Jason Brown, Institute for Resources Environment and Sustainability; Green College Society Member
DWELLING IN THE WILDERNESS: LANDSCAPE, PLACE AND THE SACRED AMONG CATHOLIC MONKS OF THE AMERICAN WEST
Coach House, Green College, UBC
Wednesday, November 8, 5-6:30 pm
in the series
Worlds of Wonder: People Making Places Sacred
A monk’s purpose is to seek God, and monks in the Roman Catholic tradition are specifically called to seek God in place. This is why twelfth-century Trappist monk Stephen Harding called monks lovers of the place. By devoting their lives to a single community often located in remote and secluded places, monks find God in the eccentricities of fellow monastics, and in the particularities of the created order. To “dwell in the wilderness” might seem like a paradox to contemporary ears, but for the monk whose sole purpose is to seek the paradise of God in the wilderness of the human heart, it is a way of life.
Jason Brown grew up in Southern California and studied anthropology and International Development as an undergraduate at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. His graduate work resulted in dual master’s degrees from the Yale School of Forestry and the Yale Divinity School. Past research and publications have ranged from Mormon Eco-theology, sacred forests, traditional communal forest management in Guatemala to perceptions of ecology in Orange County. As a doctoral student under Terre Satterfield and John Robinson of IRES and CIRS he has been studying the meanings, theology, stories and management of monastic landscapes in North America. He is also interested in issues of sacred ecology, cosmology, sacred sites and sustainable forest management. Thesis title: Perceptions and Management of Land-Based Monastic Landscapes in North America