Today is HH Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja’s disapperance day.Maharaja is a dear most disciple of Srila Prabhupada. It was Maharaja’s desire to have URI (United Religious Initiative)Global Assembly in Mayapur.Honouring Maharaja’s desire, URI Global Assembly 2008 took place in Mayapur.This meeting has a profound impact for us in Mayapur,which gave a unique oppurtunity to understand the vision of Maharaja and work with URI brothers in spreading the message of love and peace. On this day, as a dedication at the lotus feet of HH Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja, we offer Rev. Canon Charles P. Gibbs, Executive Director of URI’s letter on the URI experience in Mayapur.)

Greetings of love and peace. Hare Krishna! Namaste!!

Seven months have sped by since the URI community was blessed with your remarkable hosting of our Global Assembly – Pilgrims of Peace: Many Paths One Purpose – in Mayapur, but I don’t believe a single day has passed that you have not been present in our thoughts and in our prayers, with profound gratitude and a deep desire for blessing for the ISKCON community and for Jayapataka Swamiji’s return to health.

Indeed, in the conference room in our global office in San Francisco, which hosts nearly constant meetings every day dedicated to the ongoing work and development of URI around the world, there is a poster filled with pictures of the Global Assembly. I spend many hours each week in that room, always sitting in the chair where I can look at those pictures and feel that even as I am sitting in San Francisco some part of me is connected with your remarkable community on the banks of the Ganges.

Down the hall, Mark Mancao’s office wall is adorned with large posters from Mayapur. In my office, there are several pictures of our beloved Dr. T.D. Singh, including one with Jayapataka Swamiji. URI’s You Tube site has over 60 videos, most of them from the Global Assembly.

And these are simply symbolic representations of the profound impact our time in Mayapur has had on the life of URI. Our time with you was a time of spiritual deepening and broadening for all who came – a time of deepening in our own traditions, and a time of broadening as people learned about the traditions of others they had never encountered before, and especially of the tradition of the ISKCON community. That deepening and broadening is an incomparable blessing to our work. Then I think of the flowering of our Young Leaders Program, catalyzed by our time there. I think of one young man’s journey of service to help set up a computer training center, with donated computers he had obtained, in Malawi. I think of another young leader who has set up a program connecting high school students in Israel and Iran.

I think of the work moving forward to observe the International Day of Peace with a major football match between the North and South of Uganda – a division in that country that was been deep, long standing and tragic in its consequences. This football match, which the organizers hope will attract international participation, was born of a vision inspired when URI and ISKCON youth played each other in Mayapur.

I think of seven young leaders from diverse parts of the world who are privileged to spend a week this summer at a youth conference organized by Ven. Jinwol Lee in Korea. And I think about the e-mail conversations that take place each day involving young leaders all over the world who have a deeper commitment to change the world, beginning with their own deep spiritual practice and service, and a higher vision of what is possible when we reach across the chasms that can divide us and unite in mutual respect and common purpose for service.

Let these few examples from our young leaders symbolize the far-reaching impact our time in Mayapur has had on URI’s development. We were enriched beyond expression by the deep spirituality and extraordinary hospitability of your community while we were there, and the seeds that were planted in that soil will continue to bear fruit as long as URI exists. As long as the URI story is told, the Mayapur Global Assembly will be a part of that story, and we will be forever grateful to you and your community for the incomparable gift you have given us.

I look forward as the months and years untold, to exploring ways we can continue to deepen our relationship, and trust that our dear brother, Vrajapati Das, will play an important role in that effort.

In the meantime, please extend my deepest gratitude and respect on behalf of URI to the members of your community who gave so much to our community. And please accept my personal thanks to you and my pledge that you and your community remain in my prayers to continue to receive blessing upon blessing, even as you bestow the blessing of peace, justice and hearing on our world through deep devotion and selfless service.

Faithfully,
The Rev. Canon Charles P. Gibbs
Executive Director