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Namaste all,

 

Since this is quite the Ganesh edition I thought it worth forwarding to the group.

 

Om Shanti

Neil

 

 

Hindu Press International

[hpi_list (AT) hindu (DOT) org] On Behalf Of Hindu Press International08

September 2005 22:07Hindu Press InternationalHPI, September 8,

2005

September 8, 2005

Ganesha Festival Begins on Joyous Note Mumbai Celebrates Ganesha Chaturthi Not

Enough Priests for Ganesha Festival Ganesha Festival Not Just for Hindus

Christians Urged To Not Use Aid To Proselytize Controversial Evangelistic

Leaflet Aimed at Hurricane Survivors

1. Ganesha Festival Begins on Joyous Note

news.webindia123.com

MUMBAI, INDIA, September 7, 2005: Despite being badly ravaged by rains and

post-flood diseases just over a month ago, celebration was in the air all

across Maharashtra Wednesday as the 10-day Ganapati festival got underway. The

festival, the biggest and most important in India's most industrialized state,

marks Lord Ganesha's birthday on the fourth day of the bright fortnight of the

Bhadrapada month of the Hindu calendar. Colorful processions were taken out as

icons of the elephant-headed god - some as high as 25 feet - were installed at

public Ganesh mandals festival committees and in millions of households. In the

country's financial hub Mumbai, millions of people took part in the Ganpati

festival with chants of "Ganapati Bappa Morya, Mangala Murti Morya" ("Father

Ganapati, come again! Auspicious One, come again!") in praise of Ganesha

reverberating throughout the city. All government offices, including banks,

stock and commodities markets, were closed W ednesday for the Ganapati

festival. Many private sector companies also remained shut.More than 11 million

people participate either directly or indirectly in the Ganapati festival.

Various communities joined hands to participate and make the event a success.

There are some 7,000 mandals or festival committees registered in the city.

Security has been beefed up across the city, although there were no specific

threats to hinder the celebrations. Kundan Agaskar, president of a collective

body of the 10,000 registered mandals in the city - claims the Ganapati

festival remains the biggest public celebration in the world. Many mandals

have, however, decided to tone down the tempo this year and spend the money on

charity instead in the wake of the devastating floods that killed over 800

people in different parts of Maharashtra. Over 450 were killed in Mumbai alone.

This was followed by waterborne epidemics that took more than 170 lives.

2. Mumbai Celebrates Ganesha Chaturthi

202.131.142.25

MUMBAI, INDIA, September 6, 2005: Around 8,000 Ganesh mandals (temporary temples

set up on the side of, or in, the street) have been decorated and lit up across

the city to welcome the Elephant God. Decorations at most big mandals are

theme-based and themes vary from the religious to the glamorous. The Tejukaya

Sarvajanik Ganeshotsava Trust, Lalbaug, extols the greatness of Lord Ram and

Lord Ganesh. The scene shows how Hanuman could not build a bridge to reach

Lanka till he wrote Shri Ram on a stone and placed it near Ganesha's feet.

"This is to show what wonders devotion can do for us," said Santosh Chavan,

secretary of the mandal. The Kohinoor Mills Compound at Naigoan is bringing

South Africa's famous Sun City to Mumbai with an elaborate set that recreates

the scenic beauty of the place. Similarly, the Spring Mills Compound at

Naigaum, which has in the past created replicas of religious places like Vithal

Rakhumai temple in Pandharpur and Tirupati, is re creating Amarnath temple.

