Register for free for Cahoots Transfigured on Saturday, May 23rd. We have four workshop options in the morning, a group gathering in the afternoon, and a remote dance party in the evening. The free registration closes at midnight on May 21st and we will send you the links to the sessions you have chosen. See all descriptions here. (Please note you will need access to Zoom.)
10:00-11:25am EST
Entitlement and Gratitude with Lane Silas Patriquin
Entitlement is one of the most pervasive social and spiritual problems in Western society. But for many marginalized people, it is also essential to self-advocacy and liberation. In this workshop we will explore expressions of entitlement as they can be both healthy and harmful, as well as the healing and connective power of gratitude.
Lane is a Christian anarchist educator whose work centres around transgender liberation, climate justice, grief processing and anti-colonial solidarity.
10:00-11:25am EST
Humans of Basic Income with Jessie Golem
Jessie was a part of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot that was cancelled by the Doug Ford government. She reacted by taking photos of the other BI recipients holding cardboard signs with their handwritten stories on it. Overnight, she went from being a starving artist trying to build a photography career, to political activist fighting for basic income. Jessie has travelled around the world with those photos and has spoken in front of too many audiences to count.
Jessie has been involved in photography, from weddings, to portraits, to events, for almost ten years. Her passion for adventure has led her to a number of exciting and unique photography experiences. Her photos of humans of Basic Income have been featured on CBC, The Huffington Post, the Toronto Star, the Lindsay Advocate, the Moonshot Podcast in Australia, and Kyoto News in Japan. Jessie is also a classical pianist and a writer, with work that is published in the Huffington Post.
10:00-11:25am EST
Subversive Living: Fighting the Cis- Hetero- Patriarchy through Identities with Steph Chandler Burns
In this workshop, we will explore how to live faithful lives that make room for diverse identities. We will talk about the ways that LGBTQIA+ identity makes the world a more beautiful place, discuss what we can learn about living well from LGBTQIA+ wisdom, and prepare for the future by discussing ways to live more fully (whether you identify as cis and straight or queer) by subverting society’s expected norms.
Steph is a bisexual Mennonite pastor who loves to explore topics of feminism, social justice, LGBTQIA+ identity, and how these relate to living lives of faith. She has completed a Master of Theological Studies, where she focused her work on queer theology, specifically questions such as “What can we learn about God through LGBTQIA+ identity?” In asking such questions, Steph hopes to help prepare the church for the future, with a new, more inclusive understanding of who God can be.
10:00-11:25am EST
Tools Beyond Rules (for Radicals) with Isaiah Ritzmann
As we face the future we also face the inadequacies of rules as a tool for moral decision-making. Life is too complex to be easily navigated using rules yet both our faith and activist communities easily fall into “rules talk,” as if clear rules or strong norms are enough to guide us. In the middle age and early modern times theologians recognized the limitation of rules – teaching, for example, that rules are always “generally and for the most part” and that it wasn’t impossible to create a rule that doesn’t admit to some exception. To help those genuinely seeking to live moral lives in confusing situations these theologians invented a method known as Casuistry, a method that helps people discern what the right thing to do in a situation where rules aren’t able to give relief to a perplexed conscience. Together we’ll explore different aspects of Casuistry and what it might mean for us today in our era of ecological, economical, and political turmoil.
Isaiah works in both refugee housing and community education in Kitchener, Ontario. He graduated with a Masters in Theological Studies from the University of Waterloo in 2015 and is inspired by the Catholic Worker vision of “building a new society within the shell of the old, where it is easier for people to be good.”
11:30am EST
Virtual Ultimate Frisbee (not really) for Youth with Jonathon Reed
One of the most special parts of Cahoots (plus one of the most impactful parts of social justice organizing) is the relationships we form. They’re what bring us back again and again, and they’re something we look forward to throughout the year. There’s no way we can really replicate the wild barefoot mud-sliding youth vibe that comes to Cahoots every year (just like there’s no way we can play ultimate frisbee virtually) but we can sure try. Join the youth session to catch up on each other’s lives, play socially distanced games and have non-socially distanced love in our hearts.
Afternoon Session 1:00-2:30pm EST
Join us for a time of community gathering with music, worship and prayer, and speaker Sarah Mikh, Cahoots founder.
Dance Party – 7:00pm EST
Keep the Saturday night Cahoots Dance Party alive in your own living room, basement, backyard or balcony! Hang some bunting and Christmas lights and dress up in your sparkly clothes and kick it to favourites from past Cahoots playlists.
