PAST STORE EVENTS

ideaExchange: The Aqua Books Conversation Series

Aqua Books, in conjunction with st. benedict's table, is pleased to present our award-winning monthly conversation series dealing with issues of faith, life, theology and pop culture. Following is a list of the provocative topics and well-spoken speakers that have graced Aqua Books since January 2005. (Well there were a couple of duds, but I'll never tell which.) You can now listen to the most recent lectures/discussions in their entirety on our podcast page, plus read a few transcripts from older events (also on that page). For upcoming ideaExchange lectures, click here.

Tuesday, November 22/11 7:30pm

How Is Religious Faith Carried into the Public Square?
Former MP Bill Blaikie

Many of us simply assume that faith and politics should never be mixed. In fact if you believe someone like Christopher Hitchens (God is not Good: how religion poisons everything), the further we keep religious faith from the world of politics the better for all of us. But it this really the case? Or are there other ways of thinking about this issue?

Bill Blaikie is an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada, who served as a Member of Parliament from 1979 to 2008 and as Member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 2009 to 2011. He is currently serving with the Faculty of Theology of the University of Winnipeg. He has recently published The Blaikie Report: An Insider’s Look at Faith and Politics, profiled in the November 5 edition of the Winnipeg Free Press.

ideaExchange curator Jamie Howison is a priest of the Anglican Church of Canada and the founding pastor of saint benedict’s table. A graduate of the University of Winnipeg and of Trinity College, Toronto, he has worked in ordained ministry since 1987, serving in parish ministry, as pastoral care at Marymound - a treatment centre for adolescent girls - and as chaplain and dean of residence at St John’s College, Winnipeg. Passionate about cultivating a critical thoughtfulness around issues of faith and theology, Jamie Howison has planned and hosted ideaExchange at Aqua Books since its inception in January 2005. The original concept for iE was the brainchild of singer/songwriter Alana Levandoski.

Tuesday, October 18/11 7:30pm

Jesus Is (not) My Homeboy
Author Jane Barter-Moulaison

Contemporary conceptions of Christ – both within popular culture and Theology – have a tendency to trivialize and distort his significance by conforming his message too comfortably to the prevailing culture. While this is obvious in the case of the “Jesus is my Homeboy” campaign, it is perhaps less so in the ways that contemporary theology tends to treat Jesus primarily as a moral leader or teacher. This presentation will “go deeper” in understanding Christ by looking at some of the ways in which the fourth and early fifth century theologies give us clues to the radical–and precisely political–implications of the Gospel of Christ.

Jane Barter-Moulaison is Associate Professor of Theology and Church History at the University of Winnipeg. She is also a priest in the Diocese of Rupert’s Land. Her forthcoming book, Thinking Christ: Christology and Critics, will be published in Spring 2012 by Fortress Press.

Saturday, February 26/11 7:30pm

The Idea of Religious Freedom, and What it Means
The Canadian Human Rights Museum's Dr. Clint Curle

Saturday, January 22/11 7:30pm

An Evening of Music and Reflection
st. benedict's table Artist-in-Residence Gord Johnson

Gord Johnson, artist-in-residence for saint benedict’s table, will offer an evening of music and reflection. Gord is the author of many of the songs that have become “standards” in our liturgies, with eight of those songs being featured on Steve Bell’s Devotion album.

Saturday December 4/10 7:30pm

A Priest and a Rabbi Walk Into a Story
Rabbi Neal Rose and the Rev. Jamie Howison

Rabbi Neal Rose and Jamie Howison in conversation around how the two traditions have read and understood the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, Genesis 22:1-19. Join us for a conversation born of respect and friendship, as Jamie and Neal speak together about this particularly challenging piece of the textual tradition.

Rabbi Neal Rose is an ordained Rabbi and family therapist. He has taught at both the U of M and U of W, and has been involved with interreligious dialogue for many years.

