Abbey Financial Crisis Blog

March 25, 2011

Dear Supporters, Shareholders and Friends:

I am writing to inform you of our current situation which I ask that you hold in your prayers.

The Life Experience School for special needs children and young adults, founded in 1972 as my alternative service as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, is near bankruptcy. As you know, The Life Experience School created The Peace Abbey following Mother Teresa's visit in 1988, and has since that time carried the financial responsibility of the Abbey operation.

With further cuts in the state human service budget and a steady decline in contributions due to the economic crisis and a persistent, world-wide recession, the following notice is sadly given: Middlesex Savings Bank, which holds The Life Experience School mortgage ($63,000) and the line-of-credit ($303,000) has notified us through their attorney that we are in default and have been given 30 days to resolve our financial impasse. We are moving forward with a forbearance agreement with the bank that will put a hold on monthly payments through the end of May.

Over the past few years, our financial situation has been, at best, fragile. Shareholders, through the interest-free loan program and the donation program, contributed over $377,000 and are responsible, along with countless other contributors, for helping to lift the financial burden that The Life Experience School has carried. Over the past twenty-three years, monies that could have been used to establish an endowment for The Life Experience School have instead been devoted to creating and maintaining The Peace Abbey. As a result, The Life Experience School is at risk of closing.

At this point in time, we have but few viable options as we move forward. One solution would be to sell one of the two Abbey buildings, owned by The Life Experience School, in order to prevent the School's bankruptcy. This is what we have agreed to do in order to address the default status of our loans with the Bank. Another option is to raise enough money to pay off the mortgage, and line-of-credit which is a much more desirable option, though highly unlikely to happen in time to stave off an impending foreclosure. Yet, if we were successful, we would hold the mortgage free and clear on the School and Abbey properties and no longer be beholden to a bank for our existence.

Thinking into the future -- a new updated Abbey website is being created by a wonderful volunteer, and we are planning to launch a major social media funding campaign using Facebook and Twitter. Other volunteer fundraising professionals are working with me to develop strategies to ensure a reliable stream of revenue going forward. But these measures will take time. And time, like money, is in short supply. Should the Abbey property end up being sold, shareholders are to be assured that all loans as well as monies donated for the furnace fund will be repaid in full.

­­I am writing, not to ask for another donation, but for your assistance in reaching out to those who are capable of making major contributions. Countless smaller donations to the School and Abbey, like those that have sustained us for two decades, quite frankly, will not solve our financial crisis in time. So having done your part already, I am now asking that you pass the word to those who sit on boards of institutions, foundations and trusts and humbly call upon them to do their part to save The Peace Abbey and The Life Experience School. If the Abbey is to exist into the future without The Life Experience School's financial support and ownership, it will take a foundation, family trust or wealthy individual to save these institutions with a tax-deductive gift of $366,000 to retire the two outstanding debts of $63,000 and $303,000.

Please keep The Peace Abbey in your prayers and feel free to contact me if you have any questions, ideas or suggestions. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Lewis

Lewis Randa
Founder / Director
The Life Experience School (1972)
The Peace Abbey (1988)
lewis@peaceabbey.org
 
P.S. It has been suggested, in addition to reaching out to everyone who can help, that Peace Abbey supporters contact Ellen DeGeneres through her webpage (THE ELLEN SHOW) as it offers the viewing public an opportunity to suggest ways in which she might help a worthy organization. As you know, Ellen is extremely generous, is committed to peace and social justice and just happens to be an animal lover; vegan even! Her webpage offers an opportunity to tell her about someone or a place in 1500 characters or less: THE ELLEN SHOW. Feel free to say whatever you'd like about the Life Experience School and Peace Abbey as it may resonate with her and help might be around the corner. It's worth a try.
Keep the Abbey in your prayers.

