Save the Date!
Friday, September 25 – Sunday, September 27, 2020
Building the Future We Envision…
Green Acre Retreat and Conference Center, Eliot, Maine
A program of the Abbey of Hope, and funded by the Abbey and a generous grant from URI, the Piscataqua Peace Forum is planned as an annual gathering offering a universal platform for people of all religious, spiritual, and secular expressions from across the region, nation, and world, to co-create solutions to the most challenging issues facing humanity today. The program will integrate keynote speakers, panels, workshops, contemplative practice, and sacred performance, focusing on outcome-oriented action steps and applying common principles, values, and tools, such as conflict resolution, truth telling, and reconciliation. piscataquapeaceforum.org
The setting for the Piscataqua Peace Forum, in its earliest years a hotel known as Green Acre-on-the-Piscataqua, has its own long and celebrated history of working for unity, harmony, and peace, going back to the first Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1893 when Sarah Farmer, a partner in the Green Acre hotel, visited Chicago and invited Swami Vivekananda and Dharmapala to speak at the Green Acre Conferences she was establishing for the comparative study of religions. In its first season, 1894, Sarah Farmer raised the world’s first known “peace” flag, believing it represented the message brought by each prophet. In its early days, Green Acre attracted many other leaders, such as John Greenleaf Whittier, W.E.B. DuBois, Julia Ward Howe, Phoebe Hearst, and Booker T. Washington. For more about the history and facilities of Green Acre, see greenacre.org.
The theme of the 1st annual Piscataqua Peace Forum is
Building a Culture of Peace and Justice.
Confirmed speakers, as of November 2019 include:
Audrey Kitagawa, Chair, Parliament of the World’s Religions
Victor Kazanjian and Adeola Fearon, URI
Kurt Johnson, founder, the Interspiritual Network, author of The Coming Interspiritual Age
Layli Miller-Muro, founder and director, Tahirih Justice Center
Swami Tyagananda, Vedanta Society of Boston
David Ragland and Melinda Salazar , The Truth Telling Project
Sister Jenna, America Meditating
Philip Hellmich, Director of Peace, the Shift Network
Ben Bowler and Peter Blaze Corcoran, Unity Earth
Phil Goldberg, Author, American Veda
William Smith, National Center for Race Amity
Check the website often for more details and updates.
Registration opens in March 2020 at piscataguapeaceforum.org
For more information or to sign up for the Registration Priority list, contact: connect@piscataquapeaceforum org