Saturday October 23/10 7:30pm

Storytelling and the Gospel
U of M's Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture Storyteller-in-Residence Ignatius Mabasa

Ignatius Mabasa is an acclaimed writer and storyteller from Zimbabwe. He has published stories and poems for children and adults in both English and his native language, Shona. His most recent book, The Man, Shaggy Leopard and Jackal and other stories (Lion Press), was nominated for Zimbabwe’s National Arts Merit Award as the best book in the children’s literature category. Mabasa has performed his stories and poems in many countries, and will spend the fall term in Winnipeg as storyteller-in-residence at the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture.

Saturday September 25/10 7:30pm

Facing the (sacred) Fire
Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
Dr. Jon Sears

"I accepted an invitation to volunteer as a Firekeeper during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada event in June 2010. With Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal men, in the Oodena Circle at the Forks, I learned to keep the Sacred Fire that burned during the 4-day event. My reflections on keeping the Sacred Fire are part of how I am facing the truths of Indian Residential Schools’ legacies: truths that are the common heritage of all people in Canada. My reflections begin to make personally meaningful what reconciliation might entail, and what are ways to seek it."

Born and raised in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Dr. Jon Sears now teaches International Development Studies at Menno Simons College, and lives in the Daniel McIntyre neighbourhood with his wife and dog.

Saturday, April 10/10 7:30pm

Evil By Design
Foreign Women, The Femme Fatale and Children’s Bibles
Cameron McKenzie

How are “foreign women” pictured in the typical children’s bible, and what does that communicate to the young reader? Drawing on a series of projected images and illustrations, this presentation will explore the ways in which representations of foreign women and/or ‘evil’ women in children’s bibles continue to mark the otherness of these women. Cameron McKenzie suggests that such illustrations are based in an iconography inherited from a 19th century French tradition of the ‘fille d’Eve’, with its connotations of temptation, eroticism, and evil. Bring along your favourite childhood bible, and see if it fits the bill…

Cameron McKenzie is Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Old Testament at Providence College.

Saturday, March 6/10 7:30pm

Going Sideways
Voluntary Simplicity as an Alternative to Extinction
Author Mark Burch

This presentation introduces the philosophy and practice of voluntary simplicity as an alternative to our headlong rush toward extinction from over-consumption or falling back into poverty and barbarism. Might it be possible to gracefully step aside and strike out along an alternative pathway of personal, spiritual and cultural development?

Mark Burch is an author, educator, and group facilitator. He has practised simple living since the 1960s, and since 1995 has been offering workshops and courses on voluntary simplicity. He is a former lecturer at The University of Winnipeg, former Director of the Campus Sustainability Office, and former Co-Director of the Simplicity Practice and Resource Centre. He has been a featured guest on CBC-TV's Man Alive and What On Earth?, CBC Radio's Ideas, Vision TV’s The Simple Way, and a regular radio columnist on Discovering Simplicity for CBC Winnipeg. Mark has written four books on voluntary simplicity, most recently De-junking: A Tool for Clutterbusting. Mark Burch has taught meditation, intensive journaling, and T’ai-chi. He is a global citizen tending an organic garden who lives in Winnipeg.

Saturday, February 6/10 7:30pm

Totally Pumped
Creating Income Opportunities for African Farmers, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Capitalism
IDE Canada Director Stuart Taylor

Stuart Taylor is currently the Executive Director of International Development Enterprises Canada – a Winnipeg-based non-profit that raises the incomes of families living on a dollar a day through design of extremely low-cost technologies and development of markets that work for low-income customers and producers. Stu holds a Master’s degree in epidemiology from the University of Ottawa, where he developed a keen interest in international health. From 1998 to 2003 he worked with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank as the program analyst, with a focus on the nutritional impact of food aid and food security projects. With his family, he moved to Zambia in 2004 to serve as a volunteer with the Mennonite Central Committee. Together with his wife – an agronomist and former Agriculture Representative with Manitoba Agriculture – he assisted a national church to develop a food security component to its HIV/AIDS programme. They returned to Canada in 2006, at which point he took on his current role with IDE Canada. He has three young daughters and is making steady progress in his facility with crayons, glue and bedtime stories.