Sunday Meditation Group

Sunday Pacifist Service
Every Sunday 10 - 11AM

Members, friends, supporters and visitors to The Peace Abbey are invited to share one hour of meditation and prayer each Sunday morning in the Quaker room at the Conference Center. It is a time for those who have been involved in the work of peace and social justice to renew, connect and share the sense of peace that comes through gathered silence.
Pacifists, and those striving to deepen their understanding of nonviolence and cruelty-free living are always welcome to join us for the Sunday Service. Our form of worship is conducted in the spirit and style of an unprogrammed Friends (Quaker) Meeting. Though inspired by the Friends, it differs from a traditional Quaker gathering in that after the first 15 minutes of silence, we recite Peace Seeds comprised of the twelve prayers for peace of the major faith traditions (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Muslim, Sikh, Bahai, Shinto, Native African and American, Zoroastrian, Jewish and Christian). As a pacifist community, members of The Peace Abbey have, since 1986, shared silence with the special needs students that attend The Life Experience School. This practice of “sharing silence” is now being extended to the wider community of pacifists in the greater Boston/Cambridge area.
We hope you find your time with us centering, fulfilling and supportive to your desire to be in community with others who see themselves as pacifists -- perhaps in the spirit and tradition of the Buddha, Jesus, St. Francis, Gandhi, Dr. King, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh or Dorothy Day. We come from various or no religious backgrounds, many life philosophies and walks of life. At heart, we share a common commitment to making our lives speak a certain truth about justice, equality, nonviolence, compassion and love.
When you come to the Pacifist Sunday Service, you will be greeted by one of the Stewards. This individual may be a staff person, a commissioned Chaplain, a volunteer, child or adult.

Quaker style benches, a gift from Wellesley College, face the middle of the room. In the center, there is a table with a candle, a bell and an hourglass that is turned once members are gathered to indicate when the hour is drawing to a close. You are welcome to sit wherever you'd like.
We do not have prepared addresses or sermons, nor do we subscribe to the notion that religious services need to be led. The responsibility for the gathering belongs to all. We sit in silence, which grows deeper as it progresses, seeking to open ourselves to the spirit of God, and to know one another in that which is eternal, universal and hopeful. The meditation is unguided in total silence. After approximately one hour, the gathering adjorns with the chiming of the grandfather clock followed by announcements. The National Registry for Conscientious Objection is made available for signing. Tea and refreshments are shared in the kitchen through the generosity of volunteers.
On the 2nd Sunday of each month, half way through the hour, attenders gather at the Peacemakers Table to pass the Assisi blessing bowl to wash and dry one another's hands.
Visitors are invited to tour the Abbey buildings and grounds and visit the animals in sanctuary. If you have questions, please do not hesitate to speak to one of the Stewards at the close of the gathering.

The Peace Abbey Blog

The Dream

Lewis M. Randa

December 26, 2010

Dreams can have a most amazing effect on people, but to be honest, I rarely remember dreams long enough to consider any of them all that important.  One, however, I cannot stop thinking about and it has changed the way I view reality.  How long the substance of this dream will pervade my mind and spirit is anyone’s guess.  I hope it lasts a lifetime.

With each tragic and horrible bit of news these days, and there have been many, I have been struggling with the question that countless others struggle with as well, and that is; how could there be a "personal" God?  With all the suffering in the world -- war, famine, greed, indifference, murder and disease, how could a personal God allow these things to happen, given that God, supposedly, is in charge?  Free will is one thing; senseless tragedy another.  I have pretty much concluded, after considerable reflection over time that there being a personal God is a nice, comforting idea which I learned in catechism.  But, however, in light of all the tragedy and suffering around us, this was seemingly not the case.   Or, if there is a personal God who would allow these things to happen to anyone at any time, then I certainly am missing something.   Then one night, Christmas night, through a dream, what I was missing was explained to me.

I retired following a wonderful Christmas day with my family.  Our holiday ritual included the recitation of the prayers for peace of the major faith traditions of the world in the interfaith chapel at The Peace Abbey.   Though troubled by the recent tragic death of a friend of my daughter, I was at peace, at least with the principle that everyone and everything that exists is an expression or creation of a loving God.   What I was struggling with, however, was that this so-called loving Creator would permit such horrible things to happen so randomly in the world.  No doubt, nearly everyone has had that thought cross their mind at some point, only to work through it until it had to be addressed again, under new and different, difficult circumstances.

