The Words of the Walsh Family
|
|
The Words of the Walsh Family |
Melbourne, Australia - Dr. Thomas G. Walsh, Secretary General of the Universal Peace Federation, will give a presentation at the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions on December 4, 2009, at the largest interfaith gathering to be held during 2009. The international interfaith assembly taking place in Melbourne from December 3 to 9 will bring together over 8,000 people from around the world.
The Council invites all people of faith and spirit to encounter the vast and rich diversity of the world’s religious and spiritual traditions and take part in over 450 events including keynote addresses, seminars, conferences, dialogues, performances, concerts and exhibitions, all focused on the theme: “Making a World of Difference: Hearing each other, Healing the Earth.”
The theme reflects the urgent need for religious and spiritual communities and all people of goodwill to act on their concerns for the environment, peace, and overcoming poverty, and to take responsibility for cultivating awareness of our global interconnectedness. In our differences lie great opportunity; we can make a world out of our difference. Hearing each other, we can move towards a more just, peaceful and sustainable future. Healing the earth is our common task: to heal is to set right and repair, to restore to health and spiritual wholeness.
The following is an executive summary of Dr. Walsh’s speech on the theme of "Rev. Moon's Vision of a Global Family":
This presentation will explore Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon’s lifelong mission, guided by a vision of humanity as one global family under God, called to live in accordance with core, universal principles. Rev. Dr. Moon teaches that the most important wisdom is to know God’s heart and His ideal, the root cause of human conflict, and the destination of the human course towards a common purpose and common destiny, which is peace. His vision, therefore, has compelled him to found a wide range of organizations and programs, including the Unification Church, dedicated to realizing the ideal of a “peace kingdom,” a realm in which humankind, centered on God, lives together in harmony as a global family, transcending racial, national, and religious barriers. The Universal Peace Federation was founded to develop innovative models of governance, guided by representatives of religion and government in a respectful, cooperative relationship for the sake of peace. Projects and programs of UPF are guided by the principle that living for the sake of others is the way to reconcile the divided human family, and that peace will only come through cooperation beyond the boundaries of ethnicity, race and religious background.
There have been several meetings referred to as a Parliament of the World’s Religions, most notably the World's Parliament of Religions of 1893 in Chicago, USA, the first attempt to create a global dialogue of faiths. It was the first formal gathering of representatives of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. The event was celebrated by another conference in Chicago on its centenary in 1993. This led to a new series of conferences under the official title Parliament of the World's Religions.