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, January 9/10 7:30pm

Sexual Slavery, Forced Labour and Extracted Organs
The Horrors of Human Trafficking
Professors Val Hiebert and Dennis Hiebert

With an estimated 27 million victimized around the globe, human trafficking includes everything from forced sexual labor in brothels, to the debt bondage that produces the jeans we wear and the cell phones we put in those jean pockets, to the harvesting of human organs for sale. Next to trading weapons and drugs, trading people produces the greatest profits for international organized crime in our increasingly globalized world. A complex and troubling issue, we wrestle with the question of how to respond meaningfully and effectively.

Dennis Hiebert is the Chair of the Department of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Sociology at Providence College. Val Hiebert is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Providence College. Last spring they taught over a dozen workshops in local high school classrooms in an attempt to raise awareness among current youths about human trafficking.

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, December 5/09 7:30pm

Christmas
Keeping the Feast
Conservative scholar Dr. Gerry Bowler vs. Geez Magazine's Aiden Enns

Gerry Bowler received his Ph.D. in History from King's College, University of London, and now teaches medieval and early-modern history at the University of Manitoba. He has published on subjects such as Renaissance monarchy, theological justifications of violence, the religious content of The Simpsons and the relationship between Aristotle and professional wrestling. In addition to co-authoring Europe in the Sixteenth Century (Longman, 1989), Dr. Bowler is a leading authority on the history of Christmas and its cultural significance. His books The World Encyclopedia of Christmas (M&S, 2000) and Santa Claus: A Biography (M&S, 2005) have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese and Russian.

Aiden Enns was managing editor of Adbusters magazine from 2001 to 2003, and is also the founder of Buy Nothing Christmas. Raised as an urban Anabaptist, he finds hope in struggling for justice. Ched Myers, an activist theologian in California, advises Aiden: “Have one foot in the church and one outside. And keep your weight on the one outside.”

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, November 14/09 7:30pm

God's Economy in the Economic Crisis
Writer Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

American Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove will be discussing his book God's Economy, hailed by Eugene Peterson as "a timely expose of Money’s conspiracy to blind us. It does more: it is an articulate witness that the light of Christ reveals life abundant all around…. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is bearing witness; he has been living for years now what he writes. Trust him. I trust him."

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an author, speaker and new monastic. He’s written on Christian peace-making, race issues and the church, radical prayer, the new monasticism, and (most recently) on what he calls “God’s economy.”

Saturday, October 24/09 7:30pm

Christianity is Basically Amoral
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s (Subversive) Contribution to Ethics Today
Scholar Dr. Christopher Holmes

In this session, Chris Holmes revisits the figure of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a sequel to last season's session on Bonhoeffer’s resistance to Hitler), this time focusing on the great theologian’s perspective on ethics. Here is how he describes his session:

It is widely assumed that living ethically involves the living of a principled life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer could not disagree more. For Bonhoeffer “there is no Christian ethic.” By calling men and women’s attention away from principles and to the concrete situation of crisis with which God confronts human beings in the giving of his will, Bonhoeffer presents an arrestingly refreshing concept of ethics. The presentation will follow and discuss Bonhoeffer’s early lecture “Basic Questions of a Christian Ethic,” a lecture which he delivered in Barcelona Spain in the winter of 1928 at the ripe young age of only 25.

Christopher Holmes not only teaches theology at Providence College, but also lives and works as a theologian in the local church. He preaches regularly at his home parish of St Margaret’s in Winnipeg, and has been welcomed as a guest preacher at saint benedict’s table.

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, April 4/09 7:30pm

Faith and Fourth
On the Other Side of the Media's Collapse
Photojournalist Bramwell Ryan

Bramwell Ryan is a journalist and producer. He specializes in multi-platform content and creates video, audio, print, photographic and web material for media outlets and NGOs. His stories range from coverage of the largest caribou herd in the world to underage prostitutes in Bangladesh; grave robbers in Haiti to post-tsunami rebuilding in Sri Lanka; the life of a Swiss shepherd to AIDS testing in rural Zambia. As a content producer and controller, an ex-publisher, ex-editor and ex-producer of newspapers, magazines and radio/television, Ryan is fascinated by the collapse of the media (as we know it). There are parallels between the panic and angst in today’s media and the spiritual exhaustion with the state of the church when Martin Luther grabbed a hammer and headed to the church in Wittenburg.

