History of Events
The Ruah community has co-hosted and collaborated in creating a number of public events and workshops over the past several years.
Our aim is always to further eco-spiritual understanding, i.e. who are we humans within this evolving Earth story? Where are the opportunities for our species to lean into whole thinking, balanced systems, creative edge, greater love? How do we re-invent ourselves, re-embed ourselves as creatures among other creatures? How do we nurture maturity at the species level?
We hope you'll consider joining us whenever our next 'project' inspires us! Check back here for future updates.
On October 28-29, 2016, in collaboration with The University of Toronto’s Emmanual College, Ruah hosted Loving the World: Eco-Economic Shake Up. It was a weekend workshop with Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, an international lecturer in theology, ethics, economic and climate justice, and author of Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation. Her voice rang out with such integrity and clarity that all who attended were challenged to a deeper self-honesty, to see “empire” and its hidden violence, to research resources and avenues for action to address climate injustice.
Photo: Christian ethicist and International Lecturer Cynthia Moe Lobeda
At the celebration of Ruah's 20th anniversary on May 24, 2015, we were honoured to welcome as our guest speaker Dr. Stephen Scharper from The School of the Environment and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. His areas of research include religious ethics and the environment, religion and social movements, biotechnology, human rights, and globalization. Among other publications, including his columns for the Toronto Star, he is the author of For Earth’s Sake: Towards a Compassionate Ecology. That Sunday, with Stephen’s insight, humour and sense of joyful occasion, the Ruah circle was full to bursting with guests and former members of our community.
Photo: University of Toronto's Professor Stephen Scharper
In November, 2014, Ruah assisted in the successful promotion (through securing a bank of tickets) of an evening with Alanna Mitchell at the Theatre Centre on Queen West. Alanna is an award-winning, freelance science writer, an investigative reporter and a contributor to CBC’s Quirks and Quarks. Her solo, deeply personal performance that evening was based on her international best-seller, Sea Sick: The Global Ocean in Crisis, in which she discovers the secrets of the ocean, faces her inner demons and finds hope. The launching point for her dramatic monologue was “… the ocean contains the switch of life. Not land, not the atmosphere. The ocean. And that switch can be turned off.”
Photo: Science Writer and Performer Alanna Mitchell
We seek to know and partner with other communities who share our growing awareness of ecological crisis. On November 16, 2013, in collaboration with Dominican Seminars, a Catholic educational organization, and Friends House, a Quaker faith community, Ruah presented a dramatic reading of The De Chardin Project. The reading was a Dora Award winning play that illuminated the life and teaching of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. It was read by the original cast of Adam Sybold and Kate Fenton.
Photo: paleontologist, theologian and mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin