Festival of Faiths in Louisville

[Kentuckienne]

So I've been attending an interesting thing this week. There's an annual thing in Louisville called "Festival of Faiths" an inter/non denominational four day event. This year, the Dalai Lama was supposed to be in town giving a talk, so the festival's chosen theme was "Compassion". In Feb the DL had to cancel his visit for health reasons, but the festival organizers went ahead with the planned speakers anyway. I bought my pass early in hopes of seeing the DL, and when he cancelled I almost gave away my pass. But it's a wonderful event. I didn't know that Louisville is a signatory "compassionate city" or what that meant. I knew that the mayor organized an annual event of service, I think it's called Give A Day, where people gather to volunteer on various projects - paint an elderly person's house, plant trees, clean up parks...

This afternoon's panel included Desmond Tutu's daughter Naomi, Rami Nashashibi, Joan Campbell and Kevin Cosby sharing personal stories of what it means to embody compassion, and how it can transform society. It's been a fascinating two days.

There are still two days left - Friday and Saturday, and both days the entire event will be live streamed for anyone to watch for free. There are some videos available from the first two days speakers as well on the festivaloffaiths.org website. The sessions begin every day at 8:30 with a different spiritual practice. Yesterday was Jewish, today Islamic prayer, tomorrow Christianand Saturday Buddhists. Then from 10-12 a morning session and an afternoon one from 2-4. All the talks center around the subject of compassion: what does it mean in the perspective of economics, science, human society, the environment...it's extraordinary.

Also there are Buddhist monks creating a large sand mandala - this is also streamed live, and there are videos on YouTube. They will finish it tomorrow (Thursday) at 4, then there will be a meditation for peace and the mandala will be destroyed. I've been watching the monks for a couple of days now, creating this meticulous, intricate design knowing that it will be destroyed as soon as it's done.

I hope this post isn't crossing any ideological red lines for a parrot forum...the event is very neutral, non-sectarian, simply four days exploring the idea of compassion, and I get the feeling that compassion is the guide of many here, so I wanted to share the info about the free live video feed with anyone who wants to check it out.

 

[SilverSage]

That sounds amazing!


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[Inger]

Fascinating and wonderful sounding.


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[Scott]

Great post, Karen! I am likely one of the least religious members of the forums, but acknowledge much wisdom can be sifted from the writings and practices. Would definitely attend such an event!

 

[SailBoat]

Thanks for place this Thread on the Forum! Compassion is clearing one of the Foundational Pillars of caring and loving Parrots!

Again, Thank-You!!!

 

[Kentuckienne]

Just listened to a talk by a researcher named Pawan Sinha about compassionate research. He learned that India had thousands of children suffering from treatable blindness from birth, due to poverty and lack of access to care. He thought, this is an opportunity. Science doesn't understand how vision develops in the newly sighted as ethical research can only be done on animals. By providing surgery and other treatments to these children they have learned volumes about brain plasticity and corrected decades of wrong assumptions. Finished with a video of a blind girl before and after that brought tears to my eyes. That's the focus of this conference: understanding ways to integrate compassion into our science, or schools, our cities, and our world. It's not at all what I expected!