President of the mandal Bhau Ambre said, "We Mumbaikars have just heard of

these great places, but few of us have actually visited them. Our mandal makes

it a point to ensure that devotees really get the feel of the place when they

visit our pandal." The Kalachowki Sarvajanik Ganeshotsava mandal, which is

celebrating its golden jubilee, has created caves through which devotees

visiting the pandal will have to pass through to see the Ganesh icon. The icon

that belongs to the GSBS Sarvajanik Mandal in Matunga is decorated with gold

ornaments. The crown weighs 22 kgs, the ears, decorated with gold, weigh four

kgs and the gold modak near the icon is 1.5 kgs. Here more than 20,000 people

conduct various pujas and approximately 10,000 people are fed daily. The Mandal

contributes a substantial amount of donations for social and educational

activities. According to Jt. Convener Dinesh Pai, "The whole atmosphere is

filled with devotion and sanctity of the ce remony is maintained." As Prasad,

the devotees are offered coconuts, apples and oranges along with sweet

delicacies.FACT SHEETApproximate number of Ganesha mandals: 8,000 Number of

icons that are 15 feet high: 200Cost of icons 15 feet and larger: US$1,100 and

upTotal number of icons brought to the city: 200,000Collections at small

mandals: $1,100 to $2,200Collections at big mandals: $45,000 to

$113,000Approximate quantity of sweets prepared in city for the ten-day

festival: 40 tonsApproximate quantity of flowers supplied to the city during

the festival: 60 tons

3. Not Enough Priests for Ganesha Festival

www.ndtv.com

MUMBAI, INDIA, September 7, 2005: Mumbai and Konkan are facing a shortage of

pandits with thousands of pujas everywhere. "Now we have to buy cassettes. We

have to be careful that the cassettes we buy are keeping up with the correct

religious tradition," said Raju Bhagwat, Resident, Chiplun. For the last 20

years during Ganeshotsav, Pandit Padmanabh has been conducting Ganesh pujas

from 4:00 am (IST) at people's homes. During festival time his work goes on

till late evening. On one hand the population of the city is increasing while

on the other the younger generation is reluctant to take traditional vocations

like being a pujari. "The population has increased but the number of priests

has not kept up. I have cleared my tenth standard and have gone into the family

business but I'm still not as good as my father was," said Pandit Padmanabh. But

for devotees be it a puja through a tape recorder or a pandit, their enthusiasm

and devotion remains undiminished.

4. Ganesha Festival Not Just for Hindus

www.newindpress.com

MUMBAI, INDIA, September 8, 2005: As this mega-city ushered in this year's

Ganapati festival on Wednesday, not just Hindus but also Muslims, Christians,

Parsis and other religious groups were preparing to join in the 10-day revelry.

With thousands of small and big icons of Ganesha, the elephant-headed God, being

installed in almost every nook and corner of the city, various communities

joined hands to participate and make the event a success. It was a Christian,

Wilson Brooks, who founded the Shri Sarvajanik Ganesh Mitra Mandal of the

King's Circle area in central Mumbai, one of the 10,000 such in the city. A

Muslim, Salim Sheikh, now heads it. This 24-year-old mandal has 12 members, of

whom five are non-Hindus. "There is nothing in our festival that says

non-Hindus cannot participate. In fact, Muslims make generous contributions to

our mandal," said Machindra Nath Dighe, vice president of the 72-year-old

Lalbaug Sarvajanik Utsava Mandal, one of the biggest and richest in the city.

Rayomand Batliwala, 23, a Parsi, has been celebrating the festival at his home

since he was seven years old. After he showed keen interest in the festival,

his family, too, joined although they had initial reservations. "It is a

blessing to have Lord Ganesha at my home. I strictly perform all the pujas and

shlokas (rituals and chants) every year," Batliwala said.Religion is never a

criterion for the more than 30 lifeguards of the Young Men's Christian

Association (YMCA), including Christians and Muslims, who keep an eye on the

icon-immersion ritual on the 10th day of the Ganpati festival. The YMCA has

been involved with immersion services since 1996, when a few members received

life-guard certificates from the Louisville YMCA in the US.

