Tag Archives: URI

URI Assembly 2018 “Connecting the Region: Innovating Together”

The theme and focus of the 2018 URI Assembly North America in Maryland (July 27 to 29) will be “Connecting the Region: Innovating Together.” It will be facilitated by Susan Coleman and will be run in ‘Open Space’ – a meeting design that will enable all of us to work with maximum creativity and give everyone an opportunity to share their ideas and aspirations around this theme.

What we request most from all of you is that you bring your passion, engaged presence and creative participation, including – only if you like – any offering or short workshop you think might be useful for the community.

If there seem to be any barriers that would prevent your group from being represented at this exceptional gathering, please reach out to us and we will do everything we can to help those barriers disappear. You can reach out to our planning team anytime at na.assembly@uri.org or 415-762-2713.
Registration deadline is April 1, 2018.

Speaking out against genocide

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SiVIC has joined with other interfaith organizations around the Bay Area to raise awareness of the attacks on the Yezidi- a minority religion in northern Iraq currently under assault by ISIS.

There will be a press conference next Wednesday, April 15, and an informational meeting at the Interfaith Center at the Presidio on Monday, April 27. Other interfaith groups include the Interfaith Center at the Presidio, San Francisco Interfaith Council, Marin Interfaith Council, and the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County.

There is an article on the URI blog with details of how you can get involved:

Bay Area CCs launch Yezidi genocide awareness campaign

Celebrating WIHW: Compassion in a New Light

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SiVIC Interreligious Leaders Forum

Garth Pickett speaks on compassion

by Sari Heidenreich, Regional Coordinator for North America at URI (SiVIC is a Cooperating Circle of URI)

There are special moments in life when things just click, when something you thought you knew takes on new life.

That happened for me yesterday with compassion.

It’s not that before yesterday I didn’t think compassion was important — or that I didn’t seek to practice it everyday. On the contrary, I was doing both of those things. But yesterday, sitting around a table with 25 people, all seeking to understand the role of compassion in their religion and spiritual journey, my understanding of compassion ballooned.

Garth Pickett, a board member of the URI Cooperation Circle Silicon Valley Interreligious Council (SiVIC) and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, shared with the group that, in the Bible, the word compassion is mostly used to describe a feeling while compassion in action is charity.

  As someone raised in the Christian tradition, this set off about a hundred light bulbs in my brain. Charity — that is the word used in that most famous and central of Bible passages — 1 Corinthians 13.

Read more at United Religions Initiative