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, March 7/09 7:30pm

The Simple Life
Monastic Spirituality Outside the Cloister Walls
Kara Mandryk, Providence College

In her recent book Flirting with Monasticism, Karen Sloan writes “Not everyone is called to the monastic life, but many of us would be blessed if we were able to live more monastically.” For those of us who won’t be taking up vows, can we reframe and adopt the three primary monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in an effort to live more monastically? This is a question of particular significance for a church community that bears the name of Benedict, one of the key founders of monastic life.

Kara Mandryk holds a Doctorate in Worship Studies from The Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies, and is Assistant Professor of Worship and Christian Spirituality at Providence College.

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, February 7/09 7:30pm

Climate Change Refugees
What Do They Have to Do with Me?
Carol Thiessen, Menno Simons College

With more and more evidence suggesting that climate change is likely to displace hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and even countries, one of the questions seldomed asked is that of the international - and even personal - responsibility for the people Carol calls “climate change refugees.” This conversation promises to be challenging, provacate, and probably more than a little unsettling, yet it may well be one of the most significant issues over the coming decades.

Carol Thiessen holds an MSc in Global Ethics from the University of Birmingham, UK (2005), and her dissertation work focused on climate change refugees and the requirements of justice. She currently teaches development ethics in International Development Studies at Menno Simons College, and has written a number of climate change guides for the Manitoba NGO “Climate Change Connection”.

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, January 10/09 7:30pm

The One Who Threw a Spoke into the Wheel
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Resistance to Hitler
scholar Dr. Christopher Holmes

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of the theological giants of the 20th century. At the age of 39 he went to death as a martyr, being found guilty of taking part in a conspiracy to assassinate the Führer. This talk will explore what drove Bonhoeffer-a committed pacifist-to partake in the plot to kill Hitler, and to disavow his pacifist convictions. It will also draw some lessons that can be learnt from Bonhoeffer and applied to our own day, as we participate in the struggle for justice.

Christopher Holmes not only teaches theology at Providence College, but also lives and works as a theologian in the local church. He preaches regularly at his home parish of St Margaret’s in Winnipeg, and has been welcomed as a guest preacher at saint benedict’s table.

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, December 6/08 7:30pm

An Evening of Music and Story
singer/songwriter Alana Levandoski

After the release of her first album, Unsettled Down (Rounder Records), in 2005, Alana Levandoski toured extensively in Canada and Europe. Her international reputation has been bolstered by lavish U.K. press coverage and performing alongside Dar Williams, Bruce Cockburn, Lynn Miles, Caroline Herring, and Tanya Tucker. Alana began 2008 working with famed U.K. producer Ken Nelson (Coldplay, Gomez, Echo and the Bunnymen). The idea for ideaExchange came from Alana in late 2004.

Saturday, November 1/08 7:30pm

The Devil made me do it… Or did he?
On the relationship between spiritual reality, demons, and human experience
Pierre Gilbert, author of Demons, Lies and Shadows: A Plea for a Return to Text and Reason

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, October 4/08 7:30pm

God's Mind in the Music
Doing Theology with John Coltrane
Rev. Jamie Howison, st. benedict's table

Jamie Howison is a priest of the Anglican Church of Canada and the founding pastor of saint benedict’s table. A graduate of the University of Winnipeg and of Trinity College, Toronto, he has worked in ordained ministry since 1987, serving in parish ministry, as pastoral care at Marymound - a treatment centre for adolescent girls - and as chaplain and dean of residence at St John’s College, Winnipeg. Jamie has ministered full-time within saint benedict’s table since the autumn of 2004.

