FLOP’S SIX CORE VALUES
INTRODUCTION
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Hi! My name is Chris Joy, and I am the Executive Director at For Love Of People, a Nonprofit Organization based in Eugene, Oregon. We go by FLOP, and our mission is to unite people in an Online Community built on “Love and Respect For All People.”
By encouraging and facilitating dynamic Community Engagement, providing free Virtual Classes, and creating Educational Content from All Wisdom Traditions, FLOP is building a diverse interfaith community that will inspire members to continue to grow spiritually, develop robust emotional resilience, and support each other in living happier, healthier, more conscious lives!
As you get to know FLOP and decide if you would like to support our mission and join our community, it is important to know what we value most, and what characteristics our community members will be known for.
To make this easy, we have developed these Six Core Values as a foundation for what we hope to build together in this community and the kind of content we plan to create. We don't expect every potential FLOP member to have mastered or perfected the six following topics or to align exactly with every statement we make. Although, we do feel there needs to be at least an openness and curiosity to explore these concepts if one is to find any value in being a part of this diverse community. This is a very exciting next step for us as a community and as an organization, and we thank you all for being here.
1. WE LOVE ALL PEOPLE
FLOP recognizes that every human is created in the image of God and is therefore inherently good. We know we all have made bad decisions, but this does not make any of us bad people. We are all good and we all deserve the opportunity to love and be loved.
Love is the foundation of our identity: We Are For Love Of People. We Are FLOP.
When you love all people, you, in turn, have hope for all people, and for every person’s potential to be happy and healthy and ultimately to create a joyful life experience, which is what life is all about.
This hope we have motivates FLOP members to help one another on their healing journey, growing together in love and spreading joy along the way. When you see one another as love and light, you are eager to see each other shine their brightest!
We know not everyone will want to join FLOP, but we want to make sure that everyone knows they are invited to be a part of FLOP and are welcome to join us. We have no requirements for membership other than a desire to be a part of a thriving spiritual community that heals together, grows together, and is bound by love and respect for all people.
2. WE TAKE A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO HEALTH
By this, we mean to say that we understand there are many parts of our lives that contribute to our health and happiness. This commonly misunderstood word, “Holistic,” comes to us from the Greek word “Holo” which translates simply as “Whole.”
So in other words, FLOP holds the view that in order to be indeed whole, we need to look at the various parts of our lives and care for those parts as a whole. For example, we are aware our physical health is deeply impacted by our relationships and vice-versa, and in fact, there are many parts to each of our lives that are interconnected and interdependent.
A holistic approach to our health allows us to develop an understanding of these parts and how they work together. To help our members with this, we have developed a Spiritual Assessment Tool (SAT) using some of the following questions:
-What gives you Hope?
-What do you consider Holy?
-How do you relax your Mind?
-How do you move your Body?
-What gives you Meaning?
-Who is in your Community?
Through classes, educational videos, community engagement, and using our SAT, FLOP members will have the opportunity to expand their holistic approach, develop a deeper awareness of their parts, and discover how best to care for themselves specifically in these areas of their lives resulting in that sense of wholeness that we all long for.
3. WE EMBRACE ALL WISDOM TRADITIONS
A core value of FLOP members is an awareness that divine wisdom flows through many traditions. As one of our founding Board members has explained,
“I see the many great religions of the world all positioned uniquely around a campfire, trying to stay warm. They are all experiencing the energy from the fire but from different places in the world, and they all have unique perspectives and tell their story differently. But the fire is the same fire for all of us.”
With professional backgrounds in interfaith chaplaincy, pastoral ministry, and seminary degrees in divinity and theology, the founding members of FLOP draw from all wisdom traditions to find healing, renewal, and spiritual growth through various sacred practices and disciplines.
Our intention is that community members of FLOP will be from all faith backgrounds and world religions, as well as those with no religious interest or affiliation, and even the ones in between or on the fence, all held together by FLOP’s core value, the simple and powerful binding concept of: “Love and Respect For All People.”
