{"id":373,"date":"2016-08-29T10:27:10","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T18:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/holyscapes\/?p=373"},"modified":"2016-09-02T12:16:20","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T20:16:20","slug":"spiritual-ecology-on-vancouver-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/holyscapes\/2016\/08\/spiritual-ecology-on-vancouver-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Spiritual Ecology on Vancouver Island"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Sunset
Sunset on Oyster Bay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

This weekend I had the privilege of interviewing Charles Brandt, a hermit-priest in the Roman Catholic tradition, living on Vancouver Island. I headed over the night before and camped near Oyster Bay, where a local group had worked to restore the estuary. As the sun set I sat in silence on the east coast of Vancouver Island looking at the rugged west coast of mainland British Columbia. Killdeer were singing and as the sun steadily sunk into the western horizon the sky transformed from yellow to orange to blue.\u00a0As night grew darker, I took out my star app and looked around. Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, the top of Scorpius peaking over the southern horizon with Mars and Saturn rising through it. Above me I saw Cygnus, the swan flying through the Milky Way galaxy. As the night grew darker, I could even see the Milky Way; it became brighter and brighter as the night grew darker, something I have not seen in months. It was so beautiful.<\/p>\n

In the morning, I woke early, stiff from sleeping in my truck, and watched the sunrise from the eastern mountains. Blue herons fished in stony stillness among the morning surf.<\/p>\n

Sitting down with Father Charles on his 30 acre hermitage, I noticed how neat, tidy, simple and unpretentious his home was, with the strong peace that lingers in the air of places of prayer. We sat on his freshly painted porch and discussed his vocation as a hermit, his ecological restoration work, and his views on Pope Francis\u2019s encyclical \u2018Laudato Si.\u2019 In his 90s, Father Brandt has been featured in several newspaper articles and an ecology\u00a0blog.<\/a>\u00a0He is a disciple of Thomas Berry, and sees the future as one where humanity and ecology evolve together as a \u201csingle sacred community.\u201d It was a privilege to sit with him.<\/p>\n

Before I departed, I asked for his prayers on my project and left him to his solitary life. The Hermit tradition, which is rarer than the monastic vocation, seeks solitude as a form of prayer. It is not so much about hating people, but a mode of loving God.<\/p>\n

\"Tibetan
Tibetan Shrine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On my way back to Nanaimo to catch the ferry,\u00a0I decided to follow the signs for a Buddhist<\/a> monastery. As I entered the small rural property through the front gate I was greeted by long colorful prayer flags that lined the driveway. As I entered a small shrine I was greeted by a volunteer who told me about the lineage. The temple is part of the Tibetan tradition through the lineage of Lingtrul Rinpoche. The golden shrine contains a statue not of Gotama Buddha, but to\u00a0Padmasambh\u0101va<\/a>, one of the first Buddhist missionaries in Tibet. It was large, beautiful and impressive. The volunteer was friendly and we got on the topic of Christianity. She said that she was turned off by her protestant upbringing and did not connect with the idea that Jesus needed to die for her sins. And yet, in her own tradition, Buddha begins with suffering. The First Noble Principle is that life is suffering. For her Buddhism<\/a> was just a more appealing and in her words \u201crational\u201d path, but she had never connected the cross with the Buddha\u2019s first axiom.<\/p>\n

As I waited for the ferry, I thought about my encounters with the forest, the sea, Father Charles and the Buddhist woman. I am always fascinated by westerners who join eastern traditions like Buddhism and Hinduism. And I am always a little disappointed that my own tradition has been such a failure at teaching the mystical, contemplative, meditative side of Jesus. It is amazing that in the middle of a British Columbian island, there is a gaudy, gold, beautiful Tibetan style temple. Land that was sacred to First People\u2019s, brutally wrested from their hands by Christian civilization, only to be re-dedicated to a different foreign tradition. While I am grateful for the freedom of movement and conscience to be able to travel so far both physically and religiously in such a small amount of time, I wondered at the cost of such freedom. Western civilization has perhaps learned to read the forest as a beautiful backdrop that can populate the contemplative atmosphere of Catholic Hermits and Tibetan Buddhists, and yet it remains integral to the worlds First Peoples, who have been pushed to the margins.<\/p>\n

I do not have an answer to this question, I am not even sure it is a question. But I want to dig deeper into the assumptions I make about the beauty, romance and spirituality of forests, even ones as beautiful as found on Vancouver Island.<\/p>\n

\"Sunset
Sunset from the Ferry back to Vancouver<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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