What I failed to understand, until it was revealed to me in the dream, was that God, whom I thought had no personal relation-ship with us, actually "experiences" what we experience -- physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually with each and every experience everywhere, at all times and that is why all things are allowed to happen.  God doesn’t allow things to happen to us, but rather to happen to itself.  The dream provided an awareness that whatever can occur in our earthly existence is worth occurring, even those senseless tragedies and crucibles of life, because God experiences the pain, just as we do; the joy,  just as we do; the sorrow and grief, just as we do, and when we do.  And that is because we and everything that exists is God, the dream conveyed.  If I read what I learned through my dream in some book or someone told this to me, I wouldn't necessarily get it like I did in my dream.

It seems that in the process of being born into a physical body, and succumbing to continuous phases of ego development, we become detached, not only from our connection with God, but more accurately, the awareness that we are God, and everything around us is God, and every experience we are having, (this bears repeating) fundamentally, is God having the experience.  That thought never crossed my mind.  I sensed that everything was God in a macro-universal sense, but never came close to considering God as having my personal experiences.  That changes everything.  I feel I now need to reread every important and meaningful text, scripture, poem, prayer and revisit every philosophy, ideology, theory and principle of life on which I have based my understanding.  The dream was for me the mother lode of all paradigm shifts.

What God is on earth was clarified for me, in intimate terms, through the dream.  I now recognize more than ever that surrendering one’s ego, as best one can, is required to illuminate the awareness that there is a personal God to which my physical body and personality give form.  How much more personal can God get, if, in fact, the experience I am having, God is having -- not in addition to, not with, not through, but having exactly as I am having, when I am having it, because we are one and the same in time and space?   Within earthly existence, this oneness has confounded humanity in its search for God, as God is concealed within the ego framework of personhood.

As this was being communicated through my dream, a sense of profound peace and self surrender enveloped me.  I found myself in an alert state of sleep with no images or back drop that I can recall.  I felt like I was being told the secret of the universe which, perhaps, others are aware of, but I certainly was not.

Prior to the dream, I understood each experience I had as me having alone.  How could it be otherwise?  I was taught that God was aware of all things, even my experiences.  I was never taught, however, that God is all things, and therefore aware of all things; and is aware of all things because God is experiencing all things!  We think, because of our separation from what we really are, personal experience is ours alone.  My dream told me otherwise.  It was as though I saw God the next day in everything around me.

Now it seems the very question, "is there a personal God?" is akin to a cell on my physical body questioning a personal relationship with me because the cell is unable to appreciate the relationship between us.  The relationship, of course, is so integral, so one and the same, that it is indiscernible.

We can assume God is much more than what is taking place in the cosmos, but it is enough to know that where God exists on earth is as personal as each beat of our heart for we are the outward and visible embodiment of Godhood.  We are the physical form, equipped with a concept of self that at once denies we are God, while existing for the sole purpose of God being us.  And in being us, the dream imparted, God experiences in the “first person”, the reality it creates.

So I awoke the next morning with a sense that what I have had explained to me in a dream now needs to be absorbed so I never again fall into thinking that God is something other than everything and everyone, and then begin questioning whether or not he/she/it is personally involved or cares enough to prevent horrible things from happening.   Forgive the redundancy once more:  If something can happen, no matter how horrific and unfair or wonderful and affirming, it is allowed to happen.   It is allowed to happen because God manifests itself in order to experience everything that can happen, both the good and the bad, in our terms (and everything in between), and therefore we and everything else are created and exist for that end.  And because it's God's experience, it's our experience too, not the other way around.  Thus, God couldn't be more personal, and as such, mystifyingly, doesn’t seem to be personal at all, or even exist for that matter.  Before the dream, none of this crossed my mind.

Talk about not seeing the forest through the trees.

For years I have been drawn to the Sikh saying:  "If you can't see God in all, you can't see God at all".  I never really understood it until now.  Thanks to the dream, this saying awakens me to an understanding that takes my breath away.

Feel free to share:  lewisranda@gmail.com