The Reverend Charles Gibbs, URI’s first Executive Director, shares wisdom from his 17 years’ experience building URI’s global community and from Professor John Paul Lederach’s insights to building peace, the Moral Imagination.
“In our efforts to manifest light and love, in our personal lives, in our communities and in the world, we are not alone – we are interconnected and interdependent. We need each other.”
“We are held in hands much bigger than our own, supported and guided by the Source of Light and Love."
Doing this work, individually and collectively, requires an act of the imagination that is firmly rooted in the ground. Our vision for the future we wish to co-create must be connected to the challenging realities of the present. We need wings and feet.
To walk our flight of imagination into being, we must build a web of relationships that includes everyone in microcosm – not only those we relate to easily, who see things the way we do, but also those we have trouble relating to, those we may see as our enemies.
We must avoid the trap of creating polarities that make some people right and others wrong, and be willing to entertain the complexities and ambiguities of the realities we face, both the realities we cherish and the realities we wish to transform.
We must cultivate our capacity for creativity – to entertain previously unimagined possibilities that can transform challenges into opportunities.
We must be willing to risk, especially to risk moving from the security of the known into the uncertainty of the unknown that beckons on the path to transformation.
We each have a unique and valued contribution to make as we journey together on the path to transformation. Along the way, we are called to live each day, to take each step in wonder, gratitude and service.”