Events

Hap­pi­ness and peace forged a per­fect part­ner­ship at a two day event, begin­ning with the out­door Brook­lyn Book Fes­ti­val held on Sun­day 20 Sep­tem­ber 2015, where Hap­pi­ness The Delight-Tree was one of hun­dreds of books fea­tured at the fes­ti­val before a live­ly crowd of lit­er­ary patrons. The fol­low­ing evening, poets and Unit­ed Nations staff hon­ored The Inter­na­tion­al Day of Peace at an offi­cial Brook­lyn Book Fes­ti­val Event held at St. Ann & the Holy Trin­i­ty Church, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the UNSRC Soci­ety of Writ­ers. The Rev. John E. Denaro, Rec­tor of St. Ann’s, wel­comed the audi­ence with a prayer for peace, fol­lowed by Ramu Damodaran (Chief of the Unit­ed Nations Aca­d­e­m­ic Impact Out­reach Divi­sion, DPI and Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed Nations Staff Recre­ation Coun­cil), who spoke elo­quent­ly on the rela­tion­ship between peace and hap­pi­ness through the work of the Unit­ed Nations. Fea­ture poets includ­ed: Meena Alexan­der, Dara Bar­nat, Rei Berroa, Rose­bud Ben-Oni, Sharon Dolin, Nil­push­pi White, Michèle Voltaire Marcelin and musi­cian Pre­mik Rus­sell Tubbs. Peace, the pow­er­ful theme of the evening, was graced by the per­for­mance of “Peace: God’s Beau­ty in His One­ness-Home,” a choral arrange­ment of a few of spir­i­tu­al teacher Sri Chinmoy’s songs. To close the evening, all present were invit­ed to hold the peace torch of the glob­al Sri Chin­moy One­ness-Home Peace Run and offer his or her own silent prayer for peace.