Forty Minute Forum – September 30, Donald Grayston

Forty Minute Forums

A chance to engage with intelligent and articulate people who have something entertaining, stimulating or challenging to say to Cathedral parishioners and friends. Our diverse speakers are from: the arts, including drama, writing, television, film; government and politics; religion; education; not-for-profit organizations; etc. Free admission, free beverages. Sundays, 9:15AM, in the Park Room.

On September 30th you are invited to join Donald Grayston

Topic: The painting? That’s me, when I’m 75.

Don Grayston’s spiritual journey has been marked by a series of epiphanies, in which a painting he bought in 1972 holds a central place. He will start the story with his first time at Camp Artaban, when he was 13, share how the figure in his painting (it’s on his website: donaldgrayston.ca) spoke to him, and try to explain why he so often wept in the presence of beautiful old men.

About Donald Grayston
Don Grayston is a retired priest of the diocese and a cathedral parishioner. Born in Vancouver in 1939, he was educated here and in Toronto, in the UK, the US and Switzerland, Ordained in 1963, he worked in parishes, adult education, marriage and family life education and theological education, receiving his PhD in 1980. In 1985, a time of high nuclear anxiety, he started the Shalom Institute, out of which has come the Pacific Jubilee Program in Spiritual Direction. Between 1989 and 2004 he taught at SFU, retiring as director of the Institute for the Humanities. Successively president of the Thomas Merton Society of Canada and the International Thomas Merton Society, he sees Merton as the outstanding spiritual guide for Christians of our time.

Since 2008, he has been involved in the work of Building Bridges Vancouver, which showcases the work of those who seek to help us bridge the Israeli-Palestinian divide.