Dear Friends,

Greetings of love and peace.

“We all begin and end at the same place.”

These words have been in my heart since I learned of Dr. Nirmala Deshpande’s sudden passing from this realm to the next. They were spoken by Musa Muhaiyadeen, a Sufi leader in the USA, in a talk about pilgrimage I heard over this past weekend,

They call me to reflect on pilgrimage – the pilgrimage each of us makes from cradle to grave, the rich history of pilgrimage to sacred sites, and how the pilgrimage of our life and the pilgrimage to a sacred site might come together in the pilgrimage of the URI community to our Global Assembly in Mayapur, India, 30 November – 5 December 2008.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, God speaks to the Prophet Jeremiah, Before I knit you in your mother’s womb I knew you, and consecrated you to be a prophet to the nations.

One understanding of our individual lives as pilgrimage is that we journey between the cradle and the grave to discover our unique consecration as human beings. To discover why we are on this Earth. And to give ourselves fully and unreservedly to fulfilling our unique purpose in a way that allows us to become a true human being in service to our Source and to all life.

The American poet, Robert Frost, wrote:

Something we were withholding made us weak.

Until we found it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright.

Our human pilgrimage, one that Nirmala Deshpande exemplified so completely, is to know in our heart why we are here and to surrender ourselves fully in fulfillment of our purpose, in service to our Source and all life, withholding nothing. This is our goal. Each day, as pilgrims, we journey toward that goal. 

The URI is a community of people of diverse religions, spiritual expressions and indigenous traditions who have dedicated themselves, each in their own way, to this individual pilgrimage. The URI is a community of pilgrims. 

The world is radiant with sites seen as sacred, sites that attract people because of a concentration of spiritual energy that draws us, like a magnet, deeper into our own pilgrimage. This energy is strengthened by the focused presence of pilgrims who, year after year, bring their open hearts and questing souls in search of a deeper encounter with the Source and a deeper connection with their unique consecration, with their core of their purpose and being. 
 

I have experienced this concentrated sacred energy all over the world. Even with all the turmoil in the Middle East, I have felt this ennobling energy in Jerusalem at the Western Wall, at the Dome of the Rock and at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. 

I felt it at the Haeinsa Temple in Korea and the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Ukiah, California. 

I’ve also felt it on Robben Island, South Africa where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for seventeen years – a prison cell turned into a shrine to the triumph of the human spirit, to hatred and despair being overcome by the power of forgiveness and hope. I felt it standing with the URI Global Council and staff on pilgrimage at the Demilitarized Zone that for fifty years has separated the people of North and South Korea – a shrine to the profound human yearning to overcome separation and division with reunification and wholeness. 

And I have felt this sacred energy crossing the Ganges in a boat with Dr. T. D. Singh and walking into the ISKCON Temple compound in Mayapur, India. In seven months, the representatives of the URI community around the world will make a pilgrimage to Mayapur. We will carry with us our own deepest yearnings to see our purpose in life more clearly and to honor it more completely – to find salvation in surrender.

We will carry with us the deepest yearnings of our own Cooperation Circles and of the whole URI community to live the change we wish to see in the world and to deepen our commitment and capacity to shine the healing, transformative light of that change over all our weary and wounded world. And we will celebrate the lives of those great pilgrims of URI – Dr. T. D. Singh and Dr. Nirmala Deshpande, and the URI leaders who have gone before us to the Celestial CC.

Whether or not you are able to travel physically to Mayapur, I invite all of the URI community to be conscious we are on pilgrimage, individually and together. I invite your prayers and meditations to support us as we journey – Pilgrims of Peace: Many Paths, One Purpose – ever nearer our source and ever deeper into our purpose in this world.

I intend to write more reflections on pilgrimage and on Mayapur in the days ahead. I invite each of you to share your reflections on pilgrimage and your experiences as a pilgrim.

It is a joy to share this journey with each of you.

Love,

Charles