Sacred Balance Project

Canadian Interfaith Conversation Series

With roughly 50% of Canadians claiming a religious affiliation and 27,000 faith buildings centrally located in communities across the country, it is imperative that Canada’s faith sector join the fight to address the problem of climate destabilization.

In Canada, while progressive religious denominations (ex., United Church of Canada) and faith-based ecological justice organizations (ex., CPJ, Khaleafa, KAIROS, Shoresh) have played important roles in galvanizing their respective networks to prioritize “Creation Care,” strong, diverse, religious voices have been largely invisible from the national conversation on climate. This, despite the fact that all religious traditions share obligations around earth care.

Change will only happen when we have a range of voices from across the spectrum of Canadian society. A 2022 Census Canada Report says that in 2021, after Christianity, Islam was the second most commonly reported religion in Canada, with nearly 1.8 million, or 1 in 20, people. Close to 2.3% of the total population reported an affiliation to Hinduism. Like Muslims, the proportion of the population with Hinduism as its religion has more than doubled in the last 20 years, and is up from 1.0% in 2001. The share of the population who reported Sikhism as its religion also more than doubled since 2001, from 0.9% to 2.1% in 2021. About 770,000 people reported Sikhism as their religion in the 2021 Census. Approximately 335,000 people reported being Jewish in 2021 and close to 360,000 people, or 1.0% of Canada's population, reported Buddhism as their religion, the same percentage as in the 2001 Census.

We need faithful voices to communicate to their communities the urgent need to protect a life-supporting climate. To this end, Faith & the Common Good created a series of webinars titled “An Interfaith Conversation”. To-date, four webinars have been produced…

Webinars

Voices From the West : An Interfaith Conversation October 12

Western Canadians of diverse faith backgrounds are addressing climate change and taking action to protect the environment. The fourth webinar in our Climate Narratives series, Voices from the West centred the climate change conversation in the complex Western Canadian context. Speakers were: 

• Abhay Singh Sachal, a 20-year old Canadian humanitarian whose work resides at the intersection of climate change, ecoanxiety, mental health, and spirituality. Abhay is the founder of Break The Divide, a non-profit organization based on principles of environmentalism, sustainability, and reconciliation that focuses on fostering empathy and understanding to inspire action projects in communities.
• Dave Saude is a retired Lutheran pastor and certified Laudato Si Animator who has served parishes in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Manitoba
• Alouette Sisters:
• Catherine Hembling, a 45 year member of the Unitarian Universalists and a 20 year buddhist practitioner. She became a volunteer with Protect the Planet in 2018, and began attending monthly Earth Witness worship meetings, out of doors, near the Sleil Waututh WatchHouse.
• Ruth Walmsley, a member of the Religious Society of Friends - AKA the Quakers. She took a stand for climate justice and was arrested for engaging in spiritually rooted non-violent civil disobedience as part of a multi-faith prayer circle with Catherine and Janette.
• Janette McIntosh, community engager in intercultural, ecumenical & interfaith justice work via health & sustainability community education and research. Janette is a volunteer with KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives. The Alouettes all live on the unceded traditional lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, also known as Vancouver, B.C.

Leaders shared the unique challenges and opportunities they've experienced as they work to build community across lines of difference, maintain hope, and protect the land. Access the recording here.

Youth-Led Climate Action: An Interfaith Conversation June 8

Young Canadians of diverse faith-backgrounds are addressing climate change and taking action to protect the environment. We heard from speakers concerning how climate change impacts young people today and learned about their efforts to find solutions. Youth-Led Climate Action was the third webinar in our Climate Narratives webinar series to raise awareness around faith-based responses to environmental issues and inspire urgent action. Guest speakers were: Aleyxa Gates Julien-  Faithful Footprints PR/Communications Coordinator, Moriyah Kleiman - Student/Junior Economist, and Nazish Qureshi - Sustainability Consultant. Speakers addressed the following two questions: Why did you start to care about the environment and climate change? How does your faith or values inspire you to care for the environment? How do you align your faith or values with your climate action? Access the recording here.

Sacred Water: An Interfaith Conversation March 22

On World Water Day, we were honoured to have Mary Anne Caibaiosai, Anishnaabe water walker, Dr. Romila Verma, Founding Director at Water Speaks and Lecturer at the University of Toronto, and Sukhvinder Kaur Vinning, Decolonization Consultant and FCG board member join us. Our guest speakers created a space for value-based conversation on what different faith or spiritual traditions teach us about the sacredness of water and how we can connect more deeply with it. Access the recording here. 

Taking Action on Climate Change: An Interfaith Conversation February 2

On the occasion of World Interfaith Harmony Week, this virtual event brought together guest speakers from Canadian faith-based environmental organizations to share how their faith's environmental stewardship beliefs have influenced their climate actions.

Speakers were: Roop Sidhu, President at EcoSikh, Areej Riaz, Director of Climate Programs at EnviroMuslims, Agnes Richard, Coordinator at Mouvement Laudato Si’ Movement Canada, and Sabrina Malach, Director of Engagement at Shoresh. They addressed the following two questions: How does your faith or values inspire you to care for our common home? How do you align your faith or values with your climate action? Access the recording here.

