Week of Prayer for World Peace

The Week of Prayer for World Peace (WPWP) is an annual time in the UK for faith communities and peace organizations to come together to pray for peace.

This year it was the turn of the UK Baha’i community to host the main national WPWP event at the London Inter Faith Centre. The programme includes readings from the sacred scriptures or other writings of the various faiths and a prayer of thanks for the faith traditions and five affirmations for all participants to repeat. For example, this is the second affirmation, on human worth:

We affirm our common faith in the dignity and unique worth of the human person, irrespective of colour, class or creed.

And this year there was music from the Northamptonshire Baha’i Choir.

My job was to welcome everyone on behalf of the Baha’i community and to say a few well-chosen(?) words about faith and peace. I also found myself presenting the Wilson/Hinkes Interfaith Award for Peace to representatives of the Friends of the Bereaved Families Forum: Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families for Peace.

The London Inter Faith Centre provides an excellent collection of spaces for this and other events. The main meeting hall doubles as a parish church, but has minimal Christian symbolism, so can be used for the inter-faith meetings for which it was built. Followers of many different faiths sat together, reciting the affirmations and listening to the readings and music. A couple of the choir members had brought their young children, who were beautifully behaved. Through the east window we could see that the afternoon rain had given way for the time being to sunshine that served only to make the storm clouds look even blacker.

The affirmations, the readings and the music, and the accounts by a Jew and a Palestinian of how they had overcome the pain of their respective bereavements in the conflict, called forth a deep and reflective stillness, that was broken when everyone stood up to give a sign of peace (a handshake or some sign from within their traditions) to others in the hall.

The choir closed the ceremony by singing “God is the all-sufficing. In Him let the trusting trust.”

After a cup of tea, some cake and chats with various people - including my friend Rustam Bhedwar, a Zoroastrian Ervad (or priest), to whom I mentioned Baha’u'llah’s Tablet to Manikchi Sahib, relatively recently translated into Englished and published with some other of Baha’u'llah’s writings addressed to Zoroastrians in a slim volume entitled Tabernacle of Unity. Manikchi Hataria was a prominent 19th century Zoroastrian, who loved what Baha’u'llah taught and who had a Baha’i as his personal assistant. All my Zoroastrian friends in London know about Manikchi Hataria. Mr Bhedwar asked if I would send him a copy of the Tablet, and I promised to do so.

Technorati Tags: Week of Prayer for World Peace, Baha’i, London Inter Faith Centre, Jew, Palestinian, Zoroastrian

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite