Mohamed Sahnoun, voormalig voorzitter van IofC International nodigde Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp uit om deel te nemen aan het Caux Forum for Human Security. Soetendorp kon niet aanwezig zijn maar op verzoek van Mohamed Sahnoun schreef hij een boodschap.

Leest u hieronder de boodschap van Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp aan Mohamed Sahnoun en de deelnemers aan het Forum [in het Engels].

My dear Mohamed My best wishes with all my heart Awraham, 14 July 2009

My Dear sisters and brothers

Shalom aleechem, Salaam aleikum

I salute you, co-workers on the road towards peace and justice beyond borders of personal and national self-interest, conscious of the fact that human development is based on being more, not having more.

I greet you with fondness Ambassador Mohamed Sahnoun. We cherish both the holistic approach expressed so deeply in the Earth Charter. May your pioneering work safeguard human security and by true universal cooperation prosper. With emotion I address you, Your Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal, my brother courageous and wise. Together we wrote in 2007 an appeal “ From a painful past to a hopeful future”. Expressing our commitment to help provide the honest space for those who have been each others adversaries in the past, to share their, our pain and thus by removing barriers from historical experience, liberate the inner forces for growth and cooperation to break the stifling loneliness of trauma. May this Caux Forum for Human Security nurture this organic process.

Dear friends, at this critical moment in earth history I draw my strength from the prevailing sense of repentance. Representative circles from economic endeavour, political responsibility and spiritual traditions increasingly admit to lack of moral leadership and failure. And this realisation has not led to despondency, pessimism about human nature but on the contrary to a universal sense of urgency, to redouble our efforts to face the challenges. Both to realise the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 and to reduce in developed countries emissions in 2020 by at least 40 per cent. To quote the concluding sentences of the Uppsala Interfaith Climate Manifesto of November 2007.

“As religious leaders and teachers, we want to counteract a culture of fear with a culture of hope. We want to face the climate challenge with defiant optimism to highlight the core principles of all major sacred traditions of the world: justice, solidarity and compassion. We want to encourage the best science and political leadership. We commit our communities to fostering a spirit of joy and hope in relation to the greatest gift given to us all—the gift of life!“

At this very moment a charter of compassion is being finalised. An initiative by Karen Armstrong taken up by an international interfaith council. Our hope is that compassion, the binding principle in all spiritual traditions and beyond, will inspire us to become and behave truly as one human family, one earth community with one common destiny.

The launching of the charter November this year will hopefully amplify worldwide the whisper of truth, the acts of compassion. Our sense of repentance and humility will, I believe, create the space for the rise of a council of conscience, which will assert moral leadership.

In the deepest darkness of the Second World War hidden in a hole in the ground in the south of Holland protected by a courageous farmer, my father composed letters to a Jewish boy hidden a hundred yards away in a chicken farm, not knowing whether his own baby given into the hands of a resistance group was alive. In a clear strong hand he wrote “ Note well, my dear young friend, this is the essence God created the world for the human being. It is our task to restore the world to the original purpose God intended. A world filled with cooperation, love and justice”.

As his son, saved by a German born woman and her piously catholic husband. I believe with a complete faith that this blessed future is within our reach. The Dalai Lama said once the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself can only be fulfilled when the other responds. In these troubled but hopeful times synergy is emerging Allowing Palestinians and Israelis, Tibetans and Chinese, and all of us to love each other. And the world will be filled with compassionate energy. I embrace you brothers and sisters may the Source of al being bless the work of our hands.

Awraham Soetendorp