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Take a walk to
Westmount’s wild side

Westmount Park United Church’s third Wild Church Walk to Summit Woods on February 6

January 24, 2022

On February 6, the first Sunday of the month, Wild Church takes participants from the Westmount Park United Church door on Maisonneuve Boulevard to Summit Woods, the highest point in Westmount. This is a new expression of the Faith in Nature programme of the church that includes weekly nature videos in the worship service.

The route varies but the objective is always to spend time in this wild space, to experience how nature and spirituality are inseparable. Rev. Neil Whitehouse leads participants in simple ways to listen to nature and appreciate the impact it has on their present moment.

He comments: “Our Wild Church choices are limited in Westmount but by returning to the same beautiful space each month we see how nature is always changing even in winter and how there is a deep rhythm to life, well before any religion. We are facing huge challenges to reduce the alarming overshoot of humanity of what the earth can sustain, but being in nature helps us appreciate how all living things need to be at home.”

The route varies but the objective is always to spend time in this wild space, to experience how nature and spirituality are inseparable.

“Sharing these experiences is enriching and revealing. The return to the ordered life of streets, cars and care in crossing the road, adds to the appreciation of how nature restores soul and sensibility for what really matters.”

“It is not new as an experience but it is needed more than before. Remember the wisdom of John Muir (1838-1914): I would rather be in the mountains thinking of God than in a church thinking of the mountains.”

Rev. Neil Whitehouse is also a Board member of the Green Coalition.

The Wild Church Network began six years ago in British Columbia with Victoria Goorz, author of Church of the Wild: how nature invites us into the sacred.

The next Wild Church Walk to Summit Woods takes place on Sunday, February 6, 2022, at 9 am
at the church door, 4695 de Maisonneuve O, Westmount. The activity lasts two hours.

For more information, contact Neil Whitehouse at 514 649-3787 • westmountparkuc.org

Feature image: Andrew Burlone

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