HHS Presents Second Annual Symposium on Spirituality and the Environment

Congregation Har HaShem presents its second annual Symposium on Spirituality and the Environment on Sunday, April 8, 2018.  This year’s Symposium is focusing on bringing people of together to explore perspectives on environmentalism from Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Native American Tradition.  The keynote address will have a focus on the Native American perspective, and spiritual and cultural relationship to land and environment.

This event, held at Har HaShem from 2:00 – 6:00 pm, is free and open to the public. Kindly RSVP here by April 5th.

Keynote Speaker:

Suzanne Benally (Navajo and Santa Clara Tewa from New Mexico)

Suzanne is the executive director of Cultural Survival, an Indigenous rights advocacy organization working worldwide to support implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Prior to assuming her current post, Benally served as the associate vice president for academic affairs and special advisor to the President for diversity, at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She was a core faculty member in environmental studies and a former chair of the Environmental Studies department.

Before starting at Naropa University in 1999, Benally was the interim executive director and director of education programs at the American Indian Science and Engineering Society. She also worked as director of the Institute on Ethnic Diversity at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.

Benally is committed to social justice and human rights. She expresses her personal and professional interests in hearing the stories that come from the people and the land, “stories which defines us to be human and which shapes our humanity”.

 

Additional Teachers and Panelists:

Dr. Scott Powell (Catholicism)

Dr. Powell oversees the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought where he teaches theology, podcasts, writes, organizes the Institute’s annual lecture series and is a resource for CU-Boulder students looking for answers about their Catholic faith. He has also taught at Denver’s Augustine Institute, and has spent the last decade teaching Scripture to groups of all ages. He and his wife Annie are the founders and directors of Camp Wojtyla, a Catholic adventure program for youth. Scott completed his Ph.D at Maryvale Institute/Liverpool Hope University in England. He wrote on Ecology and St. Paul. Scott and his wife Annie live outside of Boulder with their children Lily, Samuel, and Evelyn.

 

David Loy (Buddhism)

David Robert Loy is a professor, writer, and Zen teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism. His essays and books have been translated into many languages. His articles appear regularly in the pages of major journals such as Tikkun and Buddhist magazines including Tricycle, Turning Wheel, Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma, as well as in a variety of scholarly journals. David lectures nationally and internationally on various topics, focusing primarily on the encounter between Buddhism and modernity: what each can learn from the other. He is especially concerned about social and ecological issues.

 

 

Rabbi Fred Greene (Judaism)

Rabbi Greene has been serving as the spiritual leader of Congregation Har HaShem since 2015. His background includes a wide range of leadership roles in nonprofit organizations dealing with social justice issues, strengthening the Jewish community, youth engagement, and more. He was ordained from the New York campus of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2001, and remains an active member of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

 

 

 

Moderator:

The Reverend Fletcher Harper, Executive Director of GreenFaith

Fletcher is an Episcopal priest and GreenFaith’s Executive Director. Under his leadership, GreenFaith has developed innovative programs linking religious belief and practice to the environment. An award-winning spiritual writer and nationally-recognized preacher on the environment, he teaches and speaks at houses of worship from a range of denominations in nationally and internationally about the moral, spiritual basis for environmental stewardship and justice. An Ashoka Fellow and author of GreenFaith: Mobilizing God’s People to Protect the Planet (Abingdon Press, 2015), Fletcher served as a parish priest for ten years and in leadership positions in the Episcopal Church before becoming GreenFaith’s leader.

 

 

Agenda:

2:00     Welcome, Introduction

2:15     Keynote Speaker (Sanctuary)

3:00     Attendees will select and move to one of the four breakout sessions:

Buddhism

Catholicism

Judaism

Native American tradition

 

4:45     Panel Discussion (Sanctuary)

6:00     Conclusion