5. Christians Urged To Not Use Aid To Proselytize

www.ekklesia.co.uk

September 5, 2005: As relief finally arrives in places devastated by Hurricane

Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi, Christians have been reminded that they

should not use aid as a cynical tool for winning vulnerable people over to

their religious convictions. Tom Palakudiyil, who has run the international

agency Christian Aid's response to several emergencies in Asia, says in Third

Sector magazine - a journal for charity professionals - that using humanitarian

assistance as a lever for proselytism is "morally questionable." He goes on to

express concern that some aid agencies in different parts of the world are

"using religion as a tool to gain an advantage over others," declaring the

tactic "a caricature of the message of Jesus.Proselytizing groups rush in to

virtually every modern disaster zone," declares Palakudiyil, writing before the

Hurricane Katrina disaster struck in the largely Christian southern states of

the USA. He explains: "I witnessed Chr istian organizations include Bible

tracts with the relief distributed to cyclone victims in Orissa in 1999, and

other groups trying to convince communities traumatized by the earthquake in

Gujarat in 2001 that Jesus is 'the way, the truth and the life.' " When Tom

Palakudiyil was in Asia in the aftermath of the tsunami on 26 December 2004, he

says he saw a "Jesus saves" banner on the road to a relief camp, even though

most of the people being helped were Hindu. In January 2005, some missionaries

were accused of exploiting tsunami victims in the sensitive Indonesian province

of Aceh.Concern was also expressed at the use of Christian tracts telling people

to "prepare for death." The group that produced these has come up with a similar

leaflet for use in areas impacted by Hurricane Katrina. In religiously plural or

non-Christian areas, Mr. Palakudiyil says that "an aggressive display of a

group's commitment to Christianity flagrantly disregards people's own strongly

held personal beliefs and risks exploiting people in a crisis." Insensitive

proselytism also goes against what Jesus himself would have wanted, adds the

aid worker. But he stresses that faith can be a great help to people facing

trauma, and that there are appropriate ways in which this can be expressed.

Palakudiyil cites as a much better example a project run by Christian Aid

partners in Rajasthan, in India. Flags of the women's groups that had organized

the meeting were flying, rather than Christian Aid's. Commented Mr. Palakudiyil:

"This was not a sign of a marketing failure, but of the success of our partners

and of our commitment to humanitarian principles."The World Council of Churches

and mission bodies across the theological spectrum have worked together in

recent years to try to distinguish between legitimate proclamation of a

Christian message and exploitative proselytism. The issue has been especially

sensitive in parts of the two-thirds world, where e vangelistic groups backed

by US dollars operate in situations where local people have little money or

power to resist. In 1997 the World Council of Churches produced a statement

entitled Towards Common Witness, which names proselytism as a destructive

'counter-witness' to Jesus Christ. It calls on churches and mission agencies to

renounce manipulative forms of proclamation, and to adopt responsible

relationships in mission. Christian Aid is the official relief, development and

advocacy agency of some 40 Christian denominations is Britain and Ireland.

6. Controversial Evangelistic Leaflet Aimed at Hurricane Survivors

www.ekklesia.co.uk

USA, September 5, 2005; A group in the US which distributed leaflets to tsunami

survivors telling them to prepare for death, has produced a controversial new

tract aimed at survivors of hurricane Katrina. Their tracts, which often

describe in detail famous disasters and tragedies from around the world,

suggest that people can be 'saved' if they confess their sins. The American

Tract Society has now released a new tract entitled; "When you lose it

all...God still cares," aimed specifically at hurricane victims. Their tract

comes as dozens of church denominations offer practical help to victims of

hurricane Katrina, and the importance of cooperation among different faith

groups in the relief effort is stressed.The new tract begins: "Hurricane

Katrina smashed into the Gulf Coast on the morning of August 29, 2005, leaving

a path of destruction felt by millions. Towns were levelled and cities flooded,

forcing thousands to flee their homes. Estimators are saying this could be the

costliest, and deadliest, disaster to ever hit the United States. "What do you

do when everything you own is lost? Who can you cling to when those you love

most are missing? Where can you turn when it seems like nobody cares?" the

tract continues.In text that will be considered by many particularly

insensitive, they suggest; "Natural disasters are part of the way the Earth

operates...but there is hope. Although we can't prevent disasters from

happening (many times we can't even issue warnings in time) there are some

things coming that we can prepare for now. For instance, we will all die

someday. That's a natural event God has given us plenty of warning about."

