Re-engaging with Nature
Eco-Chaplain Course
Welcome to Green Chaplains!
We offer an Eco-Chaplain course which has a flavour of Western philosophy, and shares ideas and techniques for Eco-Literacy and a more Earth-oriented wisdom.
FOR OUR NEW OFFERING OF A COMBINED LEVEL 1 AND LEVEL 2 COURSE FROM MAY - JULY 2024, PLEASE SEE THE ‘COURSES’ PAGE: THE COURSE WILL BE DELIVERED ONLINE OVER 12 WEEKS.
Further information is available on the ‘Courses’ page.
We now have a unique opportunity to help increase positive ecological awareness, so communities can begin to re-engage with Nature.
To see a world in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
(William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”)
Many of us have been seeking ways to protect and restore the natural world, to have a fresh sense of agency. Green Chaplains offers an original, research-based training in Eco-Chaplaincy, which equips candidates for new community roles of mediation and education.
As Green Eco-Chaplains, we aim to support our wider communities to move from feeling separate from Nature toward a sense of renewed friendship with the natural, both in thoughts and activities.
It is time to help our communities, and our society, to feel more connected with living Nature.
We can assist people to experience Nature more directly, to become more aware of our connection with the living world. We can all experience a fresh sense of wonder as we reconnect with the natural.
By sharing Eco-Literacy we can encourage those who want to understand the World in a deeper way. We can learn new ways to bring worthwhile changes into our world, with more Nature-oriented lifestyles.
Through Green Chaplaincy we can help inspire friendlier relations with Nature. Our courses engage with positive values and natural wisdom, and increase our skills for re-joining Nature, as well as sharing them within communities. Our aspiration is to strengthen respect and caring for Life on Earth, and for Earth itself.
We offer a fresh approach, a genuine call to service, that equips trainees with skills in Mediation, Education and Contemplation, toward a deepening and wider awareness of the sacred within the natural world.
Chaplaincy
A Chaplain was originally a cleric who served in a chapel owned by a monarch, authority or noble family. The word ‘chaplain’ comes from ‘St Martin’s Cape’, or Cloak (from Latin ‘cappa’).
The story is told that when Saint Martin was a Roman soldier, he saw a beggar suffering and desperate in the cold; immediately Martin cut his cloak into two halves and gave one half to the beggar. That night in a dream, the saint saw Jesus wearing the beggar’s half-cloak. At once he resigned from the army and began to serve Jesus. Just as the cloak had provided shelter to the person in need, it came to symbolise the sanctuary provided by the first chapel; it was in such a chapel that Saint Martin’s cape would later be preserved.
The idea of a ‘shelter’ and ‘sanctuary’ that is embodied in the term ‘chapel’ may also be seen as a metaphor for our innate capacity for deeper (and nondual) awareness, in which we become fully present and feel ‘non-separate’ from the world. Such a consciousness can provide a ‘shelter’ from the sufferings of our dualistic world. This shelter is represented in a Chaplaincy, yet may also be found deep within ourselves, in a natural experience of an authentic nondual style of awareness. A shelter is also reminiscent of a safe, natural environment, and in this way the word points toward Nature as a sanctuary for all life. A Chapel, or a Chaplaincy is, therefore a place of shelter, a safe haven, and a sanctuary.
It is a place that isolates yet both reconnects and interconnects, and is a place where we can rejoin our own deeper awareness, by re-engaging with Nature.
Eco-Chaplaincy
A Chaplaincy can be a ‘nexus’ where spiritual interactions are experienced, and a ‘matrix’ where our human connections with all life can be known through a deepened style of awareness.
Therefore, Eco-Chaplaincy is concerned with:
• Mediating between human beings and Nature,
• Understanding the natural balance of Earth’s Ecosphere,
• Undoing dualistic ‘conditioning’ that appears to separate humans from the natural world, and
• Developing a human being’s natural faculty for deep spiritual experience.
An Eco-Chaplaincy can be a sheltering space which fosters a remembrance of a deeper connection with Earth; a contemplation of the true nature, beauty and truth of Life; and an engagement with the natural beauty that connects humans, through compassion and awe, with Earth and life.
As such, an Eco-Chaplaincy can mediate between: Humans and Nature, the Technological and the Natural, the Industrial and the Poetic, and the Disenchanting and the Awe-Inspiring.
It can help us relinquish dualistic habits, and bring us gradually toward a more open, contemplative style of awareness. It can also help clarify how our customs and habits are associated with our deeply held values and ethics. This points out a need to better understand our feelings, values and awareness.
Chapel
A Green Chapel is featured in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which relates Sir Gawain’s quest to seek the abode of the Green Knight, who in modern times is represented as the Green Man, an important Nature deity and ally. This artistic rendering of an imagined Green Chapel is set in Australian bushland near Armidale. (‘Green Chapel’ Image was created by Lone Gull Design.)
The Green Chapel as a symbol indicates the natural spiritual aspect of Nature, and a means of communing with the non-human world. It is also aligned with the ancient practice of worshipping deities in a grove of trees, and is connected with the Druid’s appreciation of the sacredness of the trees. It therefore serves a mediating purpose of interfacing between human society and still-wild regions of Earth, as do our chaplains and the Community-based short courses we offer.
The role of Green Chaplains is to provide a ‘bridge’ between society and the real Natural, through eco-literacy and skills-based classes which encourage our natural connection with Nature to re-emerge. We offer training in contemplative and aesthetic practice that can bring individuals and communities closer to Nature.
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