Date/Time
Date(s) - November 22, 2022
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Location
St. Mark's College
Categories No Categories
Climate change and other ecological crises are not future threats but current reality. A growing number of people, particularly children, now experience “eco-anxiety.” How we respond to the challenges afflicting the Earth is a matter of intergenerational justice for today’s children and for the next generations of young ones. But what can children teach us about how we respond to these challenges? Dr. Greg Kennedy will explore how the enchantment that children find in the world can help us live with the Earth more wisely and carefully.
In the second part of the talk, Dr. John Martens will consider what can we learn from Jesus’ teaching on children with respect to ecological concerns of children today. What parallels exist between the way children live in the 21st century and how they lived in the 1st century? Jesus’ teaching on children taught us not only to learn from them, but proclaimed them as model disciples. Are we actually listening to children today? Are we learning from them as Jesus taught us to do?
OUR SPEAKERS:
Dr. Greg Kennedy
Greg Kennedy practices the joyful disciplines of poetry, spiritual direction, retreat leadership and farming on the graceful land of the Ignatius Jesuit Centre in Guelph, Ontario.
A Ph.D. in philosophy and a Masters in theology allow him to question lovingly both Heaven and Earth. Inspired by the Spirit that moves through all faiths, he finds his belief instructed by a diversity of lived wisdoms.
Greg is the author of several books, including An Ontology of Trash (SUNY Press 2006); Reupholstered Psalms volumes I-III (Novalis 2020-2022); and Amazing Friendships between Animals and Saints (Novalis 2021).
Dr. John W. Martens
John Martens holds a PhD in religious studies from McMaster University. He is a biblical scholar, professor of theology, and director of the Centre for Christian Engagement at St. Mark’s College, the affiliated Catholic College at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, BC.
He is the author of three volumes of The Word on the Street with Liturgical Press. These books emerged from his long running scripture column at America magazine “The Word.” He has also written extensively on children in early Christianity, including “Let the Little Children Come to Me”: Childhood and Children in Early Christianity (CUA Press 2009) with Cornelia Horn and Children and Methods: Listening To and Learning From Children in the Biblical World (Brill 2020) with Kristine Henriksen Garroway.
Will last night’s talk be available on YouTube? I would love for my Ignatian spirituality group to have access to it. Thanks. Del
Hello Del:
Thanks for getting in touch. You will have to go directly to St. Mark’s to find out. (Church for Vancouver posts a wide range of events, but is not directly involved with them.)
Blessings, Flyn