Rev. Debra Thorne
These are difficult days on the earth. We are faced with burning forests, rising oceans and air we cannot breathe. The system humans have created to manage ourselves has pulled the rug out from our traditions of truth and trust, honour and integrity. How can we envision our world today in a way that inspires hope?
Rev. Debra Thorne
When have you been so inspired by someone’s words that your life was transformed? Today or 550 years ago, when Francis David inspired the first Unitarian kingdom based on respect and acceptance of all religious faiths, an individual’s words and actions have the power to transform lives. We are both the transformed and the transforming.
Rev. Debra Thorne
Have you got a question that you’d like Rev. Debra to answer? That was the invitation to the community. The questions flowed in—from the theological and eschatological to the environmental and historical. Rev. Debra will attempt to answer them all.
Rev. Debra Thorne and Special Guest: Diana Ng
Walking the labyrinth has been a spiritual practice since the 11th century and rediscovered in the last fifty years as part of the reclaiming of contemplative practices both in and outside Catholic and Protestant communities. Diana Ng, member of South Fraser Unitarians, built her first 42 foot diameter labyrinth in Fleetwood Park, Surrey, in 2008. Diana comes to labyrinths from a spiritual and practical point of view. In her own words, labyrinths are ‘a quiet place where the simple act of walking promotes self-awareness, presence, and calm’. You will have the chance to walk one of Diana’s labyrinths during the service.
Phil Campbell and Theo Boere, Executive Director and Founder of Men’s Resource Center
Men have done some truly awful things to women. We should all be ashamed—shouldn’t we? How can we men respond to this in a meaningful way and still hold on to our maleness with pride? Should we as men hold to the Possum Lodge oath, Quando omni flunkus moritati, or do we enter into dialogue with our women friends, lovers and neighbours about what our gender identity means to us and what it means to treat each other with respect and dignity irrespective of gender?
Rev. Debra Thorne
It was like a tidal wave that swept the first world. So much good healing has come from the early days of the ‘Me Too!’ movement. With unchallenged power this wave uprooted systems of decayed power, and unfortunately a few innocent lives as well. In the aftermath of the first wave there is a dissonance that needs understanding.
Rev. Debra Thorne
How do we live together with completely different world views? Members of Beacon have been educating themselves in the history of indigenous people and realizing that their way of seeing and being in the world is so very different than that of the settler. For example there is no word for wilderness in First Nation world view, their word for wilderness is simply ‘home’. Participants from the Truth, Healing and Reconciliation program will join Rev. Debra and share examples from their transformed perspective.
Jim Stephenson
Unitarian Universalists have been referred to as God’s frozen people. We appreciate dispassionate analysis and a sober search for truth. We tend not to evangelize. and frequently don’t admit that we go to church. While we may be “spiritual”, we are not “religious” and usually don’t practice elaborate rituals. Does this mean we are lifeless and boring? Does a skeptical bent mean that we have no place for passion, enthusiasm, zeal, wonder, and joy? On April 29, Jim Stephenson, an accounting consultant and former Green Party candidate, with degrees in engineering, business, and economics, will share his experience living life with passion, enthusiasm, zeal, wonder, and joy. May the farce be with us.
Lara Charles
Brene Brown has said that “if we want our children to love and accept who they are, our job is to love and accept who we are.” But how do we get to this place of self-acceptance? Join Lara Charles as she shares her journey of rediscovering her passion for life, teaching and learning, through the most challenging and rewarding time of her life. She will share the lessons she learned about nature’s capacity to shift how we look at the world and our lives—as these lessons were revealed—stitch by stitch, in the creation of a quilt.
Rev. Debra Thorne
Darth Vader and the Wicked Witch of the North are clearly bad. Real life is not so specific. Yet is there a line we can draw between good and evil? What is the function of evil in the stories we tell and how do we confront the very real structures of evil in our world?