Being Okay with Not Being Okay: An Interview with eco-chaplain and lecturer Dr. Jason Brown
By Lynn Trotta
Dr. Jason Brown is a full-time lecturer at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Burnaby, British Columbia, where he teaches humanities and religious studies while weaving chaplaincy into academic life. He is the author of the essay “Contemplating an Ecological Chaplaincy: A Soft Manifesto for Dark Times,” published by the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, where I first heard of his work. In this interview, Dr. Brown offers a compelling vision of spiritual care for an uncertain future—one that follows pathways of faith and inspiration, meets ecological despair with contemplative practice, and embraces the truth that it is okay not to be okay.
How did you end up teaching at SFU?
After graduating and being unable to find a job in the United States, SFU offered me a place to teach one class in environmental ethics. Even though it was only one class, I took a chance and accepted.
When I arrived, I knocked on the Humanities Department door, which was good timing because they just had someone retire. This opened the door to pick up a couple more classes. Within a few years, I was a full-time faculty member as a lecturer. Now I teach eight courses a year, which is a heavy teaching load. This is my primary focus.
This may be your primary focus, but I know you’re also weaving chaplaincy through your position. How did that start, and what does that look like?
I noticed that my students were feeling the weight of the world and were a bit sardonic. They’d say things like, “Oh, I’m not having kids,” or “Why am I getting this degree when the world is ending?” But you could also see the existential dread hiding under the humor and “can-do” attitude, especially in the environmental studies department, where students are drawn to the program with the slogan “save the world.” Then they get there, and the program is dark — it delivers bad news. Then again, they’ve been hearing bad news for as long as they can remember.
Understandably, they feel pessimistic about the future. In addition, a lot of students are in the process of discovering who they are and envisioning their futures while exploring their vocations, as well as facing challenges such as health issues, the loss of family members, and mental health struggles. This is compounded by anxiety over deadlines, relationships, and social pressures.
In class, we have conversations that bring in either religion or environment, which inherently involve our sense of purpose, meaning, and values. So it’s natural to offer spiritual care along the way.
So you’re working as a lecturer, offering much-needed spiritual care, or chaplaincy, to students moving through your classes. Then something happened to spark something brand new. Can you share that?
I taught the environmental ethics class about five or six times before moving to religious studies full time. At this time, I noticed the need for more consistent and structured spiritual care and approached the Dean. I said, “The department needs a chaplain.” She looked at me and said, “Interesting,” but nothing more, and I thought, “Well, there goes that idea!”
Then I proposed a climate grief conference, called Facing Ecological Grief. The Dean was part of the conversation to find a keynote speaker. We had a long list of potential speakers. After five declined, and another dropped out at the last minute, I was asked to do it.
I spoke on the Litanies of Grief for the Coming Age. We had these great panels and an awesome discussion. The attendees and the Dean loved it, so afterwards she asked about a follow-up.
I suggested we do an Ecological Chaplaincy Pilot Project, an initiative to offer spiritual care to members of the university community struggling with anxiety and grief related to the climate crisis. She gave the idea the green light because it was a win-win for the university, with great potential for good at no extra cost, as I volunteered my time.
We put together a simple plan because I can only do so much with my teaching schedule. And I couldn’t do it as an independent chaplain because I needed a sponsor. Thankfully, the faculty of environment agreed to be mine, which made it a trailblazing partnership between the faculty and SFU’s Multifaith Center. Institutionally, it’s unprecedented, the first of its kind.
The launch was a big success, and since then, we’ve offered a series of climate cafes, a nature journaling workshop, and an event to talk about grief more openly on campus. We’ve also done a series of contemplative forest walk events, which have been well attended.
You’ve spoken about group events, but I also know you offer one-on-one support through your Multi-Faith Center. I can’t help but wonder if an ecological chaplain is more accessible for young people who don’t have a faith of origin, or are specifically looking for a non-religiously-based or ecological chaplain.
Yes, the hope was to be more accessible for young people as well as those on the fringes of their faith tradition. They come because they’ve been working through stuff you might expect from one seeking a chaplain. Other students come because they’re just curious about what an ecological chaplain is. We made it clear in the launch that there are different layers: ecological chaplaincy dialogues with religions about how their traditions respond to ecological problems; and it also expands the realm of spiritual practice, meaning-making, and sense of purpose beyond or outside religion. It invites people who don’t identify as religious into spiritual care in a way that the Multifaith Center has not previously done.
What a beautiful and meaningful initiative you and your Institution have forged. I hope it becomes a blueprint for others to do the same. Are there places you want to go next? Is there an ultimate goal for you within all of this? Where are you going with this ecological chaplaincy initiative?
