The 2025 Discovery Week came to an end earlier this month. I always have to pinch myself at the sheer good fortune to be able to run that wonderful event. This year we had a full house of 46 attendees from Canada and the USA (no overseas folks this time) who were wonderful and curious and enthusiastic. While the program is always great (credit for the brilliant concept goes to our founder JW Windland), each year brings its own lessons too. There is always so much to learn. Below were a few takeaways for me this year. I suspect each attendee would have their own list.
The Wiccans and NRMs
Image: Wiccan altar at Discovery Week.
Academics call the Wiccans a New Religious Movement (NRM). One thing you notice about such groups is they can struggle due to marginalization. During our Discovery Week, we visit enormous temples and synagogues, but the Wiccans have struggled over the years to find space. Last year, we met in a park with far too much noise and distractions from neighbouring sites. This year, they secured a nice indoor space which worked so much better. Besides the economic challenges, I know many in that community hide their identity from work colleagues or neighbours or family. Christians were once like this, operating out of small homes, fearful that their identity might lead to problems for them. We humans find older religions generally credible or respectable (whether we belong to them or now) but hear that someone belongs to some newer religion and, for many, our warning signals go up. It’s just a truth, proved over and over again in human history.
Sikhs Serving
Image: Attendees being served langar at the Sikh gurdwara.
The Sikh visit is always so impressive to our participants. There are many reasons for a key factor is what the Sikhs call “seva” (service). The Sikhs consider feeding everyone who enters the gurdwara (temple) a religious duty. The experience of entering into unfamiliar ground as a visitor unknown to the hosts who, nonetheless, cook for you, serve you, and clean up after you – well, it feels like such an extraordinary gift! Religious communities have their flaws but generosity is something they do well with regular attendees in Canada and the USA donating more to charity and volunteering more. This ethic of generosity is something anyone can appreciate and learn from.
Misunderstanding at the Mosque
Image: Canva.ca
A brief misunderstanding happened at the mosque, not actually during the Discovery Week, but during a similar shorter 4-day program I run for some American universities. In both May and June, some American universities sent students up for a world religions “study abroad” where we ran a mini-Discovery program.
With one of these schools, we attended Friday prayers. The female students were in the women’s section with a female guide from the mosque. Our guide got the group settled and then left them to go do the prayers. Shortly after she left, a couple of mosque attendees told our students they shouldn’t be there and would need to leave. Not knowing what to do, the students left the mosque and waited on the bus for us guys to come join them.
When the mosque later realized what happened, they were appalled. They tried, unsuccessfully, to find out who at the mosque had asked the students to leave. I was surprised how seriously they took this interaction. The guides reached out to me, then the imam, then the chair of the board. This mosque has welcomed us for 25 years and I repeatedly emphasized our gratitude for their hospitality for so many years and that, well, sometimes life happens.
It was a small lesson in how people are complicated. Eventually, we all get treated poorly somewhere but this doesn’t mean that an unkind interaction represents a whole community. My experience over these 25 years has shown me again and again that people can be so very kind and thoughtful.
A Disorienting Time for Jews
Image: Memorial notes after murder of 2 Israeli Embassy Employees (Yaron Lischinsky & Sarah Milgrim) at Capital Jewish Museum, Washington, DC May 22, 2025. CC BY-SA 2.0
The horrifying situation in Gaza makes it difficult to speak these days at all about Jewish perspectives. I certainly don’t mean to downplay the horror of Gaza’s people and we’ve written about it several times including a recent piece (3 Men in Gaza). But the Discovery Week fosters encounters with communities here in Canada and not to war torn parts of the world. And entering synagogues regularly and interacting with community members really highlights how disorienting these times are for Canada’s Jews.
Antisemitism had been surging since 2016, long before the recent conflict, but it is now setting new records annually. Just this spring, American Jews witnessed two young Jews killed by a stranger in Washington D.C. for being Jews while Jewish Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro had his residence burned down. Jews are afraid.
At the same time, Jews are struggling with internal disagreements about Israel. Some are loyal to any action of the Israeli government while others think that government is committing crimes. Many think Israel guarantees Jews a place of safety but some feel Israel is making Jews in the diaspora less safe. I have friends who have watched family ties sever. None of this would have been predicted a decade ago. As on so many fronts, the past decade has brought incredible change and for Jews in North America, few of these have seemed positive.
Religions are Complex
Image: The colour of Hinduism.
When I was young, I thought of religions as belief systems. People in this religion believe X, people in that religion believe Y. Today, I feel that view (while understandable) misses a lot.
As the examples above show, religions are sometimes partly ethnicities and ties to a sacred homeland (e.g. Judaism). Religions are sometimes defined by what they do as much as what they believe. I believe that Sikhs’ practice of seva (service) is something that establishes identity for Sikhs. A sort of “we are the people who serve” that connects pride with an ethic at an early age. If we are what we do, doing seva makes you Sikh.
And religions are sometimes aesthetics. Our visit to the Hindu temple early in the week was met with horns blaring, drums sounding, fire burning, flowers being tossed into the air, and more. But the Zen visit was about quietly sitting in a room marked both by simplicity and natural art. If you visit these places enough, you come to understand how each begins to feel like holiness for those in that tradition. It provides a space that is home, that is removed from the everyday, and allows one to step back, to reflect, and sometimes to connect to a higher power. Spaces, sounds, rituals give a religion its shape, its feel, and sometimes its taste.
Image: The stillness of a Zen temple.
Next Year
I am already looking forward to the 2026 Discovery Week. I’m imagining who will come as well and thinking about a few folks who are pondering whether to commit. It’s such an honour to see people every year who, out of a curiosity to learn, commit to spending the week with us and our incredible hosts. If you know folks who might be interested, we’re about a third sold out already so it’s not too early to secure a spot.
I hope you are enjoying your summer.
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