Silicon Valley Interreligious Council (SiVIC) builds interreligious harmony and understanding to promote a just and compassionate society in Silicon Valley.
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Silicon Valley Interfaith Book Club
SiVIC has created a new opportunity for those interested in reading together with people of differing religious traditions. The Silicon Valley Interfaith Book Club, hosted at Goodreads.com, will proved a venue for reading and discussing books focused on faith journeys taken by individuals of different religions and/or spiritual communities.
The book club is moderated by two members of the SiVIC Board, who will work through the book one chapter per week and develop discussion questions for group members to consider and comment.
The group is open to any interested people. To join, simply go to the Club Page, and click the button “Join Group.” Questions about the Book Club can be addressed to info@sivicouncil.org.
On Attacks on Muslims and Hindus
February 15, 2015
A week ago, people around the world were celebrating World Interfaith Harmony Week, a week dedicated to building peaceful relationships among the diverse religious communities of the world. SiVIC chose to observe that week with efforts to build compassion. We encouraged people in our community to reach out to one another across boundaries that separate us from each other, and celebrated those compassionate actions, as part of SiVIC’s commitment to build a more just and compassionate society in Silicon Valley. read more…
Celebrating WIHW: Compassion in a New Light
Garth Pickett speaks on compassion
by Sari Heidenreich, Regional Coordinator for North America at URI (SiVIC is a Cooperating Circle of URI)
There are special moments in life when things just click, when something you thought you knew takes on new life.
That happened for me yesterday with compassion.
It’s not that before yesterday I didn’t think compassion was important — or that I didn’t seek to practice it everyday. On the contrary, I was doing both of those things. But yesterday, sitting around a table with 25 people, all seeking to understand the role of compassion in their religion and spiritual journey, my understanding of compassion ballooned.
Garth Pickett, a board member of the URI Cooperation Circle Silicon Valley Interreligious Council (SiVIC) and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, shared with the group that, in the Bible, the word compassion is mostly used to describe a feeling while compassion in action is charity.
As someone raised in the Christian tradition, this set off about a hundred light bulbs in my brain. Charity — that is the word used in that most famous and central of Bible passages — 1 Corinthians 13.
Read more at United Religions Initiative