On World Peace Day, We Offer Our Intention

September 21, 2014

Dear Friends,

We are very excited to share our news with you!

As most of you know, Jill founded and incorporated a nonprofit society, World Hearth for Peace and Friendship, in 2003.  For many years, we lived on the Yucatan Peninsula, during our Canadian winter months, sharing life with friends from Nicte Ha and Punta Laguna.  We opened life-long learning environments, offered humanitarian care and deepened friendships in the spirit of sharing daily life in peace and common interests.

We have been on a hiatus for personal reasons, but are now re-emerging with continued love for our friends and world peace, the environments we create and hold open through World Hearth, and for the exciting new ideas we hold for our continued growth.

One of our many premises is that when there is genuine interest discovered and cultivated in each other and each other’s lives, there is a unique possibility to unfold living friendships.  Where there are friendships, a new culture of peace can begin to blossom.  We value the common environments of home, hearth and sanctuary in the diversity of cultures.  We treasure sharing daily life through what we call the art of accompaniment which is filled with a myriad of questions and heart-felt, mindful intentions.  We love imagining that when we open the environments of World Hearth, there is a sense of a roaring fire of love and warmth with seats placed in a circle for anyone wanting to join in this circle of friends, this community of peace.

We feel it is a unique way to hold space open between friends around the world for the purpose of cultivating interest, generosity, compassion, happiness, curiosity, and a world culture of peace one friendship at a time.

We love the cultural diversity on this planet and we love the potential of touching in with each other, one person, one family, one community at a time, igniting in each other the wish to get to know one another better, to share life, to open one’s home, hearth and sanctuary, enter the gardens and landscapes of community, experience the colours and aromas of cooking, and discovering the diverse cultural expressions of the artistic lives around the world.  We also recognize that amidst the cultural diversity there is human commonness, joys and sorrows, gifts and needs.  As a friendship society, and in the art of accompaniment, there is always room for care, love, questions, compassion, health and wellness.

So why are we writing to you today?

We have decided to once again open our World Hearth environments, in new ways, welcoming individuals, welcoming you, to join us in this newly formed circle and  community of friends.  Please think about our invitation.  We have much to do like re-opening our website and fb page, designing a new logo.  We want to start an active group in Victoria.  We will be looking for Board members.  We will be planning new projects and making lists of our hopes and dreams.  This is a world-wide organization and we already have friends from different countries and cultures.  Please let us know, after you’ve read our email, if you would be interested in joining us or learning more as we take fresh new steps enlivening this organization and our vision.

This year we have two projects currently planned.

1.  The first is an exploratory and planning trip to La Paz where we have been asked to volunteer and work with a group of 30 women who currently have or have recovered from breast cancer.  We would be offering environments of health and wellness.  We have been asked if we could offer meditation, yoga, breath work and nutrition.  We have many ideas and will take an exploratory trip this winter, with our friend, Karina, daughter to one of the women, to meet everyone, enter into their homes, their lives, their culture finding our place of common interest and meeting new friends.   We hope to create an on-going World Hearth project out of this where we can invite World Hearth friends from around the world to join us and offer their gifts to this learning, wellness, healing, peace and friendship environment.

2.  The second project, involves a direct invitation to you!  We are going to be returning to the Yucatan this winter as well and would love to invite you to join us.  We will be rekindling our friendships that have spanned years.  We will be visiting Rosalia and family in the Mayan village of Punta Laguna.  We hope to find Daniel, Maria and Pablo, which is a beautiful story.  Miguel and Lucy and family live in Nicte Ha and Martha and family live in Chetamal.

We are looking for apartments at the moment where we could live together or close to one another.  We would love to do yoga, meditation and breath work together daily.  We’d love to share meals and the local culture with you.  Of course, we will always do our green smoothies in the mornings.  Long walks and conversations on the beach, time to write and read at sunrise or sunset, and an opportunity to spend time with friends who have a things in common, is the picture we wish to paint for you.

We are looking at two weeks in Playa.  It could be that you have one week.  We can work with everyone but we need to know if you’re interested, so we can begin booking our housing needs.

We have many more ideas for World Hearth environments around the globe, in different communities, with different questions and focuses, but for now.  We will stop here.

Please let us know, if any of this speaks to you, if you’d like to have a conversation with us, or join us in some gatherings we are considering starting as World Hearth potlucks, or be a supporting member.

Thank you so much for reading our letter of intention and for sharing our excitement. We’d love to hear from you to let us know if you’re interested, not interested, partially interested……or whatever you’d like to share with us.

In our lives, we recognize that what has always been important to us, still is, and we want to continue to grow more community gardens of peace and friendship.  We want to live out of what we value with others.  We want to create a new world culture and world hearth community of peace, one friendship at a time.  We want to know that we continued staying true to what’s really important and tried our very best, in small ways to contribute to making the world a place of happiness.

And most of all, we recognize that within each one of us lives love, peace, wisdom, and compassion, and that it is through each of us touching each other and each other’s lives in genuine ways out of pure interest, that those butterflies of capacity, deep within each one of us, can be released.  The magic lies not in one person, it lies in the beautiful ways we can be present to each other, seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking, creating ……in the circles of life.  Therein, lies the beauty of living.

It is with my deepest gratitude that Rod and I send this pure intention out as invitation to each one of you.

Would you like to join our community garden of peace and friendship as it continues to grow?  Would you like to sit in front of World Hearth’s fire and share?
Would you like to go to Mexico with us this year?

We look forward to hearing from you.

In deep sincerity and true friendship.

Namaste.

Jill and Rod Shouldice
World Hearth for Peace and Friendship
469 Monterey Avenue
Victoria, BC V8S 4T8
Canada