37th Annual World Peace Meditation

The Rime Buddhist Center will host the 37th Annual World Peace Meditation, an interfaith gathering on December 31, at 6:00 a.m. (*please arrive by 5:30 a.m.). The program will consist of religious observances from various cultures and faith traditions including Native American smudging, Tibetan Buddhist chanting and meditation, Christian prayer, devotional music, and the Muslim “call to prayer.” Members of the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council will offer a prayer for peace from each of their faith traditions.

The event will be in-person at St. Marks Hope and Peace Lutheran Church. This event is free and open to everyone.

A highlight of the event will be the presentation of the Bodhisattva Award to Bird Fleming of the Traditional Music Society. Bird Fleming is a professional percussionist, educator, and performer. As founder and Artistic Director of the Traditional Music Society, he is not only an educator and performer, but also a world music liaison for area educational organizations. He has collaborated with many institutions in the Kansas City area such as the Kansas City Missouri School District, St. Vincent’s Operation Breakthrough, the Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey, Young Audiences, Accessible Arts, the Jackson County Family Courts, the American Jazz Museum, the Kansas City Art Institute, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Additionally, Mr. Fleming had the distinction of assisting with the development of the core music curriculum for the Kansas City School District as ethnic music advisor in 1996. He currently teaches World Music as an adjunct professor at Longview Community College in Lee’s Summit, Missouri.

The Keynote address will be given by Rev. Donna Simon. Pastor Donna Simon is a Midwesterner by birth (and temperament), though she has spent much of her life on the West Coast. She is a graduate of San Francisco State University (English Literature) and Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California. Pastor Donna was called into the ministry from a volunteer position as church youth director at Messiah Lutheran Church, Redwood City, California. While attending seminary, she came out as a lesbian. Because the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America did not allow the ordination of openly gay and lesbian candidates, she joined the roster of Lutheran Lesbian and Gay Ministries, now known as Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries. In 2016, she earned her Doctorate of Ministry from Luther Seminar in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Host or Publisher Rime Buddhist Center & Institute of Tibetan Studies