Discover Spiritual McGill Fair
2019
Panels
Panel A - Sacredness of Self
The intersection of faith-based rituals and practices with the main tenets of self-care, and how the love of a creator might translate to the love of the self.
Panelists
Rabbi Kaufman
Rabbi Kaufman is the Rabbi of Jewish Experience Downtown, a Jewish engagement organization in downtown Montreal. He is a husband and a father of four, and was and Atheist until 10 years ago. He works with Jews living in Downtown Montreal and he acts as an outlet for those seeking Jewish wisdom or just to be part of a community. He was in university from 2004-2009 where he identified as an "intellectual Atheist". He had his own personal spiritual revolution as he was graduating, so he thinks maybe he can add to someone who's spiritually questioning at this point in their life. He’s hoping that he will be able to answer some questions at Discover Spiritual McGill that some people are seeking to have answered.
Dr. Abdu’l-Missagh Ghadirian
Dr. Ghadirian is an author, researcher and Emeritus Professor at McGill University, Faculty of Medicine in Montreal. He has spoken in numerous public, professional and university venues around the world. He has done extensive research including numerous articles published mostly in scientific journals and other professional media in the field of social science and psychiatry. He is the author of fourteen books, including “In Search of Nirvana” and “Alcohol and Drug Abuse: a Psychosocial and Spiritual Approach to Prevention”. He founded and has conducted a course on Spirituality and Ethics in Medicine (since 2002) at McGill University’s Undergraduate Medical Education department. As an author, he has researched and published on spirituality in medicine and is currently writing a chapter on the role of spirituality in the global mental health: www.medicineandspirituality.com. You can watch one of Dr. Ghadirian’s previous talks on spirituality and healing here: https://www.tvo.org/video/archive/abdul-missagh-ghadirian-on-spiritualit...
Olivier Grenier-Leboeuf
Olivier Grenier-Leboeuf is an undergraduate student at McGill University, where he is pursuing a joint major in Mathematics and Computer Science (U2). He is a Falun Dafa practitioner and participates in the Falun Dafa club at McGill. He started to develop a passion for philosophy in high school. At the time, he tried meditating for about two hours every day, and after one month he had come to what he considered profound realizations, which were very similar to ideas discussed in Buddhist teachings. This led him to believe that perhaps there is more to Buddhist ideas than superstition. Gradually he started to believe more and more that there is something divine in the universe. One day he started to read a book about the practice called Falun Dafa, which is a Buddha school of self-cultivation and has practiced Falun Dafa since that day. The subject of self-care and sacredness of the self is intrinsically tied to his life and he is looking forward to meeting the other panelists and the attendees, but also to listen to what other people think about the universe and life. He believes it is remarkable for someone to still hold on to values and the belief in the divine despite the current state of society, which is why he cherishes everyone who still has faith and enjoys meeting them.
Fauzia Saiyed
Fauzia Saiyed is Muslim faith volunteer who recently completed her BA in psychology and is currently working as a research assistant for on a project on child development. She is interested by Islamic history and knowledge, and is currently learning from classes in Islamic jurisprudence and theology. One of the eye-opening experiences that caused her to seek Islamic knowledge was a class on innovation and creativity in Islam. Since then, she has begun to explore how religion and spirituality intersects with other parts of life, not as discrete categories which interact but as nuanced overlapping and often merging concepts. In particular, she is curious to learn more about the ways that wellness and spirituality come together holistically and is excited to hear different perspectives in Discover Spirituality about the various ways this relationship may manifest itself.
Morgan Sweeney
Morgan is a fourth year cognitive science student with a minor in communication studies. Her spiritual journey started her senior year of high school, when she started taking yoga classes at a community center in her neighborhood. Over the last four years, Morgan has developed a dedicated Ashtanga yoga practice which has changed her life. Morgan wanted to share this experience with others, so she enrolled in a 200-hour teacher training course in Costa Rica in February 2017. After returning to McGill, she founded the McGill Yoga Club, a place where students can come no matter their experience and learn from devoted teachers, with the goal of maximizing accessibility. This is her second year teaching the Spiritual Side of Yoga Class with MORSL. Morgan is most excited for the opportunity for like-minded people to celebrate their spiritual connection with themselves and whatever they believe in.
Panel B - Religion and the Environment: Foundations for Action
Our keynote panel focuses on what faith communities bring to environmental movements, different theological views of the relationship to the environment, and whether it is possible to apply theology or spiritual philosophy to the climate action movement.
Panelists
Maddy Evans
Maddy Evans is a second year student at McGill University pursuing a degree in Honors Political Science and double minoring in Arabic and Spanish. Originally from Essex, Connecticut in the USA, on campus she serves as the VP Tzedek/Social Action for the Jewish, egalitarian student-run club Am McGill. Maddy is passionate about social justice and activism and she promotes environmentally sustainable efforts through her executive role in Am McGill. She is really looking forward to hearing from new, diverse perspectives and learning from her fellow panelists at Discover Spiritual McGill.
