Unfortunately, the video of the final ceremony was not recorded. But we have two parts of it, first, a contribution Wael Farouq, who brought us wisdom about religious diversity from Islam, and, second, a closing message and kind of prayer about these challenging times from Amazon Watch.
My name is Walther Thomas Mendoza Cholotio. I am a Tzutujil Maya originally from the municipality of San Juan la Laguna, the descendent of men and women healers and spiritual guides. Since I was a child, I grew up watching and listening to ritual and healing processes. As I grew up, they began to make sense in my life and so I accepted and believed that I was the one chosen to give continuity to this lineage. That is why I currently exercise my mission with consciousness and love as an ajq’ii spiritual guide in the ancestral Mayan practices. I am also an acupuncturist and health promoter with medicinal plants, currently living in Santa Cruz del Quiché. It is an honor and pleasure to collaborate with any life process. To the Order and thanks for the trust!
Elizabeth is founder of One World in Dialogue, and this annual, global meditation vigil. She is a long-term meditator, and explores the potential of conscious We Spaces as a spiritual practice. She is inspired to experiment with new forms of sacred activism that arise from diversity-in-unity.
Thomas is a philosopher and co-founder of One World in Dialogue. He is also publisher of the German quarterly evolve, and host of Radio evolve, which is in German and English. He is deeply committed to developing new forms of sacredness as a means of changing culture.
They are currently located in Frankfurt, Germany. Elizabeth is from the US, and Thomas comes from Austria.
Ra Vuyi Qubeka is here to hold a mirror up for herself, her community and humanity. She is a wayshower, an advocate for self-realization and alignment with natural laws devoted to love, truth and freedom.
She is an indigenous medicine womxn, a seer, an artist and a multidimensional storytellerand speaker. Ra Vuyi Qubeka weaves together folklores that blend sound, movement, imagery, the mystical, spoken word and ancient text to conjure memory and inspire truth seekers from all walks of life. The intention is always for our expansion and to aligning with our original selves.
Her work explores and extends the verity of divine feminine wisdom – the Mother Mind – while confronting our familial and collective traumas through art, storytelling, medicine, ritual and ceremony for our shared restoration and redirection.
Ra offers 1:1 divination consultations, storytelling and speaking emersions, bespoke ceremonies and workshops for deeper exploration of our consiousness and the invisible.
Juris Rubenis, 58, is a theologian, meditation teacher (Lassalle Kontemplationsschule via integralis) and author. He is interested not only in mindful mediation but in different kinds of transformative practices. Listening to wild nature, speaking with trees, birds and clouds is of the same importance to him as conversations with people and reading books.
He lives in Latvia – a northern European country – and is director of the Institute of Integral Education, located in the capital city, Riga. At the same time, together with his wife Inga, he runs a small retreat center surrounded by deep woods and located close to the deserted dunes of the Baltic Sea in the northern part of Latvia. In both places he leads meditation retreats and seminars about finding and developing intellectual, emotional, spiritual and physical intelligences.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse–a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota–is an international speaker on Peace, Indigenous and Mother Earth perspective. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of the twenty-four-year-old “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”), a one-hour live program now syndicated to seventy radio stations in the US and Canada.
A master musician and a teacher of magical, ancient and modern sounds, Tiokasin performs worldwide and has been featured at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the United Nations, as well as at many universities and concert venues. Tiokasin serves on boards of several charitable organizations dedicated to bringing non-western education to Native and non-Native children. Tiokasin describes himself as “a perfectly flawed human being” who is a Sundancer in the tradition of the Lakota Nation.
Co-Founder of Tamera, Peace Ambassador, Author, Theologian, Head of the Global Love School and of the Spiritual Research in Tamera
Sabine Lichtenfels, born in 1954, studied Theology in Germany. She is author of many books, freelance theologian, peace activist and co-founder of Peace Research Center Tamera, Portugal.
Her spectrum of knowledge and activity comprises: international peace work, cooperation with the Plan of the Healing Biotopes, community knowledge, spiritual research, a new female consciousness, reconciliation between the genders, truth in love and eros. With her comprehensive knowledge and her radical commitment she is an ambassador for a global perspective for peace.
She was nominated as one of the “1000 women for Peace” for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005.
