CONCEPT AND OUTLINE OF SERIES  & BACKGROUND OF HINDU PRESENTERS AND SERIES CHAIR:

The featured speaker Chandra Prakash is well known to mature audiences in St. Cloud as a bridge champion and as a retired chemist. He has been delivering spiritual discourses on the Gita and the Yoga Sutras and other Hindu scriptures and topics for very many years at the Hindu Temple in the Cities. He was first to go in to bat when CIE offered its very first interfaith dialogue program on 1/22/2000 at Newman Center.

The co-presenting Hindu leaders and the co-sponsoring Hindu community of St. Cloud would seem to raise a question: Is Hinduism merely about "spirituality"? Is it perhaps also about being material, successful, socially responsible, religious, fun loving, and happy?

Would it not be fascinating to listen to St. Cloud's leading Hindus speak about their experience:
1) living and raising Hindu families in a majoritarian white Christian milieu and
2) cultivating Hindu faith and culture in Upper Midwestern USA?

The chair of this series is Ralph Calabria, a self-described "eclectic." He and his wife Diane (a certified yoga instructor and also an employee of the College of St. Benedict) have been devout followers of Paramahansa Yogananda, author of the spiritual classic, Autobiography of A Yogi and the first great yoga master to live in the West for an extended period of time (over 30 years). He and his wife regularly practice Kriya Yoga as taught by Yogananda. They have also undertaken pilgrimages to India down the years for darshan (spiritual sighting) of Sri Satya Sai Baba.

HOSPITALITY:

UNIITE is grateful to the St. Cloud Hindu community for offering
1) to display sacred Hindu artifacts, symbols, art, and literature,
2) to provide taped (or live?) music as the audience begins to gather from 5.50-6 pm and during snack time, and above all,
3) to host and donate the annual fund raising dinner on the closing night 10/4/05, 5-6 pm, at New Horizons United Methodist Church.

UNIITE is especially grateful to New Horizons United Methodist Church for once again generously offering their premises and their kitchen, cutlery, and crockery to UNIITE.

UNIITE is grateful to hosting institutions for
1) offering snacks and beverages toward the close of each session,
2) providing copies of brochures, fliers, and feedback sheets as needed,
3) helping with set up and clean up, and
4) arranging for a credence table with sacred symbols from diverse world religions placed in front of the speaker's podium, and above all, for giving leadership in St. Cloud by becoming some of the first organizational members of UNIITE.

DATES , TOPICS, SPEAKERS & LOCATIONS

THANK YOU TO ALL WHO ARE INVOLVED IN THIS EVENT!