Under a section entitled; "Are you ready for it?" the Society stated; "God

loves you, and when you die He wants you to be with Him in heaven for all

eternity. Although He knows we may not heed His warning, God offers us all the

way to safety." The 180-year-old American Tract S ociety first sent gospel

tracts to accompany relief workers on the battlegrounds of the Civil War in the

1860s.

NOTICE: Some source URLs cited in HPI articles are only valid on the date the

article was issued. Most are invalid a week to a few months later. When a URL

fails to work, go to the top level of the source's website and search for the

article.

Daily Inspiration

Hindu Dharma is like a boundless ocean teeming with priceless gems. The deeper

you dive, the more treasures you find. Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

Opportunities and Submissions

Please to our beautiful print edition at http://www.hinduismtoday/.html

Individuals and organizations are invited to submit Hindu-related news and

announcements for distribution by HPI.

News is our major thrust--the more current and global, the better. When sending

news to HPI, please provide the source and text of the original item, either by

e-mail to hpi (AT) hindu (DOT) org or by fax to 808-822-4351. News should clearly relate to

the Hindu religion.

For announcements, please prepare a short summary of the subject and provide a

URL to a web page with details. For example, "Swamiji will be visiting San

Francisco November 14-19 and Ann Arbor, Michigan, November 21-23, 2006. For

further information visit www.swamiswami.org. Alternatively, one could provide

an e-mail address. Acceptable subjects for announcements include significant

world tours of religious leaders, major events of organizations, major cultural

exhibitions and outstanding artistic performances.

Contact Archives HPI on the web Reuse and Copyright Information Support HPI Financially

Subscribe | Un | List Master

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Share on other sites

Its good to see a Holiday that really gives God his proper respect and glory.

 

JimNeil <Trikashaivism (AT) onetel (DOT) com> wrote:

Namaste all,

 

Since this is quite the Ganesh edition I thought it worth forwarding to the group.

 

Om Shanti

Neil

 

 

Hindu Press International

[hpi_list (AT) hindu (DOT) org] On Behalf Of Hindu Press International08

September 2005 22:07Hindu Press InternationalHPI, September 8,

2005

September 8, 2005

Ganesha Festival Begins on Joyous Note Mumbai Celebrates Ganesha Chaturthi Not

Enough Priests for Ganesha Festival Ganesha Festival Not Just for Hindus

Christians Urged To Not Use Aid To Proselytize Controversial Evangelistic

Leaflet Aimed at Hurricane Survivors

1. Ganesha Festival Begins on Joyous Note

news.webindia123.com

MUMBAI, INDIA, September 7, 2005: Despite being badly ravaged by rains and

post-flood diseases just over a month ago, celebration was in the air all

across Maharashtra Wednesday as the 10-day Ganapati festival got underway. The

festival, the biggest and most important in India's most industrialized state,

marks Lord Ganesha's birthday on the fourth day of the bright fortnight of the

Bhadrapada month of the Hindu calendar. Colorful processions were taken out as

icons of the elephant-headed god - some as high as 25 feet - were installed at

public Ganesh mandals festival committees and in millions of households. In the

country's financial hub Mumbai, millions of people took part in the Ganpati

festival with chants of "Ganapati Bappa Morya, Mangala Murti Morya" ("Father

Ganapati, come again! Auspicious One, come again!") in praise of Ganesha

reverberating throughout the city. All government offices, including banks,

stock and commodities markets, were closed W ednesday

for the Ganapati festival. Many private sector companies also remained shut.More

than 11 million people participate either directly or indirectly in the Ganapati

festival. Various communities joined hands to participate and make the event a

success. There are some 7,000 mandals or festival committees registered in the

city. Security has been beefed up across the city, although there were no

specific threats to hinder the celebrations. Kundan Agaskar, president of a

collective body of the 10,000 registered mandals in the city - claims the

Ganapati festival remains the biggest public celebration in the world. Many

mandals have, however, decided to tone down the tempo this year and spend the

money on charity instead in the wake of the devastating floods that killed over

800 people in different parts of Maharashtra. Over 450 were killed in Mumbai

alone. This was followed by waterborne epidemics that took more than 170 lives.