Passionate about cultivating a critical thoughtfulness around issues of faith and theology, since 2001 he has taught yearly in the “Outtatown” program of the Canadian Mennonite University, and has also been called upon to teach in the Faculty of Theology at St John’s College Winnipeg and at various conferences and events. He is currently in the middle of a seven year appointment as a member of the Primate’s Theological Commission of the Anglican Church of Canada.

Jamie Howison has planned and hosted ideaExchange at Aqua Books since its inception in January 2005. The original concept for iE was the brainchild of singer/songwriter Alana Levandoski.

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday May 31/08 8:00pm Aqua Books

Mary: Not Just for Roman Catholics Anymore
Dr. Tim Perry, Providence College

Monday, Apr 28/08 8pm Aqua Books

Why people of faith should bother with politics
Rev. Tim Sale, former NDP cabinet minister

Monday, Feb 25/08 8pm Aqua Books

Congo Renaître - Congo Reborn
Is there room for hope?
David Pankratz, Institute for Community Peacebuilding

David Pankratz is the Director of the Institute for Community Peacebuilding, a program of Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg. Prior to holding this position, he provided humanitarian assistance in numerous countries, including Zambia for 3 years and Iraq for six months in 2003. An accountant by training, he now focuses on program delivery and administration in areas of peace and conflict, particularly with refugees. He and his wife, Janet Schmidt, live in a large house in Wolseley which they share with others in a 'household' arrangement. David Pankratz has an MBA from Laurentian University.

Saturday, Jan 26/08 8pm Aqua Books

Movies We All Need to Watch this Year
Dr. Gordon Matties, Canadian Mennonite University

Gordon Matties is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies and Theology at Canadian Mennonite University. Gordon grew up in Abbotsford, B.C. He studied at Briercrest Bible Institute; the University of British Columbia; Regent College in Vancouver; and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, where he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. Gordon and his wife Lorraine have two children. The family attends River East Mennonite Brethren Church, where Gordon serves on the Faith and Fellowship Commission. He is also a member of the Editorial Council of the Believers Church Bible Commentary. Before coming to CMU, Gordon worked at Mennonite Brethren Bible College and its successor, Concord College. At CMU, Gordon directs the Seeing is Believing film series, and is director of Film and Faith.

Saturday, Nov 24/07 8pm Aqua Books

One of Us in Five?
On spiritual care and mental illness
Mary Holmen, Chaplain to the Selkirk Mental Health Centre

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, Oct 27/07 8pm Aqua Books

The Politics and Pitfalls of International Development
Stu Clark, Canadian Food Grains Bank

Stu Clark is the Senior Policy Advisor at the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, a coalition of Canadian church-related development organizations. As well as being Canada’s largest food aid programming agency, the Foodgrains Bank also supports broad based food security programming and public policy advocacy in the area of trade policy, aid policy and human rights policy. Stu Clark is the Chair of the Trans-Atlantic NGO Food Aid Policy Dialogue (TAFAD), a consortium on European and North American NGOs dedicated to the reform of the international food aid regime.

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, Sept 22/07 8pm Aqua Books

Something Broken, Something Beautiful
Why Bother with the Church?
Rev. David Widdicombe, Rector St. Margaret's Anglican Church

The Reverend Dr. David Widdicombe completed his D. Phil. Degree at the University of Oxford where he studied with Prof. Oliver O’Donovan and Prof. Rowan Williams, now Archbishop of Canterbury. Dr. Widdicombe has experience in small town and rural ministry and university chaplaincy and has served on the staff of two Anglican Cathedrals, all in British Columbia. For the past thirteen years he has been the Rector of St. Margaret’s Church, a thriving Anglican parish near the centre of Winnipeg, and teaches church history and systematic theology for St. John’s College, University of Manitoba.

