Drinking from our own well: How a Salt Spring Island experiment recovered Christian contemplation

The Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault (right) with the Rev. Richard Rohr OFM at a retreat at The Contemplative Centre on Salt Spring Island in 2001. Photo: Mary-Clare Carder

An online publication from the Anglican Journal.

When the parish of All Saints by the Sea consecrated its new church in 1994, it did something unusual: it placed meditation and silent prayer at the very centre of the celebration. That choice, made on a quiet island in the Diocese of British Columbia, launched a spiritual experiment that would soon ripple far beyond its local roots. Nurtured by Margaret Haines’ founding vision for The Contemplative Society, this initiative used a parish setting as a laboratory to prove a vital point: the Anglican tradition already possessed the spiritual depth many Western seekers were crossing oceans to find. At a time when common wisdom held that to find transformation one had to “go East,” this small society demonstrated that the water of life was already flowing in the West, if only someone would teach us how to drink from it...

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