2. Mumbai Celebrates Ganesha Chaturthi

202.131.142.25

MUMBAI, INDIA, September 6, 2005: Around 8,000 Ganesh mandals (temporary temples

set up on the side of, or in, the street) have been decorated and lit up across

the city to welcome the Elephant God. Decorations at most big mandals are

theme-based and themes vary from the religious to the glamorous. The Tejukaya

Sarvajanik Ganeshotsava Trust, Lalbaug, extols the greatness of Lord Ram and

Lord Ganesh. The scene shows how Hanuman could not build a bridge to reach

Lanka till he wrote Shri Ram on a stone and placed it near Ganesha's feet.

"This is to show what wonders devotion can do for us," said Santosh Chavan,

secretary of the mandal. The Kohinoor Mills Compound at Naigoan is bringing

South Africa's famous Sun City to Mumbai with an elaborate set that recreates

the scenic beauty of the place. Similarly, the Spring Mills Compound at

Naigaum, which has in the past created replicas of religious places like Vithal

Rakhumai temple in Pandharpur and Tirupati, is re creating

Amarnath temple. President of the mandal Bhau Ambre said, "We Mumbaikars have

just heard of these great places, but few of us have actually visited them. Our

mandal makes it a point to ensure that devotees really get the feel of the place

when they visit our pandal." The Kalachowki Sarvajanik Ganeshotsava mandal,

which is celebrating its golden jubilee, has created caves through which

devotees visiting the pandal will have to pass through to see the Ganesh icon.

The icon that belongs to the GSBS Sarvajanik Mandal in Matunga is decorated

with gold ornaments. The crown weighs 22 kgs, the ears, decorated with gold,

weigh four kgs and the gold modak near the icon is 1.5 kgs. Here more than

20,000 people conduct various pujas and approximately 10,000 people are fed

daily. The Mandal contributes a substantial amount of donations for social and

educational activities. According to Jt. Convener Dinesh Pai, "The whole

atmosphere is filled with devotion and sanctity of the ce remony is

maintained." As Prasad, the devotees are offered coconuts, apples and oranges

along with sweet delicacies.FACT SHEETApproximate number of Ganesha mandals:

8,000 Number of icons that are 15 feet high: 200Cost of icons 15 feet and

larger: US$1,100 and upTotal number of icons brought to the city:

200,000Collections at small mandals: $1,100 to $2,200Collections at big

mandals: $45,000 to $113,000Approximate quantity of sweets prepared in city for

the ten-day festival: 40 tonsApproximate quantity of flowers supplied to the

city during the festival: 60 tons

3. Not Enough Priests for Ganesha Festival

www.ndtv.com

MUMBAI, INDIA, September 7, 2005: Mumbai and Konkan are facing a shortage of

pandits with thousands of pujas everywhere. "Now we have to buy cassettes. We

have to be careful that the cassettes we buy are keeping up with the correct

religious tradition," said Raju Bhagwat, Resident, Chiplun. For the last 20

years during Ganeshotsav, Pandit Padmanabh has been conducting Ganesh pujas

from 4:00 am (IST) at people's homes. During festival time his work goes on

till late evening. On one hand the population of the city is increasing while

on the other the younger generation is reluctant to take traditional vocations

like being a pujari. "The population has increased but the number of priests

has not kept up. I have cleared my tenth standard and have gone into the family

business but I'm still not as good as my father was," said Pandit Padmanabh. But

for devotees be it a puja through a tape recorder or a pandit, their enthusiasm

and devotion remains undiminished.