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, May 26/07 8pm Aqua Books

songExchange
Jenny Mooreand Conrad Koslowsky (farewell concert)

Saturday, May 5/07 8pm Aqua Books

The Politics and Spirituality of Hunger in Winnipeg
David Northcott, Winnipeg Harvest

David Northcott is the Executive Co-ordinator for Winnipeg Harvest Food bank, which he co-founded in 1984. In the federal election of 2004, he was one of the star candidates selected by Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin. Like fellow star candidate Glen Murray, however, his attempt at achieving national office proved unsuccessful. He was defeated by fellow anti-poverty activist Pat Martin, the NDP MP incumbent in Winnipeg Centre. Northcott received 9285 votes, or about 35% of the total cast. Had he won, Northcott might have emerged as a leading spokesman for the left wing of the Liberal Party. He was also a founder of the Canadian Association of Food Banks, and has served on the board of the National Anti-Poverty Organization. For his efforts in this field, he has been named a member of the Order of Manitoba. Northcott worked as the Executive Director for Palliative Care and Hospice Manitoba until he returned to Winnipeg Harvest in May 2006, where he resumed his role as Executive Co-ordinator.

Read our December 2006 interview with David Northcott here.

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, March 24/07 8pm Aqua Books

Images and the Selling of Charity
How the Need of the 2/3 World is Marketed to the Rest of Us
John Longhurst, Canadian Mennonite University

John Longhurst, Director of Communications and Marketing at Canadian Mennonite University, has 25 years experience in communications with non-profit organizations. He has worked as Associate Editor of the Mennonite Brethren Herald; directed communications for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Canada and Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA); and as founder and editor of the Dallas (Texas) Peace Times. John is author of the book Making the News: An Essential Guide to Media Relations (Novalis, 2006). He regularly conducts workshops on media relations for non-profit groups. In 1998 he helped organize Canada’s first national conference on how the media covers faith, and helped found Canada’s Centre for Faith and the Media. John is a Faith Page columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press, ChristianWeek (Manitoba) and the Mennonite Weekly Review, and also writes regularly for various church-related publications.

Listen to this podcast now.

Monday, February 26/07 8pm Aqua Books

Two Traditions:
A Rabbi and a Priest Look at the Old Testament
Rabbi Larry Pinsker and Rev. Jamie Howison

Rabbi Lawrence Michael Pinsker, a native of Chicago, Illinois, was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Previously he has served pulpits in the Conservative movement in locations as diverse as Niagara Falls (New York), Chicago, and San Antonio, Texas. In 1985 he helped found the West End Synagogue, a new congregation on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Rabbi Pinsker accepted the position of Associate Rabbi and Scholar-in-Residence at Winnipeg's Shaarey Zedek in 2004. Rabbi Pinsker holds degrees from Antioch College and Temple University in Philosophy and Religion, and has been invited to teach on general cultural and religious topics as well as on Jewish issues at Niagara Community College, Niagara University, Texas Lutheran College, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, B'nai B'rith Summer Camp Institute of Canada, and at the Spirituality Diversity program at the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg. A popular speaker on Judaism in programmes of interfaith dialogue, he reportedly still has thousands more of books and other materials awaiting shipment to Winnipeg to further enrich the life of learning he loves to cultivate.

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, December 2/06 8pm Aqua Books

Christian Music:
Cultural Phenomenon or Subcultural Blip?
Jaylene Johnson, recording artist

The release of Jaylene Johnson's sophomore CD, “Finding Beautiful” was met with stellar reviews and acclaim, including a Western Canadian Music Award Nomination in 2004. In addition to a spring tour with Juno Award winner, Jill Paquette, she spent the fall of that year touring solo for three months, beginning in Campbell River, B.C. and making her way to the Maritimes by car. On her way home from the East Coast, after finishing a final gig in Thunder Bay, she found herself in a head-on collision with a semi-truck on the TransCanada highway. The unexpected halt to her career as she knew it, however, turned out to be only a “bump” in her musical road. Despite being unable to self-promote or play live in 2005, her music found its way to several placements through SONY Pictures TV, for shows such as CBS’s Joan of Arcadia and ABC’s Beautiful People, and the DVD release of Season 6 for Dawson’s Creek. With her back pain now in check and her undaunted passion as a singer/songwriter, Jaylene has spent the better part of the year reconnecting with the music community and establishing her network in the industry. She attended Canadian Music Week in March, spent two weeks co-writing in Nashville in April, and sat on a panel for SOCAN at the NXNE music conference in June. Her music has been featured numerous times on CBC radio and receives regular spins on stations such as Shine FM in Edmonton and Calgary, Winnipeg’s CHVN and Canada’s first Triple A format station, Café 100.7 FM. She has also been rebuilding her live show, performing in and around Winnipeg whenever possible, and played the Trout Forest Music Festival in North-Western Ontario in August. Currently she resides in Winnipeg where she spent the summer writing for a new project which she hopes will be underway soon. For more info, visit www.jaylenejohnson.com.

