Conference Guide – Saturday, March 3, 2007

Location: 1825 W. 16th Avenue, Vancouver, BC

Sponsored by the Thomas Merton Society of Canada & Canadian Memorial Church
& Centre for Peace

KEYNOTE ADDRESS—Finding Hope in a Time of Despair
9:00 – 10:15 am, Great Hall

Thomas Merton was a prophet for his own time and remains a prophet for our historical moment as well. He was also a man of faith, hope, and love—an imperfect human being, without doubt, but one who continually worked at the integration of his spirituality and his politics. He speaks strongly over the decades since his death, and calls his readers and hearers in our time to the same ancient verities: faith, love, and in particular, at this time, to a robust and lively hope in what for many is only a time of despair.

Donald Grayston is an Anglican priest, a spiritual director, and co-director of the Pacific Jubilee Program in Spiritual Formation and Spiritual Direction. In 2004 he retired from undergraduate teaching and as Director of the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University. He is past president of the Thomas Merton Society of Canada.

1. Despair and Empowerment as Our Earth is Heating Up (Great Hall)
Canadians’ concern about the environment has become the number one political and moral issue. For many of us it is easy to become overwhelmed and feel powerless. Some perspectives, based on the work of Joanna Macy and from Thomas Merton, will be offered to help people find that their emotional response to this current crisis is a source of empowerment. The Environment Ministry at Canadian Memorial United Church will offer ways to take action on the Earth’s behalf.

Toni Pieroni, MA, RCC, is a Registered Clinical Counselor in private practice. She leads group retreats in eco-psychology, volunteers at The David Suzuki Foundation, serves on the board of the Earth Revival Society, and belongs to the Canadian Memorial United Church Environmental Ministry (CMUC). Russ Quinn is chair of the CMUC Environmental Ministry.

2. Christian Humanism and the Roots of Peace in Thomas Merton (Fireside Room)
Steeped in classical humanism, Merton came to Christianity with a sense of dignity of the human spirit, a dignity that issued primarily from reason. Merton was always optimistic about the proper uses of reason including its use in negotiating human conflicts. He came to recognize, though, that reason was insufficient to deal with beginnings of those conflicts, that Christian love was indispensable in addressing the fear that historically had drive groups and nations into war.
Ross Labrie is the author of several books, including The Art of Thomas Merton, The Writings of Daniel Berrigan, The Catholic Imagination in American Literature and Thomas Merton and the Inclusive Imagination. He is president of the Thomas Merton Society of Canada and a former director of the International Thomas Merton Society.

3. Reclaiming Hope through the Child’s Vision: An Experiential Workshop
 (Youth Centre)
Can the child restore hope in adults? Drawing upon Thomas Merton’s vision of the child and a storytelling performance of Trust, a refugee girl’s story, this experiential workshop will offer creative arts expression activities through which we can create our own stories of hope. 

Karen Gosetti has worked as director of international service and multicultural training programs in Latin America. She lives in Vancouver where she writes children’s stories and performs sacred improv dance, flute, and storytelling. She graduated from Naropa University in Oakland, California with a Master of Arts in Creation Spirituality.

4. The Meaning of Hope (Library)
Using experiences of recent civil disobedience and solidarity action in Vancouver, this interactive session will explore the meaning of hope in relation to social justice struggles, recalling Merton’s prompting to ground any hope in action, in and out of prayer. The following haiku summarizes the session theme: Yearned outcomes resist / despair breaks open wills / prayer summons hope.

Barry Morris is a United Church of Canada minister at the Longhouse Council of Native Ministry in the east end of Vancouver. He is a founder of the annual Advent and Lent Vigils for the Silenced in downtown Vancouver, author of Engaging Urban Ministry,and editor/contributor of The Word on the Street.

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There is no doubt that in the final decade of Thomas Merton’s life he had a passion for peace. What is the connection, though, between Merton’s understanding of peacemaking and the distinctly Canadian peacemaking tradition of J. S. Woodsworth, Mildred Fahmi and George Grant? How does Michael Ignatieff’s thinking fit into our Canadian peacemaking tradition? Does our Canadian peacemaking tradition offer hope in times of despair?

Ron Dart teaches in the Department of Political Science, Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University College of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, BC. He is author of thirteen books that deal with the interface between literature, spirituality and politics. Ron is the political science advisor to the Stephen Leacock home/museum in Orillia, Ontario. He serves on the board of the Thomas Merton Society of Canada.

1. Contemplation in a World of Terror: Bonhoeffer and Merton on Faith and Violence (Great Hall)
We live in a time when religion is often seen as the source of terror and violence, but we forget that thoughtful, reflective belief also remains the only viable bulwark against inhumanity, mostly because genuine religion should be all about what it means to be human. This workshop will provide opportunity to discuss two Christians who have thought deeply about religion, theology and the religious life in times of terror. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) and Thomas Merton (1915-1968) each believed in the social responsibility to uphold humanity in times of terror, a calling which led to inevitable conflict with their theologically grounded pacifism in opposing state violence. The presentations preceding the discussion will compare Bonhoeffer and Merton’s theological convictions regarding  a) the life of prayer,  b) the contemplative life or the necessity of withdrawal from the world, and c) how these two converged to motivate political action.