Lucas Garrett
Lucas Garrett is currently completing the last semester of a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and World Religions. Before commencing his studies in Montreal, Lucas would spend his time reveling in the abundantly alive woods and waters of his island home in the Pacific Northwest. Here in the city he seeks only to prove that this enchantment is indeed everywhere, if we were only to have eyes to see. It is this mission which informs his research into ontologies, religious and otherwise, which might present alternatives to the disenchantment of a contemporary anthropocentric capitalism which privileges the wealth and wellness of the individual over the dignity and vitality of all beings everywhere. To this end, he is particularly interested in Buddhist phenomenologies of compassion, and how the possibility for intuitive realization of such compassion might contribute to a radical vision of ecological action and care as an essential responsibility.
Sean McGrath
Sean McGrath is a philosopher and theologian who researches and teaches at Memorial University in Newfoundland, but is a visiting Religious Studies professor at McGill for the 2019-2020 school year. After five years in a contemplative Christian monastic community, McGrath studied philosophy and theology at the University of Toronto, the University of Freiburg, and the Christian Theological Academy in Warsaw. He earned a doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Toronto in 2002 and a doctorate in Theology from the Christian Theological Academy in 2018. In the interim years he undertook psychoanalytical training at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. McGrath is a specialist in the philosophy of religion, which he applies in many different, interdisciplinary ways, including in fields as diverse as psychoanalysis and ecology. He is interested in finding out more about “Spiritual McGill” and is particularly interested in how environmentalism is evolving into a form of earth-centred spirituality among many young people.
David Summerhays
David Summerhays describes himself as a Quaker extraordinaire, and he is finishing a master's degree in political science at UQAM in conservatism. To pay for muffins, these days he teaches piano and he also tunes them. He is the Quaker liaison for MORSL and he was also involved with Divest McGill, a campaign to divest McGill of fossil fuels, for a number of years. Ever since he became a faith liaison, he’s been amazed how nice it is to dialog with people of other faiths and talk about religion with people. Such a wonderful chance to talk about what matters and how to live meaningfully.
Jacqueline Lee-Tam
Jacqueline Lee-Tam is a climate justice organizer who grew up on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, colonially known as Vancouver, B.C. She has been involved with the resistance to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion since 2014 and since moving to Tio’tia:ke/Montreal, has been organizing with Divest McGill and Climate Justice Montreal. She studies Gender, Sexuality, Feminist and Social Justice Studies and with a double minor in Economics and Environment. Her spiritual upbringing has set the foundations for her commitment to the justice aspect of climate and environmental advocacy and she is curious about the role of collective healing and community building at the intersection of spirituality and environmental and climate work.
Panel C - Faith in Action: Religious Communities Engaged in Social Justice
Discussion around the diverse areas of social justice movements that faith communities are working in, and ponder what unique perspectives faith movements can contribute to equity-based movements.
Panelists
Adriana Cabrera-Cleves
Adriana has served as Director of the Inter-religious Affairs Bureau-External Affairs of the Bahá’í Community in Montreal since 2012. Adriana is a curator, museologist, researcher, and consultant in human rights, social justice with extensive international experience. She is interested in investigating the challenges and prospects for strengthening human rights and for meeting future challenges to advance equality and social justice through the study of museums devoted to human rights issues. Her perspective also responds to the need of developing an effective system of global justice with international institutions as part of an evolutionary process and the necessity of building a spiritualized world culture that will enable human dignity to be realized. Adriana is now pursuing a doctoral degree in Social and Cultural Analysis (Sociology and Anthropology) at Concordia University. She holds an M.A. in Museology from the Amsterdam University of the Arts-Reinwardt Academy, Netherlands. She also holds a Graduate specialization in Cultural Management from the Universidad del Rosario and B.A. in Social Communication and Journalism from the Universidad Javeriana, Colombia.
Jaz Hellman
Jaz is a fourth year student double majoring in Software Engineering and International Development and double minoring in Social Entrepreneurship and Arabic Language. She is the co-Founder and former president of Am McGill, a student led Jewish organization on campus dedicated to inclusion. She is passionate about social justice and particularly interested in the possibilities emerging technologies have to aid in solving social issues around us. She cannot separate social action and her religion; they are intertwined, reinforcing the other as key components of her identity.
Jon Waind
Jon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theological Studies at Concordia University. He researches and teaches on the intersection of religious ethics and public life. Jon’s main research and teaching interest is in in philosophical and theological approaches to human vulnerability and social issues proceeding from that basic condition.
Sophia Winkler
Sophia is a graduating Honors International Development Studies student at McGill. She is originally from Amelia Island, Florida and was raised in the Unitarian Universalist religious tradition. Sophia is particularly interested in social issues affecting families and LGBT communities.
Videos
Panel A - Sacredness of Self
The intersection of faith-based rituals and practices with the main tenets of self-care, and how the love of a creator might translate to the love of the self.
Topics
- Spirituality's Impact on Wellness - Dr. Ghadirian
- Spirituality's Impact on Wellness - Morgan Sweeney
- Can Mental Wellness Thrive Without Spirituality?
- Extreme Secularism and Anxiety
Spirituality's Impact on Wellness - Dr. Ghadirian
How has religion or spirituality positively affected your own overall wellness (mentally, physically, emotionally)?
Spirituality's Impact on Wellness - Morgan Sweeney
How has religion or spirituality positively affected your own overall wellness (mentally, physically, emotionally)?
Can Mental Wellness Thrive Without Spirituality?
Do you think it is possible for someone to be fully mentally and emotionally well without spirituality?
Extreme Secularism and Anxiety
Do you think high levels of stress, anxiety and depression among university students are a result of extreme secularism?
Photos
