Calendar of events
Here you will find all of our congregation’s Sunday services, Board and Committee meetings and other events. Use the calendar controls to see events for past or future dates. For a quick look at recent Sunday services, click here!
Speaker: Kim Dawson
This three question song lyric sticks with me. What do you believe – really believe deeply – is your purpose in life? Why are you here on this planet at this specific time? I want to explore the idea that we all have something to contribute – by choice or by force. We have something to “do” during this lifetime. I want to question two contradictory assumptions inherent in this idea. One is the backward-looking scientific, objective belief in a reality we hold in common. Another is the forward-looking, subjective belief in an uncertain, creative, and ever more complex, equally real sci-fi future. How do we manage this paradoxical journey through time? Bottom-line: Be they short or long, these lives will pass. As individuals who reckon with what our species has done, what are we? What is left of ourselves and what is right with us when these temporary bodies go?
Bio: I have always been inspired by trying to understand what’s going on, so I pushed education to the hilt earning a B.Sc. from UBC and an M.A. and Ph.D., all in neuroscience from the University of Waterloo. Since then, I have enjoyed trying to keep up with exciting new brain imaging studies and unified theories that pertain to understanding our place and time in this life and the role of psychotherapy in personal development. After a wedding and a two-year stint counselling young offenders with substance use, I started a career in clinical psychology that continues to this day. Valuing nature, I have taken two paths. As co-founder of the compassionate charity Warm Hearts Pet Safe Havens, I work with my wife Jan to help women and pets escape abuse. As a licensed psychologist, I offer integrative self-therapy through animal-assisted and transpersonal pathways.