A Welcome Address From The New Executive Director

Dear Omega Community,

Greetings! I am Gregory Hansell, the new and first Executive Director of the Omega Center. I’m honored and thrilled to join you all at this exciting and crucial moment for both the Center and our divisive world. So let me say first “Thank you!” to Ilia, the Omega Center board and team, and all of you who have already welcomed me so graciously and kindly.

This is a time of great progress at the Omega Center and considerable foment on our troubled planet. I believe Ilia Delio’s profound vision of wholeness—the bridging of science and spirituality, world religions, and contemplative knowing within the grand cosmic deepening of divine love and consciousness—can help heal our world and lead us to a new era of spiritual celebration and human flourishing. Our task here at the Omega Center—for all of us, including all our contributors, subscribers, online readers and event attendees—is ambitious, bold, and timely. Together we are a community that shares a passion for Ilia’s work, feels the “Hunger for Wholeness” that beats at the heart of all people and throughout the entire cosmic creation, and understands that our combined efforts can carry us closer to God-Omega and bring us peace.

We are just getting started. Ilia and the Omega Center board have inspired me with their charge to help grow our organization and community in the coming months. We intend to move quickly—updating our website, announcing new online offerings and offline events, establishing partnerships, and sharing the work of Ilia and the Omega Center far and wide. To this end, we will be soon launching an updated Vision and Mission statement on our website. We see this as a work in progress, honing and refining who we are as a community, and we welcome your thoughts and ideas.

We are also committed to reaching out frequently to all of you to ensure we grow collaboratively. Within the very forward-moving meaning of Omega is a fundamental interconnectedness. The future orientation of God’s continual creation proceeds interdependently: it is a progressive unity through diversity, a growth through cooperation, a deepening of divine love and consciousness that only happens relationally. Whether we consider the Christian Trinity, the Buddhist teaching of Pratītyasamutpāda, the complex unfolding of evolution, or the synaptic dynamism between neurons, it all comes down to the simple and profound truth that we are all in this together. For the Omega community, this means that we both welcome your participation and feedback, and that we need your help to continue onward. Please get in touch with us: we want to hear your voice, read your comments on our blog and on social media, and deepen the connection of divine love we all share.

In the next week we will be emailing out a link to a survey to all our donors, members, subscribers, readers, and supporters of any kind: let us know what you think! While we have our own ideas and plans, too, we want to know what brought you to Omega Center, what you are looking for, and what about our work inspires you to open your hearts and minds to the divine overabundance of cosmic love. Please take a few minutes to complete this survey to help us grow in an organic way—and help me get to know all of you better.

We also humbly ask for your financial support. We would like to host more events, provide more online offerings, produce an expansive print newsletter, and expand our programs to include webinars, workshops, and ultimately classes—all of which require steady financial support from new and existing contributors. If, like me, you find Ilia’s work inspiring and essential for our time, please consider joining our community. If you are already one of our contributors, we thank you kindly for your support. And if you would like to help grow and expand our vision together, please consider increasing your contribution.

“Within the very forward-moving meaning of Omega is a fundamental interconnectedness. The future orientation of God’s continual creation proceeds interdependently: it is a progressive unity through diversity, a growth through cooperation, a deepening of divine love and consciousness that only happens relationally.”

Ilia writes in A Hunger for Wholeness: “We have reached a crossroads in cosmic development whereby we must either unify or annihilate.” We need to get beyond “defending our borders of race, culture, and creed” and instead develop “a new consciousness of the whole.” Rather than today’s fearful foment of division, separation, and domination, this is a “consciousness of belonging, mutual affirmation, participation, and creative love…a consciousness of belonging together and sharing a future together.” This is the future we work toward here at Omega Center, a future we want to share with you and that we want to build together.

I cannot adequately express the honor and excitement I feel to be a part of this organization at the spiritual vanguard. Ilia’s work and this Omega community inspire me deeply and I am enraptured to see what we can accomplish together. Please always feel free to reach out to me with any ideas, concerns, or perspectives. I am at your service, as we all are to this blessed time of divine becoming.

With gratitude,
Gregory