Andreas Weber, 53, is a biologist, philosopher, and writer. In his work, Andreas explores ways to understand the cosmos as alive and shared between its participants. He calls this perspective “Enlivenment,” the principle that we intrinsically understand reality as we are part of its subjective inner experience and share this perspective with others in the flesh. Andreas has written more than a dozen books which have been translated in various languages. His latest works in English are Enlivenment. A Poetics for the Anthropocene (MIT Press, 2019) and Sharing Life. Animism as Ecopolitical Practice (Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, 2020). Andreas is currently lecturer at the University of the Arts, Berlin. He lives in Berlin and in the Apennine mountains in northern Italy.
Photo credit: pantea lachin
Flordemayo is a Curandera Espiritu, or a healer of divine spirit. As a seer, she has the ability to see other realms of color, light, and sound. In addition, she has the ability to see the effects of existing imbalances on the physical, emotional and spiritual realms within a person’s energy system. She was born in highlands of Central America, specifically Nicaragua and was the youngest of 15 children. In the Mayan astrology she has the seed sign.
Since 2004, Flordemayo has been one of the founding members of The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, a prestigious group of traditional female elders drawn from around the world, who represent a global alliance of prayer, education, and healing for our Mother Earth, all of her inhabitants, all the children, and for the next seven generations to come.
Heather Hall-Dudney is Flordemayo’s daughter, who works with her to protect the seeds.
With a diverse background in cultural arts/ environmental/ social/ justice/ youth work and Indigenous Medicines Therapy, Ruth Langford divides her time into projects that reflect her passion for uniting ancient traditions and contemporary innovations for optimistic action and healing for her people.
As a Song woman and Story Teller, Ruth draws upon the cultural knowledge of her Yorta Yorta mother and the Tasmanian Aboriginal community where she was born and continues to live. Combining over twenty years traveling the world sitting with Indigenous Elders, Senior Knowledge Keepers and World Wisdom Teachers with conscious research, Ruth Langford’s vision is to connect people to the ancient wisdom of Indigenous teachings in a contemporary and relevant context through the expression of cultural arts, ceremony and ritual.
Establishing Nayri Niara, a Centre for the Arts of Healing, Ruth has gained a reputation as a capable facilitator and coordinator of effective capacity building programs, which have as their guiding principles, Connection to Country, Culture and to the Sacred.
Sach’a Sawila is a Queshwan woman also belonging to the Ancient Wisijsa Nation. She was born in the Qallcha community of the Norchichas Province of Potosi Department (of today`s Plurinational State of Bolivia). She currently lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where for many years she has been practicing and spreading the knowledge and wisdom of her Elders, her Grandmothers and Grandfathers. It is though the traditional Queshwan Cuisine that she generates awareness regarding the essential role of good nutrition, of food as Medicine for the Good Living of us all. She has taught enormous amount of courses, conferences and experiential workshops, and she is well known in the gastronomic field as well as in the spiritual realm, in which she always keeps the essence of her cultural sacredness and worldview. Andean spirituality is intimately bound to the practice and the body, therefore, Sach’a Sawila works with the food as medicines but also as transmitters of cosmic and ceremonial messages. In her role as native woman she performs complementary and duality ceremonies corresponding to each moment of the Andean year. She has been part of numerous meetings of spirituality along the Tawantinsuyu.
Rami Avraham Efal, Israel-born and US-based, is a dharma holder in the Zen Peacemakers Lineage and a student of the late Zen Buddhist teacher Bernie Glassman. He is the former executive director of Zen Peacemakers International and has organized and co-led the Bearing Witness retreats in Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Native American Bearing Witness programs. He is a published and presented visual artist. Today, Rami weaves secular mindfulness, Jewish and Buddhist practices and prayer, ancestral healing, cross-cultural peace-building practices, nonviolent communication, art-making and contemplative creativity. He is a board member at the Greyston Foundation, and an associate with Colombia-based global think-tank Justlabs.
Louise Marra has post graduate qualifications in environmental management, public policy and Jungian and Transpersonal psychology. She has trained with mystic and collective trauma expert, Thomas Hübl for many years including through the Pocket Project. She is an executive coach and group process leader employing many different modalities including somatic therapies. She works mainly with diverse groups of leaders on transforming patterns of the past and leading for systems change, within us and within the whole. She has worked for Prime Ministers, boards, NGOs, corporate teams, public sector and philanthropy across the globe in emergent practice, social innovation, deep group healing process and leadership. She is deeply connected to the living planet and all its beings, and is part of the Ngai Tuhoe tribe in New Zealand and is passionate about reconnecting people as nature.