Next, I want to focus on peer mentorship. Instead of my being the generator of the programming, ideas, and content, I’d like to coordinate more with students who are passionate about this work, so they do the tabling and interface with the students. I’d like to build a more vulnerable climate cafe, which is peer-driven, more consistent, and less formal, where vulnerability could support metabolizing difficult emotions about the climate.
It sounds like shifting towards a model akin to The BTS Center’s model of Conversation Circles, where the groups are consistently the same people and are skillfully facilitated in a small group to foster greater intimacy.
Yes, this is the work that needs to be done for people to build resilience into the unknowing they’re faced with about the planet. In the 1990s and the 2000s, the model was the Eco-warrior: gaining skills to rally, advocate, fight legal battles, and engage in civil disobedience. But this is such an individual action model, and it burned people out. Of course, we still need warriors, but I’m hearing more of this idea that environmentalism is shifting towards a sense of chaplaincy: centering the care we need to offer ourselves, guiding us to feel our pain for the world, and grounding ourselves in gratitude before we can do the work.
This deepening and widening of the spiritual dimension of environmentalism is important. This grief work is so important because we’re building resilience into our lives and admitting that loss is part of the struggle. It doesn’t mean it’s not worth the struggle.
Place-based chaplaincy emphasizes building deep, committed relationships with specific locations affected by climate change. It requires passionate individuals who love their places and are dedicated to their protection. This approach goes beyond mere nature romanticism. It acknowledges the complex histories of these places, recognizing that change is inherent and that ecology is dynamic. Rather than aiming to preserve pristine nature, we need to discern between change and loss. In an era of rapid transformation, it’s crucial to process grief while remaining open to love, which I refer to as “grief craft” to highlight its creative aspects.
This idea of place-based chaplaincy, which you just named, weaves in many concepts. It makes climate change more real and tangible because we can see what’s happening in this very specific place, and it creates an avenue for grief. Do you want to say anything else about ecological chaplaincy being place-based, and how that links explicitly with this idea of grief and having a place to grieve?
Place-based chaplaincy serves as a response to the grief of cultural displacement. Growing up, I felt an unnamed sorrow about my civilization, especially as I realized I lacked knowledge of the places and plants around me. Capitalism has stripped us of our cultural ties, focusing more on financial survival than on nurturing a relationship with the land.
I’m frustrated that I have to learn about this through the internet and books without guidance from my elders. While my connection to place may never match that of indigenous peoples, embracing the idea of placefulness* is essential. We’re in an intergenerational transition, where settler communities need to be patient as the land begins to trust us again. This discomfort is warranted and necessary. In the meantime, cultivating a sense of place can enhance daily resilience. Simple acts such as walking in nature can benefit both body and soul. Ultimately, ecological chaplaincy revolves around three core components: contemplative practices to build resilience, curiosity about complex emotions, and discerning one’s vocation and sense of purpose in the world.
Is there anything else you would want to mention before we finish?
Just to reiterate the main point: chaplaincy is not about fixing or medicating.
We’re moving into a great deal of uncertainty, and we need to prepare ourselves for some loss and some defeats. They’re coming. They’re here. So maybe it isn’t about individualism. It’s not about fixing or trying to convince anyone they’re going to be okay. Because no, we’re not okay, and we need to be okay with not being okay.
*Placefulness is Jason’s way of thinking about place-based spirituality and chaplaincy as a consistent practice of presence to the places we live and love.
Jason M. Brown was born and raised in Southern California and studied anthropology and international development as an undergraduate at Brigham Young University. He has lived in Vancouver, BC since 2013 and became a Canadian citizen in 2024. He earned joint master’s degrees in forestry and theology from Yale. He completed his PhD in 2017 from the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) at the University of British Columbia. His dissertation research explored the sense of place and attachment to land of contemporary Catholic monks in the American West. The dissertation was published as Dwelling in the Wilderness: Modern Monks in the American West (2024). As a Lecturer in Religious Studies at Simon Fraser University Jason teaches courses that explore religion and ecological humanities for the department of Global Humanities. Since 2023, he has piloted an ecological chaplaincy program at Simon Fraser University, a joint partnership between the Faculty of Environment and the Multifaith Centre, which seeks to bring contemplative practice to build resilience to climate anxiety and ecological grief. He is also an Affiliated Forest Professional (AFP) with British Columbia Forest Professionals (BCFP). He writes at www.holyscapes.org.
For over twenty-two years, Lynn Trotta has been dedicated to helping people of all ages mend and find effervescence in their sacred bonds—within themselves, with their community, and with the more-than-human world. As she nears the completion of her MA in Chaplaincy at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, she is exploring how to offer spiritual care in a world shaped by climate change.