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, October 28/06 8pm Aqua Books

Playing God:
Ethics and the World of Biotechnology
Jim Read, Salvation Army Ethics Centre

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, September 30/06 8pm Aqua Books

The Immortality of the Soul:
The Thundering Silence of the Bible
Rev. Jamie Howison, st. benedict's table

Listen to this podcast now.

Saturday, April 22/06 8pm Aqua Books

songExchange
Live Jam Session
The Musicians of st. benedict's table

Saturday, March 18/06 8pm Aqua Books

Three Minute Tragedies and Musical Catharsis:
Rock Songs, Religion and Emotional Release
Michael Gilmour, Professor of New Testament at Providence College, and author of Tangled up in the Bible: Bob Dylan and Scripture (2004)

Saturday, February 18/06 8pm Aqua Books

The Ad-Man Meets Jesus:
Uncovering the Christianity Industry
Will Braun, editor of Geez Magazine and Aiden Enns, publisher of Geez and former editor of Adbusters Magazine

Saturday, January 21/06 8pm Aqua Books

In Through The Wardrobe:
Why C.S. Lewis Created Narnia, and What He Found There
Rev. Jamie Howison, st. benedict's table

Saturday, December 10/05 8pm Aqua Books

Santa Claus:
Friend or Menace?
Dr. Gerry Bowler, U of M History Professor, author of The Encylopedia of Christmas and the brand new Santa Claus: A Biography

Saturday November 19/05 8pm Aqua Books

Sheep to the Slaughter and Soldiers of God:
A Reassessment of theChristian Just War Theory
- Rob Stansel, Student, U of M

Does George Bush speak for Christianity? Or should Christians turn the other cheek when faced with history's Hitlers and Stalins?

Saturday October 22/05 8pm Aqua Books

Movie Going as Religious Experience
- John Berard, Assistant Professor, Booth College

What do films do to people? What do people do to films? From Star Wars to Spiderman, films help identify questions about the universal experience to discern purpose, meaning and vocation as well as insight into the struggle between good and evil. A discussion around the role that films can and do play within culture, and its connection as religious experience.

Saturday June18/05 8pm

The Organ is Dead...Long Live the Saxophone:
The Intersection of the Sacred and the Secular in Jazz - A Conversational Concert
- The Burton Jazz Trio

Saturday April 30/05 8pm

The Psalms, The Blues and the Telling of Truth
- Rev. Jamie Howison, st. benedict's table

Read this transcript now.

Saturday March 19/05 8pm

Good Friday:
Does God take satisfaction in the killing of an innocent man?
- Brian Loewen

Does God have a blood lust? With help from controversial Catholic theologian James Alison and philosopher René Girard, Loewen will be taking on the thousand-year-old Theory of the Atonement.

Read this transcript now.

Saturday February 19/05 8pm

Jesus as Superhero:
Why spandex sells better than sackcloth and ashes
- Kalyn Falk

Does God want us to be healthy and prosperous like the TV preachers say? Or is there value in suffering?

Read this transcript now.

Saturday January 22/05 8pm

Our Guitars are Tuned to Despair:
Elliot Smith, Kurt Cobain, and the Book of Ecclesiastes
- Rev. Jamie Howison, st. benedict's table

Can we find hope in despair?

Read this transcript now.

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