Lynn Szabo, Associate Professor of English and Chair of Department, Trinity Western University, is a devoted scholar of the poet, mystic, and political activist Thomas Merton.  She is the editor of the first comprehensive selection of Merton’s poetry, In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton and is currently writing a book on Thomas Merton’s poetics. She is also a member of the Board of the International Thomas Merton Society and has served as a Board member of the Thomas Merton Society of Canada.
Jens Zimmermann is Associate Professor of English, Canada Research Chair in Religion, Interpretation & Culture at Trinity Western University. He was recently awarded a prestigious $500,000 Canadian Research Chair for his research on philosophy, theology and literature.  His book, Recovering Theological Hermeneutics: An Incarnational-Trinitarian Theory of Interpretation, has provided a ground-breaking approach to its field. He is currently writing a book on Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

2. ‘We Will Be Joyful Even in the Night’: Thomas Merton’s Struggle with Darkness (Fireside Room)
The image of darkness has long been used in Christian mystical writing to describe certain powerful but difficult experiences of God. In the early 1960s, Thomas Merton drew on this tradition to describe his own struggle with God as he confronted the powers of war, violence and racism all around him. For Merton, the image of darkness evoked both the awful violence of a broken world and the necessary passage through “unknowing” in the spiritual life. This presentation will consider how the language of darkness might help us grapple with the pain and confusion of living in a broken world. It will consider also whether such language might help us deepen our sense of who God is in these challenging times.

Douglas Burton-Christie is professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He is author of The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism and is the editor of Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality.

3. Cultivating Alertness and Action: Preparing Teenagers for Life
in the Modern World (Library)
Thomas Merton was concerned with the destructive tendencies that threatened the welfare of humankind. In our present age, environmental degradation and violence, in the form of terrorism and nuclear proliferation pose dire threats to our future as a civilization.
How can we help youth to become more self-reflective and observant of the world around them? How can we develop a capacity for positive action? This session takes a look at various approaches to education that can help students become more informed through critical thinking. We will also examine how students can develop an environmental consciousness that compels constructive action.

Dave Chang is a teacher at Princess Margaret Secondary School in Surrey. He discovered Thomas Merton as an English Literature undergraduate at Simon Fraser University. Dave lived and worked in Japan where he studied various mystic traditions and began Zen practice.

4. The Way of Engaged Contemplation (Room 201)
The challenges of globalization, postmodernism, and environmental destruction can lead to despair if one is not rooted in a spiritual practice that supports position engagement in the world of human affairs. The traditional spiritual method of contemplation-in-action provides a path to sustain social and political actions that seek to transform our systems and institutions and align them more towards the common good. This talk will explore the way contemplation-in-action grounds hope in the midst of fragmentation and disintegration. The insights and poetry of Thomas Merton will be incorporated within this talk, as will the insights from the engaged Buddhism of Thich Nhat Hanh.

Michael Dallaire has a doctorate in the philosophy of education from the University of Toronto. He is the author of Contemplation in Liberation: A Method for Spiritual Education in the Schools. Michael has worked as a chaplain for over twenty years, and is presently on sabbatical in Vancouver.

5. Responses to Genocide in Our Time (Youth Centre)
Drawing upon the contemplative tradition in Judaism and the contemplative teachings of Thomas Merton, this session will weave together the responses to genocide in our time with references to the abandonment of despair and the pursuit of justice by Holocaust survivors, the implementation of a post-World war legal and ideological firewall against the incendiary nature of hate speech, and an analysis of the Darfur advocacy campaign.

Mark Weintraub is a trial lawyer who has played an advocacy leadership role in the Vancouver and National Jewish community for over twenty-five years. He is currently Chair of the Canadian Jewish Congress Pacific Region and National Chair of CJC Darfur Advocacy. Mark has been a panelist on numerous forums related to social justice issues. Amongst other speaking engagements, he was keynote speaker at the Tokyo Conference on War Crimes which resulted in the publication of Japanese War Crimes: The Search for Justice (Rutgers University, 2003). He received his MA in History of Religion at UBC, and graduated from the University of Toronto Law School.

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Gather for a concluding celebration of hope with reflections and acoustical music by Rob des Cotes and friends.

Rob Des Cotes is a musician, liturgist and pastor at Fairview Baptist Church in Vancouver. He is an active member of Baptist Peacemakers International and a spiritual director with Imago Dei Community (www.imagodeicommunity.ca). Rob also directs Imago’s Vancouver Arts Network, a community of writers, musicians, actors, dancers and visual artists who are in creative dialogue with spiritual issues in the arts, especially as they relate to postmodern culture.

Following the conference today, you are invited to a “Contemplative Communion Service” with Taizé-styled worship featuring meditations from the writings ofThomas Merton at 7 pm at Fairview Baptist Church (1708 W. 16th Ave., between Burrard & Granville).

“The fire of a wild white sun has eaten up
the distance between hope and despair.
Dance in this sun, you tepid idiot.
Wake up and dance in the clarity of
perfect contradictions.”

—Thomas Merton