The Virginia Satir Network –
Newsletter
January 2005, Volume 4 Number 1
Election of Board Members by Mail
Larger Internet Presence / Satir Teaching / Connections
Member
Connections
Recently we heard from Hugh Gratz as he was leaving to go to Sri Lanka to assist in the work with the Tsunami survivors. He is going as a "Trauma Counselor" with a group called Green Cross www.greencross.org. He should be back at the end of January. A message from Hugh.
We also connected with some of participants from the 2002 and 2004 Brief Therapy Workshop who live in Thailand. Tasanee Tonthawewong family in Nonthaburi are fine but her land and bungalow at Chalong Bay in Phuket were destroyed by the tsunami. Somrakc Choovanich and Nongpanga Limsuwan are all right and went down into the Tsunami area and did counseling of the tsunami survivors.
During the holidays and now in January as we get members dues, we also get letters and notes that makes us realize how much we are like a family. The holiday letters are too many and some too long to repeat, so we will give you just a flavor.
From Nancy Macdonald we got a very creative holiday card. We want to repeat it here because you may want to use this idea for other cards. On the outside it said: "Buy Me Nothing", then you open it and inside it says "instead" and it give you several choices (two of which Nancy had checked): Hug some one you love; Donate to Charity; Help the Children; Take me to Dinner; Call me more often.
From Joan Herrick-Hansen (who frequently sends us cards or calls). "Still the stars are shinning and still we spread our little seeds of peace, Peace Everywhere.
Marilyn Peers in her holiday card shared that she may be able to attend this years Annual Satir Conference in Canada. Yee, Marilyn!
Members of the Institute of Virginia Satir of Slovak Republic sent us a holiday card with Santa on the outside with his hat on top of the world. Inside was wishing the staff and the whole Avanta family a "2005 year be filled with rewarding experiences, plans and connections all over the world. Us [Slovak members] being the appreciating part of all this happening, with love" and then it was signed by all of the Institute members.
Harland Hermann stays in touch with Avanta through email. He is a person you may want to ask to be put on his email list to get information, funny stories (especially about getting older) and current issues.
We hard from many others by phone and email like Joe and Carole Dillon, Sister Patricia Perez, and Beverly and Alvin Gervais. By the way if you want to get to know Alvin better and read his interesting letter ask him to add you to his list. You will learn a lot about him and also learn some historical facts of Canada.
We also received words of wisdom and encouragement like the following:
We must never doubt the power of nonviolence, which is the power of love in action. But we must remember that "with great power comes great responsibility." We all have a responsibility to raise our voices against the forces of war, violence, the abuse of civil liberties, and the disregard of international law. They can only operate if we remain silent and afraid.
Humanity is at a crossroads. We must choose between violence or nonviolence, death or life, despair or hope. Let us choose hope, and have the wisdom to put our common humanity above everything that divides us. Together, we can build a nonviolent world.
Mairead Maguire - won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work for peace in Northern Ireland with the Community of the Peace People. The above quote is from a lecture she gave at a conference on Religions and Cultures: The Courage of a New Humanism, September 2004 in Milan, Italy,
General Omar Bradley is one who know what the reality of war was like.. As he reflected on his experience with World War II, he said: "We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount...The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience...We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living."
The challenge is still with us to place the seeds of hope and peace that are rooted in the Sermon on the Mount.