Harvest of Peace summary from director Michelle Munro

I hope you enjoyed our Harvest of Peace celebration here in Halifax. We had a delightful time! We were happy to announce that our kitchen renovation is nearly complete thanks to the generosity of the community, within budget! Also, it was a great opportunity to introduce new Shambhala Centre staff Genea Teskey, Lisa Tay, Peter Clancy, and our new Shastri, Tom Bell. Since our Harvest of Peace celebration fell on International “Talk like a Pirate Day”, we enjoyed a fun translation of the first part of the Sakyong’s address in pirate-speak thanks to our charming MC Alex Meade. While the adults were inside enjoying the Sakyong’s address, the children were outside creating micro-green gardens with the Gardening Goodness team lead by David Wimberly and Cheri Kemp. In trying to come up with an offering to the community, my 8 year old daughter suggested homemade fortune cookies. Below you can find a silly tutorial of my best friend Lori Wilson and I making (over 100) fortune cookies-which was too much fun to be considered work really!

As you know, Harvest of Peace is celebrated in Shambhala Centres around the world. This year, the Sakyong addressed us from Berlin, giving teachings on life balance and Shambhala household: “Shambhala Household is connected with the power and confidence we feel in the principle of basic goodness and human dignity. How we live our life day-to-day is an expression of our cultural confidence. So as practitioners and warriors in the Shambhala tradition, right now all of us want to examine how we are living.” The link to the Sakyong’s address is at the bottom of this letter.

This year, we also held a Harvest of Peace fundraiser— a single fundraiser to support our activity here in Shambhala Halifax, and also to fund the work that supports all Shambhala Centres and groups and furthers our vision in the world altogether, including the Sakyong’s work, world-wide services like Shambhala Online and the Shambhala Times, program curriculum, centre support services, planning and support for international programs at our land centres, the Shambhala Database and websites, and Harvest of Peace videos!

Halifax set a goal to raise $20, 000 to support our centre and the central organization through the rest of 2015. Thank you Halifax for your generosity! So far, we have received generous donations from 55 people totaling $7560.

We have confidence that we can collectively reach our goal! If you haven’t yet made a donation, or if you have and feel further inspiration to support our work locally and internationally—please offer a gift here! Please put “Harvest of Peace” in the comments section so we can be sure to count it in our tally. Please enjoy the Sakyong’s full Harvest of Peace address transcribed for your reading pleasure on the Shambhala Times.

With appreciation to you, and a sense of enormous possibility for what we can offer the world,

Michelle