Spiritual Tourism
Posted on 22. Jun, 2017, in Church Teachings, Climate Change, Community, Ecology, Environment, Nature1 Comment
Bernadette Flanagan PBVM is chair of the board of SpIRE, The Spirituality Institute for Research and Education which has been established to serve the spiritual seeking of people and contribute to the academic study of spirituality in higher education. For the last fifteen years they have been organising a very popular summer school from 21-25th of August – spiritualityinstitute.ie/summer-school
This year, the school will focus on ecology and how people make meaning in their life, drawing on the Story of the Universe. The summer school is open to everyone offering a taster event into spirituality. From there they can explore spirituality deeper by choosing to sign up for the MA in Applied Spirituality.
Pat Coyle spoke with Bernadette Flanagan PBVM about some of the topics that can come up during the school and on the masters. One topic in particular that stood out was the school’s focus on the area of spiritual tourism and how we can explore sacred sites, pilgrim routes or holy wells without losing the sense of sacred rituals and importance that is associated with the sites. Bernadette Flanagan explains more.
Fascinating was the last word used in this interview and it surely summed it up. From the dimension of the sacredness of the natural world to the vision of New Monasticism as a way of life, culminating in engagement with the world of cyber awareness, I was interested all the way. Congratulations to you, Miriam, for your deep understanding of awareness of place and to you, Bernadette, for presenting new possibilities. Thank you both for the hope you presented to me today.