Funded by Clean Economy Fund (CEF), this project particularly supports CEFs charitable object “To educate and increase the public’s understanding of the environment and its importance by offering courses, seminars, conferences and meetings and by collecting and disseminating information on that topic.”

Thanks to our funder!

Acknowledgement

Thank you to our Partners and Funders

Our new Cultivating Care for Our Common Home program seeks to strengthen efforts to renew the sacred balance in our interrelated world. In his 2015 letter, Laudato Si’, Pope Francis addresses every person living on this planet and appeals for a new dialogue and a new solidarity that includes everyone in the work of caring for our common home. He calls the world’s attention to a growing ecological and social imbalance that results in destructive impacts felt to the greatest extent by those who are most vulnerable — people struggling with poverty, future generations, and our wider family of living beings. Pope Francis names the roots of this imbalance as a profound ethical, cultural, and spiritual crisis. In response, he invites all of us to “set out on the long path of renewal” (Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ #202, 14, 119, 161…).

The Cultivating Care for Our Common Home program offers interactive presentations, workshops, and collaboration to Catholic parishes and other interested groups in Toronto who would like to explore and respond more deeply to Pope Francis’ call that everyone living on the planet actively engage in caring for our common home.

Program activities invite participants to cultivate care for our common home by:

• preparing the ground of one’s heart in prayer;
• developing ecological awareness, practices, and spirituality;
• fostering the growth of a culture of care, especially for the vulnerable;
• seeking and deepening relationships for neighbourhood, ecumenical, and interfaith collaboration.
   

For program information and booking please contact the coordinator Karen Van Loon at [email protected].

“The gravity of the ecological crisis demands that we all look to the common good…” 
Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ #201.

2022

Indigenous Canada- FCG Network Study Group

Image credit: Indigenous Canada Coursera

“We say where the sacred spirit, kîsikâw’pîsim, comes up, it makes a light and then it goes down over here. That light it makes, we call that event, kîsikâw…and it's a spirit, a spiritual event... And so..the vulgar translation is daytime... But our interpretation is that it is an event which is a time for spirit… What we do is, we observe this life with this apparatus, one of the seven holes in our head. We call this, miskîsik…And, it's a tool to help me to observe the spirit. The spiritual event.” – Reuben Quinn, Program Coordinator at Centre for Race & Culture.

FCG is committed to participating in the TRCA Calls to Action Education for Reconciliation. This year, as part of our reconciliACTION, we have started hosting a bi-weekly discussion group for Indigenous Canada, an online course that is offered by the University of Alberta. 

The course itself is divided into 12 modules, the first module beginning with historical Indigenous worldviews, and the significance of stories and storytelling in Indigenous societies.

Over the next few months and ending in July, we will be learning together about Indigenous and settler perspectives of treaty making, the variation of treaties in Canada and how they came about. We will examine Indigenous legal traditions and the ways in which the Indian Act contributed to assimilation.

Our group will become familiar with the characteristics of teaching and learning in Indigenous communities (relationships were fundamental). We will be digging deeper into the development and implementation of the Residential school system in the period after Confederation, and we will be learning about the intergenerational impact of the Residential school system and the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Other significant areas of learning and discussion covered by the modules include information on the sovereignty of lands, Aboriginal title, and rights to land. We will learn about current and on-going threats to Indigenous lands and how these threats and challenges are being addressed as well as Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge.

There is a module dedicated to Indigenous women that explores the concepts of gender, and the traditional roles and responsibilities, and underlines how colonization can be characterized as a gendered project, giving examples of the impact of colonialism on Indigenous women.

We will get into the mindset of Indigenous societies concerning what community means and look at answers to how Indigenous people form communities, traditionally and today. This module will demonstrate how social and environmental activism can mobilize and create communities; it also points to key moments that include the Oka Crisis, Idle No More and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls–grassroots resistance movements.

Throughout the course, our group will be gaining a deeper understanding of the impact of historical and ongoing colonialism on Indigenous societies as well as learning more about past and current Indigenous resistance and leadership and exploring concepts that include self-government, self-determination, and Indigenous resurgence.

Hosted in a space of mutual respect, our meetings are conducted in a spirit of open-mindedness and true inquiry and we will be sharing our learnings on our social media platforms, to engage even more of our followers in this critical moment in time.

2021

Maamawi Revisited

Live from the Victoria Park Pavillion - Kitchener, Ontario	Musicians at Victoria Park Pavillion - Kitchener, Ontario

This project was undertaken by our GSS Chapter, Divest Waterloo, in partnership with Pins and Needles Fabric Company, an “Intersectional Inter-Arts Collective” and Crow Shield Lodge. The project involved land based workshops (funded by the Community Foundation) that were held in the woods at Crow Shield Lodge Indigenous Healing Centre to connect the artists with each other, their mentors, elders and knowledge keepers. Crow Shield Lodge is a particularly cultivated space for Indigenous teachings and connections visioned and realized by the urban Indigenous community in Block two of the Haldimand tract where there are facilities that encourage traditional culturally-based relationship building, to foster cooperation and collaboration and creating support.
Participants spent time in the woods together and alone, listening and learning. They were also supported to develop their songs during one of these workshops by accomplished Indigenous studio musicians. Numerous online coaching sessions followed in advance of the final performance.
These focused on preparing the emerging artists to perform and to share their stories. The final performance was funded by the City of Kitchener and held indoors at the City’s Victoria Park Pavilion in December 2021.

