The Week of Prayer for World Peace Committee met on Wednesday 15th June at the London Inter Faith Centre, London NW6. The main item on the agenda was the inter faith gathering of prayer for peace to be held at the London Fo Guang Temple on 23rd October 2005 at 3 p.m. Our first preparatory meeting with the Temple personnel has already taken place, and another meeting is to take place in the first week in July. The Temple has a magnificent choir, which has already been heard at the London Inter Faith Centre, and we hope that they will take a full part in the proceedings on 23rd October.

All persons attending the October gathering are asked to note that shoes are to be taken off before entering the Temple. There are no special rules about what to wear on the head. The main Temple seats sixty people. If more than sixty people attend, they will be accommodated in a room upstairs, where they will be able to watch what is happening in the main Temple on a large screen. Seating will be on cushions on the floor, and a few chairs will be provided at the back in case they are needed.

The meeting will close, as is our custom, with the sharing of a sign of peace. The manner of giving the Peace in the Temple will be as follows: Each person will place their hands together in the position of prayer, and gently bow their heads to each other and say the words 0 MI TO FO, which mean "Peace be with you - we wish you infinite light and long life".

The Fo Guang Temple is in central London, and very easy to find. It is on the corner of Margaret Street and Wells Street, and just a few minutes walk from Oxford Circus Underground Station. The Temple will provide light refreshments after the gathering.

With this newsletter each Sponsor will receive a copy of the prayer leaflet for the year 2005. Each Sponsor is invited to turn quickly to the Order Form and place an order for further copies. It is estimated that if each of our Sponsors were to order thirty copies of the leaflet, we would be free from any financial anxiety about the leaflet operation. In a recent e-mail, one of our Sponsors tells me that he has ordered five hundred leaflets, three hundred and eighty of them to be sent to his denominational headquarters for mailing out to local churches, and the remaining one hundred and twenty for use locally, to convert his town to inter faith friendship. This kind of support is most welcome, and very encouraging. We can all do something like it.

At the June meeting a request was received from the London Inter Faith Centre to be included on the list of organisations associated with the Week of Prayer for World Peace which appears in the leaflet. This request was readily granted. This seems an appropriate occasion to express our appreciation of the hospitality of the Centre, which provides a room free of charge for every one of our committee meetings and our Annual General Meeting.

After our Annual General Meeting we sent Doctor Hans Kung, Professor of Theology at the University of Tubingen a message of congratulations on his being awarded the Niwano Peace Prize for his work on a Global Ethic.  Correspondence at the June meeting included a reply from Professor Kung, thanking us for our good wishes. I greatly regret that I have no device on my typewriter for printing those two dots over the "u", both in Kung and Tubingen, which Sister Regina Baumgart reminds us are so important. Please fill them in mentally.

Roger Grainger is pressing ahead with his anthology of items which have appeared in the prayer leaflet during the past few years. He proposes to add to the collected prayers and readings a collection of essays by members of the different faith communities involved in our work, on the contributions which their faiths can make to the peace of the world. We are delighted that Professor Grainger has set his hand to this task, and we look forward to the finished work appearing in due course.

The June meeting of our Committee considered an application for the Gordon Wilson Peace Award made by the Epsom Peace Prayer Group on behalf of the Zimbabwe Victims' Support Group, a project founded and managed by the Haywards Heath Methodist Church. I have written to the Fund asking them to accept the award, and look forward to receiving their reply.

Donations towards the cost of this newsletter may be sent to our Treasurer Mr. Norman Taylor, 98 Merewood Road, Bexleyheath DA7 6PQ. Please do not make your cheque out to WPWP, but to the Week of Prayer for World Peace (in full).

Other correspondence should be sent to the Secretary WPWP, 1 The Bungalow, Bremilham Road, Malmesbury 5N16 0DQ. Telephone 01666 825249,
e mail sidney@fish.co.uk

SIDNEY HINKES