Rev. Jean Inmyo O’Cuilinn

Awakening to Kinship: A New Year’s Wish for 2026 Friends, allow me to share a wish as we welcome the New Year 2026. The way we go about our hectic self-absorbed lives in this deeply troubled and wounded world of ours prevents us from seeing a truth that underlies our very being: that we are all connected in a deep karmic bond of Kinship and Love with one another and with all beings. The spiritual practice of taking time to be still and to listen in the silence puts us in touch with the innermost core of our being, thereby opening our hearts to our intimate kinship with each and everyone in the universe. This awakening to kinship with all beings enables us to overcome a self-preoccupied, tribalistic mindset that tends to be anxious and fearful and violent, and destructive, and instead live in the light of the vision of the kinship of us all, becoming an agent of peace and reconciliation. The activation of this Love in our day to day lives, based on our realization of this kinship, will bring to us the greatest joy, the deepest satisfaction and true fulfilment as human beings. The heart and mind of one so awakened to this kinship is conveyed by a well-known line from the early Buddhist treatise On Lovingkindness (Mettā Sutta): "As a mother would give her life to protect her child, her only child, have this boundless heart in you toward all beings." Awakening to this all-inclusive and intimate kinship with all, in a truly experiential way, will inevitably affect the personal, social, political, economic, ecological, and all dimensions of our being. And as more and more of us come to this awakening, there would a palpable and effective transformation of our world, from a deeply divided, wounded, violent, and ecologically destructive global society that we currently find ourselves in and for which we are all responsible, toward a mutually accepting, loving, cooperative, ecologically sustainable Earth community, wherein we can celebrate our kinship and our togetherness in the midst of our differences. Imagine what a world that would be! This is my wish, my aspiration, which I hope can also be yours. We can start right here, right now, with a renewed resolve, to take up, and to persist, in the practice of cultivating stillness on a regular basis in our lives, thus enabling our hearts to be open to hearing, and bearing, the pain of our fellow beings in this wounded world of ours. In this way we will find the inspiration and empowerment to become an agent of change and of healing, to become a messenger of kinship and love for one another and for all. With deep bows and palms together