Marjorie Greaves interview Fr Charles Brandt
Quotes:
“…contemplation is awakening to the presence of God in the human heart and in the universe around us. Its knowledge by love..”
“The only thing that lasts is love that you put into the heart of another person. So I think that’s what I’d like to be remembered for. Sharing God’s love with other people. Books, money, buildings, they disappear and so, if we can put love in another person’s life, that’s a lasting legacy.”
An Interview with Father Charles Brandt (2010) – Transcript
CB: The contemplative life is a lonely life.
MG: Father Charles Brandt is one of the few hermit priests ever ordained by the Catholic Church. For the past forty years a piece of wilderness lining Oyster River has been his home and place of life’s work.
CB: One of the great Hindu Catholic missionaries, he says that contemplation is awakening to the presence of God in the human heart and in the universe around us. It’s knowledge by love.
MG: Charles Brandt was born in the United States in the 1920s. At the age of 13 , he began to have inklings of his life’s calling.
CB: My aunt Hildred did book reviews for the Kansas City Star and she did one on Henry David Thoreau one time and he went to the woods to find out what life was all about so that when he came to die, he wouldn’t have lived in vain. So I thought that would be a wonderful thing to do to go to the woods and live in a cabin. I thought I’d be a look out in a forestry tower someplace. I did a bookbinding badge on bookbinding. Took my manual apart and resewed it and rebound it. So those were all the sort the things that were interesting to me back in those early days.
MG: Advance the calendar in these days Father Brandt has a conservation lab in his Hermitage where he restores old books and fine art. Clients from all over the world seek him out.
CB: I have a very large family Bible that goes back to about 1850. It’s a beautiful Bible and it was hand tooled. I have to take off the back and there’s a lot of mending to do and put new leather in the spine backbone and replace the original leather. I have a dry point print which is an engraving by David Brown Milne and it was sent to me yesterday by a gallery in Victoria. I have to clean it up, preserve it remove some of the light damage – the paper has become yellowed. So I will wash it and bleach it slightly. I love to do it. I always look forward to it.
You know if I have something on the table and the conservation lab then I go about doing something else I think about it and I go back and I really enjoy working with these artifacts. There is always something new, unexpected and you can bring something back from – almost from the dead.
MG Father Brandt has made conservation his life’s work restoring man’s contemplative spirit written and artistic works, an appreciation of the environment, but upon reflection he says is really is only one legacy that endures.
CB The only thing that lasts is love that you put into the heart of another person. So I think that’s what I’d like to be remembered for. Sharing God’s love with other people. Books, money, buildings, they disappear and so, if we can put love in another person’s life, that’s a lasting legacy.
MG In Oyster River for Shaw TV, I’m Marjorie Greaves