Quote:
“The new story, the Universe Story, based on empirical evidence has not been adequately grasped or become known by most of us. The story tells us that there is a spiritual dimension to the universe, a fact denied by the great scientists of the 17th and 18th centuries. Isaac Newton, the father of physics, taught that only man’s mind was spiritual. The question then arises: how do we get in touch with this spiritual dimension, those of us who belong to a dysfunctional society, dysfunctional because although we understand human-human relationships, and even human-divine relationships, we have no spiritual relationships with the natural world.”
The Comox Valley Unitarian Fellowship will meet on Sunday, Feb. 28 at 10:30 a.m. in the Lewis Park complex to hear a talk by Father Charles Brandt, a priest of the Roman Catholic Church who is officially recognized by the church as a hermit monk.
In his pre-clerical days Farther Brandt studied ornithology and earned a B.S. from Cornell University. He holds a B.D. from Nashotah House. Author of Meditations from the Wilderness and Self and the Environment, Fr. Brandt leads retreats in Spirituality of the Environment. He lives at the Hermitage on the Oyster River where he supports himself through his work as a professional book/paper conservator. He belongs to several environmental groups in the Valley and abroad. His present energies go primarily toward the reclamation of the Mt. Washington Copper Mine by serving as a member of the Tsolum River Task Force.
The title of Fr. Brandt’s talk is the Universe Story. He says that our difficulty today is that we are in between stories. The old story is not adequate. The new story, the Universe Story, based on empirical evidence has not been adequately grasped or become known by most of us. The story tells us that there is a spiritual dimension to the universe, a fact denied by the great scientists of the 17th and 18th centuries. Isaac Newton, the father of physics, taught that only man’s mind was spiritual. The question then arises: how do we get in touch with this spiritual dimension, those of us who belong to a dysfunctional society, dysfunctional because although we understand human-human relationships, and even human-divine relationships, we have no spiritual relationships with the natural world.
This talk, the Universe Story, encourages us to realize that we are living on the planet earth, to explore the magic of quantum physics however briefly, and finally to learn to meditate so as to enable us to carry forth the universe’s intention, to form from the earth community and the human community a single sacred community.