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“All beings on earth depend on one another for survival. If the engine of a plane is damaged it cannot fly. But even if a single vital screw is damaged, the plane also cannot fly. Similarly, even the tiniest living being plays an important role. All living creatures need our help as well in order to survive. They are also our responsibility.” Amma, from The Timeless Path

Green Friends Retreat

An opportunity to share and learn about Amma’s InDeed pledges and how we as Amma’s children can undertake to follow these teachings. The retreat will include:

• working with a local conservation team to help preserve and protect some of the local countryside.
• sharing ideas and practical ways to undertake the InDeed pledges.
• opportunity to sing, to chant, to meditate and to eat yummy food.
• go for a walk and learn about the local wildlife/plants

The aim is for everyone attending to bring ideas and share how they try to undertake Amma’s InDeed pledges and then go back and share what they have learned with their own satsang group. So ideally we would prefer that we had representatives from different satsang groups.

We will be staying in simple shared accommodation. The price is still to be decided but will include donation to Friends of Amma UK. Please contact Kaivalya as soon as possible if you are intending to attend lucydevi@yahoo.co.uk.

InDeed Environmental Campaign is Launched

In honour of Amma's 59th birthday on 27 September, the umbrella group of Amma's charities, Embracing the World®, has launched an environmental campaign called InDeed. It identifies six small things each of us can do to make a big difference for our planet -- all based on Amma's practical suggestions. Click here for more.

NEWS

Greenfriends Day in Birmingham 1st September 2012

On Saturday 1st September a small but dedicated team of Greenfriends members got together in Hill Hook nature reserve Sutton Coldfield to do some voluntary work. First we were told the history where we learnt the large pool originally provided water to Hill Hook Corn Mill, which operated from the 1600's. The mill pool now provides the focal point for the 7.5 hectares Local Nature Reserve, which also comprises an extensive area of woodland and rough grassland providing habitat for a wide variety of trees, plants and animals including, bats, butterflies, moths, birds, fish and small mammals. The six of us spilt into two teams and spent the morning weeding, pruning and creating a pathway. Although we were a small team we did a good job.

Thinking about the work what we did on the day, there is a story that comes to my mind. When Lord Ram was building the bridge across the ocean to Lanka, Lord Hanuman and his team were working hard, transferring huge stones and large quantities of sand, in order to build the bridge. Lord Ram noticed a squirrel on the beach who was running to the ocean soaking itself in water and then coming back to the shore and rolling over on the sand, then back to the ocean. It was repeatedly doing this. So Lord Ram asked the squirrel what it was doing there? It replied that it was too small, and unlike the others working there could not carry the heavy stones. So it was just contributing in whatever way it could, in transferring the sand. So on that day we were all like the squirrel, we all tried to help in the way we could, even though it was a small group, we did contribute.

After a well earned lunch we took part in Amma’s green meditation, sang bhajans and watched an eco film. We hope to repeat the success of the day and maybe even get a few more volunteers!!

To find out more about GreenFriends click here.
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Visit the GreenFriends website

This GreenFriends site has been created in order to support the GreenFriends initiative of Mata Amritanandamayi Math in the UK. We seek to reawaken awareness of the unity between Nature and Humanity and to cultivate an attitude of love and reverence for Mother Nature: http://www.greenfriends.org.uk