4. Ganesha Festival Not Just for Hindus

www.newindpress.com

MUMBAI, INDIA, September 8, 2005: As this mega-city ushered in this year's

Ganapati festival on Wednesday, not just Hindus but also Muslims, Christians,

Parsis and other religious groups were preparing to join in the 10-day revelry.

With thousands of small and big icons of Ganesha, the elephant-headed God, being

installed in almost every nook and corner of the city, various communities

joined hands to participate and make the event a success. It was a Christian,

Wilson Brooks, who founded the Shri Sarvajanik Ganesh Mitra Mandal of the

King's Circle area in central Mumbai, one of the 10,000 such in the city. A

Muslim, Salim Sheikh, now heads it. This 24-year-old mandal has 12 members, of

whom five are non-Hindus. "There is nothing in our festival that says

non-Hindus cannot participate. In fact, Muslims make generous contributions to

our mandal," said Machindra Nath Dighe, vice president of the 72-year-old

Lalbaug Sarvajanik Utsava Mandal, one of the biggest and

richest in the city. Rayomand Batliwala, 23, a Parsi, has been celebrating the

festival at his home since he was seven years old. After he showed keen

interest in the festival, his family, too, joined although they had initial

reservations. "It is a blessing to have Lord Ganesha at my home. I strictly

perform all the pujas and shlokas (rituals and chants) every year," Batliwala

said.Religion is never a criterion for the more than 30 lifeguards of the Young

Men's Christian Association (YMCA), including Christians and Muslims, who keep

an eye on the icon-immersion ritual on the 10th day of the Ganpati festival.

The YMCA has been involved with immersion services since 1996, when a few

members received life-guard certificates from the Louisville YMCA in the US.

5. Christians Urged To Not Use Aid To Proselytize

www.ekklesia.co.uk

September 5, 2005: As relief finally arrives in places devastated by Hurricane

Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi, Christians have been reminded that they

should not use aid as a cynical tool for winning vulnerable people over to

their religious convictions. Tom Palakudiyil, who has run the international

agency Christian Aid's response to several emergencies in Asia, says in Third

Sector magazine - a journal for charity professionals - that using humanitarian

assistance as a lever for proselytism is "morally questionable." He goes on to

express concern that some aid agencies in different parts of the world are

"using religion as a tool to gain an advantage over others," declaring the

tactic "a caricature of the message of Jesus.Proselytizing groups rush in to

virtually every modern disaster zone," declares Palakudiyil, writing before the

Hurricane Katrina disaster struck in the largely Christian southern states of

the USA. He explains: "I witnessed Chr istian

organizations include Bible tracts with the relief distributed to cyclone

victims in Orissa in 1999, and other groups trying to convince communities

traumatized by the earthquake in Gujarat in 2001 that Jesus is 'the way, the

truth and the life.' " When Tom Palakudiyil was in Asia in the aftermath of the

tsunami on 26 December 2004, he says he saw a "Jesus saves" banner on the road

to a relief camp, even though most of the people being helped were Hindu. In

January 2005, some missionaries were accused of exploiting tsunami victims in

the sensitive Indonesian province of Aceh.Concern was also expressed at the use

of Christian tracts telling people to "prepare for death." The group that

produced these has come up with a similar leaflet for use in areas impacted by

Hurricane Katrina. In religiously plural or non-Christian areas, Mr.

Palakudiyil says that "an aggressive display of a group's commitment to

Christianity flagrantly disregards people's own strongly held personal

beliefs and risks exploiting people in a crisis." Insensitive proselytism also

goes against what Jesus himself would have wanted, adds the aid worker. But he

stresses that faith can be a great help to people facing trauma, and that there

are appropriate ways in which this can be expressed. Palakudiyil cites as a much

better example a project run by Christian Aid partners in Rajasthan, in India.

