Keep The Faith

The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying, "All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness - the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives."  I begin here because Sobornost For The World Foundation offers you one way to live these values in your daily life and here's how.  All three of these values "love, compassion and forgiveness" are words that require a person to set one's mind and heart to give something to another person.  We all have the choice to be the first to love or to be the first to forgive another.  It is even possible to observe little children loving and forgiving one another on the playground, but often a bit harder to find adults who are willing to budge from resentments, prejudices or disagreements.  Sometimes I think religions were created primarily for adults because the older we become the harder it is to love and forgive!  

When love and forgiveness are practiced, however, compassion grows.  It seems to me that allowing oneself to simply be human and acknowledge that pain and suffering change us, is the key to finding a compassionate heart because it opens us up to feel things.  Feeling pain or hurt, however uncomfortable for us, is an effective way to bring us to our knees where we cry out for answers, or more succinctly, for love.  Love is found in relationship with others, where forgiveness is the solution and compassion is its child.  

We, at Sobornost For The World Foundation and the World Village Fair Trade Market in Hampton Bays are sorting through these feelings every day as we work for, with and among many people worldwide.  The reason we choose to keep working at these two missions of helping orphans in Africa and promoting fair trade as a way of business is because, for us and for so many others, it is a way to bring more love, forgiveness and compassion into our individual lives, our families, our community and the wider world.  The Alcoholics Anonymous groups have a saying, "It works if you work it."  This is true for us as well.  We could just stop "working it," but what would happen?  The hundreds of orphans we feed and educate would not have a way to continue or the thousands of producers and growers of fair trade products would have one less market to sell their products which helps provide an income to care for their families.  We are connected in this chain and it is working because so many are "working it." 

Have you ever read the "Starfish Story?"  It goes like this:

One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed
a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean. 

Approaching the boy, he asked, "What are you doing?"

The youth replied, "Throwing starfish back into the ocean. 
The surf is up and the tide is going out.  If I don't throw them back, they'll die."

"Son," the man said, "don't you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? 
You can't make a difference!"

After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish,
and threw it back into the surf.  Then, smiling at the man, he said, "I
made a difference for that one."  (by Loren Eisely)

We invite you to come visit Sobornost For The World Foundation and World Village Fair Trade Market located at 101 W. Montauk Highway, Suite 4, Hamlet Green, Hampton Bays, NY 11946.  These are some ways to practice compassion with us:  buy a raffle ticket for a beautiful fair trade arpillera from Peru to help an agricultural project for Haiti and food for orphans in Kenya; pick up a gift card with a photo frame of one of our orphans for someone's special event showing that you made a donation in his/her name to our Foundation;  purchase a fair trade gift; donate to the Wish List where you can choose anything you want to help the orphans; volunteer; pass the word to your friends what we're doing; etc.  Your heart may be changed forever, but we promise, it's worth it.