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Why I Want to Help Save Bethlehem Centre
Dale Perkins, Victoria
Volume 28 Issue 10, 11 & 12 | Posted: December 29, 2014
Why should a Protestant care about the Bethlehem Centre?
Why should a Protestant care about the Bethlehem Centre?
After all, it is a Roman Catholic operation run by the good Sisters of Benedict. I’ve gone there at a past gathering arranged by the United Church of Canada. I found it to be a beautiful location along the shore of a small lake (you could walk around the 6 km lake path in an hour). It’s in easy access of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, very close to two ferry terminals running regular schedules to the mainland. Nearby is the famous Island Highway, which connects both South and North Vancouver Island. It’s nestled in a quasi-rural community among resplendent trees and gardens. What a place to have a retreat centre! As I expected there were the required religious icons about, signaling that the Centre’s owners were members of a religious Christian community. However, the icons were never so blatant as to make a non RC person uncomfortable.
Perhaps equally important to many of us is the challenge not to see this dedicated operation handed over to a private developer, who then would flip it quickly into a high-end luxury enclave or reserve for the one percent population. To stand by meekly and witness the desecration of a lovely facility, erected for the sole purpose of nourishing the spiritual life of participants into just another corporate altar in praise of greed and privileged pleasures would have been a travesty.
Of course I don’t have intimate knowledge of the economic and logistic challenges faced by the Benedictine Sisters. I can easily ignore the financial obstacles they encountered. Nevertheless, in the resultant proposed development I am so grateful that saner heads have prevailed and now there is an excellent possibility that Bethlehem can become an ecumenical, multi-faith centre (even welcomed by the 'spiritual but not religious’ crowd) so that through this remarkable collaboration some of Bethlehem’s rich legacy may continue.
Another remarkable development in this instance is the possibility of turning Bethlehem Centre into an ecumenical, multi-faith facility, I find it far superior that now we are imagining such a collaboration, where several faith communities can work together to own and operate this unique enterprise.
Such a Centre could welcome people from every faith tradition where they might delve deeper into their own unique expressions of spiritual reality but be continuously cognizant of other faith traditions and practices. What better example of respect and valuing of the many spiritual paths people of faith follow.
On several fronts this development is to be welcomed and supported. Nothing more important could result from this transition at the former Bethlehem Retreat Centre and I salute the principals involved in bringing the idea to fruition. I am doing all I can to make others aware and to develop the project in both financial and spiritual terms. Join me.
Dale Perkins is a retired United Church Minister.
Dale Perkins, Victoria