We are most excited to watch how the integration of divine wisdom will be shared in the FLOP community and the new kind of fruit that will manifest! We feel sharing with each other the treasures from our own sacred traditions and watching others have amazing life-changing experiences is what this FLOP community is all about!
When we heal together, we grow together, and we see a potential for a new kind of interfaith interconnectedness that may provide the opportunity for spiritual growth, healing, and expanded states of consciousness that we have only begun to imagine. The potential is exciting and motivates us to overcome limits and discover new heights together.
4. WE MOVE OUR BODIES WITH INTENTION
We have discovered that having a daily practice of healthy mindful movement is the key to integrating the energies of the mind, body, and spirit. “Meditative Walking,” or what we call a “Spirit Run” can serve as powerful vehicles to experience deep emotional healing, restore a sense of groundedness, and overall rejuvenate and energize your soul!
As one of FLOP’s founders is a certified instructor in Kundalini Yoga, FLOP has been able to provide FREE Online Classes every Tuesday and Friday since Fall 2022! (These free classes and everything we do at this nonprofit organization are made possible by FLOP’s generous DAY1 Supporters.
In these classes, you will awaken your spirit body, find an energy source that arises from within, and even potentially experience healing for physical ailments you never thought possible. (www.weareflop.org/yoga)
5. WE PRACTICE MINDFULNESS AND MEDITATION
Members of FLOP cherish the ability to be present and to find peace of mind. We do this through many kinds of meditations, mindfulness, breathing exercises, and ultimately learning how to assess our emotions and how to shift our state of consciousness to what serves our highest good!
Learning how to meditate is often a game-changer for most people, regardless of their ethnic, religious, or social background. To find the quietness of spirit and peace of mind one has been longing for, feels like fresh water in a desert, so FLOP places a very high value here.
As meditation can be practiced independently and as a group, FLOP will lead and facilitate group meditations, as well as provide opportunities for our community members to lead group meditations and offer guidance and support to each other.
6. WE CONNECT WITH NATURE
In nature, we see the interconnectedness of all living things. We observe how all forms of life (humans, animals, plants, fungi, etc.) along with our solar system, and even the life-giving natural resources like clean water, fresh air, and fertile soil, all work together as one beautifully scripted complex network of systems, intentionally designed to function in harmony with each other and sustain one another.
We consider our role in this intricate multi-layered system a great privilege and responsibility. We are mindful to ensure we have a positive impact and understand our personal wellness as an integral part of this system.
On the rare occasion that we “get sick” or experience disease (dis-ease), or when our system falls out of alignment, we go first to plants, fungi, herbs, and all the sacred medicine that nature provides to us. We know that food is medicine, so we make every effort to eat healthy whole foods from nature that have been grown consciously and sustainably.
Similarly, we are aware of how our health is impacted when we are out of sync with nature’s flow. So for example, we observe and align our own sleep pattern with the Earth’s circadian rhythm, which maximizes our potential for healthy sleep, a strong body, and peace of mind, providing access to overall wholeness and good health.
CONCLUSION
So, those are FLOP’s Six Core Values, I hope this gives you all a better sense of who we are and what we are creating here at For Love Of People. If this sounds like a community you would like to be a part of then please be sure to like, follow, and subscribe to our community on all your socials. If you find value in the content we create, please let us know and share it with people you think will appreciate what we are doing here.
We are slowly beginning to build a presence everywhere we can online, but we are just getting started. Our experience in building a community online has taught us that our greatest resource for growth will be our community members spreading the word about FLOP with people in their own networks.
To boost this initiative, we will be giving away lots of FREE FLOP T-Shirts to our most active early online supporters, so watch for many easy-to-win opportunities on all our pages!
If you have any other questions or just want to connect in person, send us an email at info@weareflop.org.
Thank You for your time today and for your support.
We Are For Love Of People. We Are FLOP.
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