Paul Wang is a Master-Teacher of Chinese Classics, meditation, “insight calligraphy,” and “mindfulness Tai Chi” at the Live Zen Centre and Kung Fu Zen Garden Retreat. While he is a Chinese native, he has been teaching classical Chinese philosophy, in English, at the Capital Normal University and the Institute of Education for over 10 years. He is an expert in the classics of Confucius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, as well as the Southeast Asian, Chinese Zen, and Tibetan Buddhism. He is proficient in using art-based techniques of what he calls “Insight Calligraphy”as a tool for meditation, awareness, and stable heart cultivation.
In times of crisis, we instinctively look for a refuge where we can come together and find peace.
The Ripples of Peace project was started in 2015 to offer such a refuge. At that time political conflicts severely polarized Philippine society and caused much suffering and discrimination. This group of people from different peace NGO’s gathered and held an outdoor meditation in an open area in the University of the Philippines. Since then, they continued to do outdoor interfaith prayer and meditation yearly in different public places.
Because of the intense challenges brought by the pandemic and climate crisis (the Philippines has already experienced 21 typhoons this year, the latest being the equivalent of a category 2 Hurricane) and different forms of division and unpeace, they have decided to gather again this time through the technology of zoom. They have held 3 interfaith prayers this year with local and international participants and plan to continue for the coming years.
Participating organizations: Binhi ng Kapayapaan, Anak Mindanao Foundation, Miriam College, De La Salle University, GINHAWA, ZABIDA, Unitarian Universalist Church of the Philippines, Bahay Dalangin Zen Community, Reiki,Inc., Boat of Compassion Sangha (Plum Village Philippines), Katharina Group Philippines, GZO Peace Institute, Teach Peace Build Peace Movement, Balay Rehabilitation, Balay Mindanaw, Sangha des Herzens (Zurich, Switzerland), One World in Dialogue (Frankfurt, Germany), Katharina Werk Community (Basel, Switzerland)
The mother & son team, Angelo Herrera and Angelina Pacifico, are co-founders and leaders of BINHI.
Vibha is a global Gratitude Champion and Facilitator, based in India. “From being to doing” summarizes her life and work. Vibha is pursuing her mission of spreading the joy of gratitude to promote the spirit of interconnectedness and well-being of humans and Mother Earth. She worked in the social development sector for more than 15 years in the areas of public health and social-emotional education, at program leadership positions with international organizations. Since 2010, she transitioned from her leadership job to the role of a facilitator to help organizations grow holistically and is a Flow of Life guide for individuals. Vibha leads with the values of integrity and compassion and enjoys credibility as someone who is a good Samaritan. She continues her family value of not writing her surname. Instead, she writes “humanity” as her religion and “Mother Nature” as her nationality, wherever she is required to fill up such columns on forms. When not working, she goes on road trips to offer gratitude joyshops and undertake random acts of kindness.
Wael Farouq is currently professor of Arabic language, literature, and culture at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the Catholic University of Milan (Italy) and at the Faculty of Linguistic Sciences and Foreign Literatures of the same university. Previously, he has been professor of Arabic language at the American University in Cairo (Egypt) and Straus Fellow at the Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice at the University of New York.
He is author of several essays and books in Arabic, Italian, and English in the field of Islamic studies and on contemporary Islamic thinking. Among other publications, he is coauthor of the book Dio salvi la ragione (“God Save Reason”, Cantagalli, 2007); with Pope Benedict XVI, coauthor of the book Pope Benedict XVI’s Legal Thought. A Dialogue on the Foundation of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and author of the two recently published books: Conflicting Arab Identities. Language, Tradition and Modernity (Muta, 2018) and Discourse Analysis of the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity (Bibliotheca Alexandrina, 2018).
Photo credit: Bisho Ibra
I have been cultivating transformative “We Space” practices for nearly 30 years. As a philosopher, practitioner, and spiritual mentor, I have dived deeply into the practice of meditation and into an exploration of the evolution of human consciousness, particularly the current transition from a hyperindividual “I” culture to a co-conscious “We.”
As an authority on cultural evolution and the different spiritual and religious currents that have formed our postmodern world, I bring this perspective into my work as publisher of evolve-magazin, the leading German magazine on consciousness and culture and as faculty at Meridian U. in California. I also have a weekly webcast called Radio evolve, where I have interviewed over 500 pioneers forging the future.
For the last decades, I have co-founded and developed a process of emergent dialogue, an advanced practice in conscious communication.