercises led by Orlan), the group was engaged by Ms. Marites Africa into touching-base with each other through individual sharing on the highlights of each one's experiences in the past week. This once again prepared each one to connect with the others by breaking the ice and engaging the participants in the exercise of expressing one's self and listening to others.

Following the guided silencing of the mind facilitated by Ms. Marites, the group proceeded to the evening’s program which was a continuation of the reorientation to the Inner Work program 2008 of The Peacemakers’ Circle.

Ms Shakun Vaswani gave a preview to the forthcoming themes and the guide questions for the Inner Work program for the year. She explained that in each month three Tuesdays will be assigned to a particular guiding theme for reflection (for a total of 34 weekly themes for the whole year), and one Tuesday in a month will be an Open Evening session. An Open Evening is when an assigned or invited speaker has the whole session to speak about his/her particular topic/theme or subject matter (usually a particular faith tradition). An Open Evening can either be in-house conducted at The Peacemakers’ Circle, or on-site – which is when the whole group goes on a “field trip” to visit a particular place of worship and experience first-hand the faith celebrations/ religious service/lecture.

The orientation was capped off by reading aloud the Preamble, Purpose, and Principles of the United Religions Initiative (URI-PPP) whereby each one around the circle read aloud a line from the Charter one after the other.

Ms Shakun then invited everyone to become members of the Peacemakers' Circle and read out the guidelines for membership and distributed application forms.

Next Tuesday (Jan.22), as we continue discussing/finalizi ng the Inner Work program 2008, we will be sharing our reflections and insights based on the following guide questions:
1) ”Where am I led to do? What do I find myself doing best? Where am I good at?"
2) “How can I contribute in my own way/capacity to the peacebuilding programs of The Peacemakers’ Circle?”

See you then!