Next Meeting: April 12th, 2011
Time: 9:30 am
Location: H.R. MacMillian Planetarium and Space Centre
Topic: Extremists: Jewish, Christian, Muslim-will they run our lives?
Don Grayston, born and educated in Vancouver, retired in 2004 from 15 years teaching Religious Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. During the last three of these years he also served as director of the Institute for the Humanities. An Anglican priest, he is co -director (with Lois Huey-Heck) of the Pacific Jubilee Program in Spiritual Formation and Spiritual Direction (founded in 1988), and is past chair of Jubilee Associates, the network linking the four Jubilee programs across Canada.
In 2006, he became freshly aware of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This awareness resulted in the development of Building Bridges Vancouver (interspiritualcentre.org/ bbv.html), a public education program which showcases the work of those seeking through education, art, personal encounter and community development to bridge the Israeli-Palestinian divide.
Past president of the Thomas Merton Society of Canada and of the International Thomas Merton Society, he continues to be active in Merton scholarship. Since 1972 he has been actively engaged in the study of Merton, whom he sees as a very important and paradigmatic figure in contemporary religion, spirituality, culture and politics. Other academic interests include Gandhi, the Holocaust, pilgrimage and interfaith dialogue. In the fall of 2011, he will be teaching an interdisciplinary course on Jerusalem for the Seniors Program at SFU Harbour Centre. Personal interests include singing in a community choir, Shakespeare, struggling with Italian, and riding his bike.