Land-based Healing (Faith Food Forest)

Planting at Crow Shield Lodge, Kitchener 2021	Planting at Crow Shield Lodge

Divest Waterloo ran a year-long project with diverse faith communities to grow food forests on their properties. The project culminated in a plant-in at Crow Shield Lodge, with groups participating in planting. Through Indigenous land-based healing and education, Crow Shield Lodge has as its mission "to walk alongside those who are in need of healing.” It offers connection and belonging to a community that is committed to responsible land stewardship.

“With settlers, land is all about ownership, not about stewardship, “ says founder Clarence Cachagee. “When you make that connection with the land, you make a deeper connection with yourself.” 

He believes that while we are in the time of truths and that “there has to be more truths discussed before reconciliation,” Crow Shield’s vision is to support reconciliation between Indigenous and settler communities in the region. “We hope that people can become our allies. Allyship is action.”

Read on here.

2019

Waterloo Story Telling Project

Debaj Storytellers preparing cedar tea

Organized by Divest Waterloo, the Waterloo Storytelling Project brought together Indigenous theatre creators Debajehmujig Theatre Group (Debaj) in a weeklong community-wide learning opportunity about climate justice. The project culminated in Maamawi, a cocreated theatre show that incorporated the stories that Debaj heard in Kitchener/Waterloo region with traditional teachings about our relationships with each other and
with the land led by the Indigenous storytelling experts and a local advisory circle lead by Amy Smoke and local Indigenous theatre artist and community animator, Heather Majaury.

2018

The Chemical Valley Project

On stage after performance of Chemical Valley Project

In 2018, we assisted in bringing performances of The Chemical Valley Project to various locations.

The Chemical Valley Project: Protest. Performance. Reconciliation. - an innovative documentary-theatre performance telling the story of a small
Indigenous community smothered by Canada’s petrochemical industry in our own backyard.

Faith & the Common Good was proud to sponsor performances of Broadleaf Theatre’s "The Chemical Valley Project”, an innovative
documentary-theatre performance telling the story of Aamjiwnaang First Nation’s struggle against Canada’s petrochemical industry. The performances, held at the Registry Theatre In Kitchener(March 2018) and at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Toronto (November 2018), sparked conversations on Canadian environmental policy, environmental racism, treaty rights and Indigenous relations, as well as the current
nature of Canadian identity and values.
Deep thanks to Broadleaf’s Kevin Wong & Julia Howman, Divest Waterloo’s Laura Hamilton and Indigenous Climate Action’s Andrea Bastien for helping us make these performances possible.

2017

Sacredness of Water

Great Lakes Water Walk with Anishinaabeg Grandmothers, 2017

We have been working with the Sacred Water Circle in central Ontario for a number of years, helping to bring attention to the sacredness of water and our role as stewards of water protection. Inspired by traditional Indigenous teachings and leading with hope and spiritual courage, the Sacred Water Circle sees a restored relationship between human communities and water.

Through these relationships, we became one of the founding partners in the Great Lakes Water Walk, held in Toronto in September 2017. The Great Lakes Water Walk invited people from all backgrounds to join Indigenous Grandmothers, Knowledge Holders and Elders to share and re-awaken our commitment to safeguarding the water by walking together along the Toronto waterfront. By sharing the Indigenous practice of honouring and giving thanks to those same Lakes, The Great Lake Water Walk was an invitation to pause and reflect upon what we can do individually and collectively to ensure the health and well-being of our waters for generations to come. Read on here.

In September 2017, Faith & the Common Good continued its work on allyship as an organizing partner in the first annual Great Lakes Water Walk.

2016

Annual Forum

Our 2016 annual forum focused on bridging two areas that are deeply important to our members — reconciliation with First Peoples and climate justice. Many in our interfaith network want to work more closely with First Nations communities on local climate issues, but aren’t sure how to go about it. This forum (and its action oriented follow-up work) was designed to create connections to support one another in the challenge of caring for our natural environment and what Indigenous allyship would mean. The forum was held in Waterloo, Ontario and hosted by Faith & the Common Good, Divest Waterloo, the Green Awakening Network  and the Centre for Public Ethics at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, with funding support from the Justice and Reconciliation Fund of the United Church of Canada.

We need to return to the original relationships. That was the repeated message heard at the forum. These relationships involve taking care of Mother Earth in tandem with revisiting the cordial, peaceful beginnings of our settlers’ and first peoples’ interactions.

Read Indigenous Allyship is about relationships.

Click here for the full conference video, which includes bookmarks to direct you to individual speakers (under SHOW MORE).