Flags of the women's groups that had organized the meeting were flying, rather

than Christian Aid's. Commented Mr. Palakudiyil: "This was not a sign of a

marketing failure, but of the success of our partners and of our commitment to

humanitarian principles."The World Council of Churches and mission bodies

across the theological spectrum have worked together in recent years to try to

distinguish between legitimate proclamation of a Christian message and

exploitative proselytism. The issue has been especially sensitive in parts of

the two-thirds world, where e vangelistic groups backed

by US dollars operate in situations where local people have little money or

power to resist. In 1997 the World Council of Churches produced a statement

entitled Towards Common Witness, which names proselytism as a destructive

'counter-witness' to Jesus Christ. It calls on churches and mission agencies to

renounce manipulative forms of proclamation, and to adopt responsible

relationships in mission. Christian Aid is the official relief, development and

advocacy agency of some 40 Christian denominations is Britain and Ireland.

6. Controversial Evangelistic Leaflet Aimed at Hurricane Survivors

www.ekklesia.co.uk

USA, September 5, 2005; A group in the US which distributed leaflets to tsunami

survivors telling them to prepare for death, has produced a controversial new

tract aimed at survivors of hurricane Katrina. Their tracts, which often

describe in detail famous disasters and tragedies from around the world,

suggest that people can be 'saved' if they confess their sins. The American

Tract Society has now released a new tract entitled; "When you lose it

all...God still cares," aimed specifically at hurricane victims. Their tract

comes as dozens of church denominations offer practical help to victims of

hurricane Katrina, and the importance of cooperation among different faith

groups in the relief effort is stressed.The new tract begins: "Hurricane

Katrina smashed into the Gulf Coast on the morning of August 29, 2005, leaving

a path of destruction felt by millions. Towns were levelled and cities flooded,

forcing thousands to flee their homes. Estimators are saying

this could be the costliest, and deadliest, disaster to ever hit the United

States. "What do you do when everything you own is lost? Who can you cling to

when those you love most are missing? Where can you turn when it seems like

nobody cares?" the tract continues.In text that will be considered by many

particularly insensitive, they suggest; "Natural disasters are part of the way

the Earth operates...but there is hope. Although we can't prevent disasters

from happening (many times we can't even issue warnings in time) there are some

things coming that we can prepare for now. For instance, we will all die

someday. That's a natural event God has given us plenty of warning about."

Under a section entitled; "Are you ready for it?" the Society stated; "God

loves you, and when you die He wants you to be with Him in heaven for all

eternity. Although He knows we may not heed His warning, God offers us all the

way to safety." The 180-year-old American Tract S ociety first sent

gospel tracts to accompany relief workers on the battlegrounds of the Civil War in the 1860s.

NOTICE: Some source URLs cited in HPI articles are only valid on the date the

article was issued. Most are invalid a week to a few months later. When a URL

fails to work, go to the top level of the source's website and search for the

article.

Daily Inspiration

Hindu Dharma is like a boundless ocean teeming with priceless gems. The deeper

you dive, the more treasures you find. Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

Opportunities and Submissions

Please to our beautiful print edition at http://www.hinduismtoday/.html

Individuals and organizations are invited to submit Hindu-related news and

announcements for distribution by HPI.

News is our major thrust--the more current and global, the better. When sending

news to HPI, please provide the source and text of the original item, either by

e-mail to hpi (AT) hindu (DOT) org or by fax to 808-822-4351. News should clearly relate to

the Hindu religion.

For announcements, please prepare a short summary of the subject and provide a

URL to a web page with details. For example, "Swamiji will be visiting San

Francisco November 14-19 and Ann Arbor, Michigan, November 21-23, 2006. For

further information visit www.swamiswami.org. Alternatively, one could provide

an e-mail address. Acceptable subjects for announcements include significant

world tours of religious leaders, major events of organizations, major cultural

exhibitions and outstanding artistic performances.

Contact Archives HPI on the web Reuse and Copyright Information Support HPI Financially

Subscribe | Un | List

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