Dr. Abdu'l-Missagh Ghadirian came to Ottawa on 14 January, 2005 -- and, with his busy schedule, he blessed us with an engrossing and illuminating lecture on the topic of Medicine and Spirituality. The talk was organised by the Campus Association for Bahá'í Studies at the University of Ottawa, and attracted a large audience from the university population and from the Bahá'í community.

Dr. Ghadirian is, among many other things, a Professor at McGill University Faculty of Medicine and an Emeritus Physician of McGill University Health Centre and the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. His talk focused on the advances being made in exploring the connections between medicine and spirituality at McGill. Since 2003, McGill's Department of Undergraduate Medical Education has been offering an elective credit course entitled "Spirituality and the Practice of Medicine", taught by Dr. Ghadirian himself.

As well as examining the growing academic interest in the relationship between health, medicine, spirituality and religion, Dr. Ghadirian laid a strongly founded argument for the fundamental connection between religion and medicine -- describing the nature of healing as being both a material process and a spiritual process. Without spiritual healing, he maintained, full recovery from serious illness is rendered far more difficult.

The talk ended with a Question-and-Answer period. Many members of the audience (packed into the auditorium) asked pointed and/or difficult ethical questions about their practice as doctors, underscoring the great need for increased dialogue on this important yet underresearched topic. Many people sought out Dr. Ghadirian at the end to ask even more questions, and to thank him for the insights delivered in his lecture.

Overall, the event was a success, and highly appreciated by the audience. And of course, true to form, the Ottawa Bahá'í youth took time afterwards to socialize and go out for a late dinner at Nickels' in the Byward Market. See those pictures online soon!