Cécile Entremont: “Spirituality is an integral part of a radical ecological conversion”

I grew up in a family of eight children. My parents did not send me to catechism but, at the age of 15, I asked to make my solemn communion, then my confirmation. Luckily, the accompanying priest was a quality chaplain like, moreover, those I met in high school and then at university.

The origins of a vocation

Very quickly, I discovered how essential human interactions are and I felt a vocation for the profession of psychologist. The death in a moped accident of my brother Rémi, at the age of 17, was a very important moment in my journey of faith. I was 19 years old and I was in what was then called a “camp-mission”, surrounded by my confirmation godmother (a high school friend) and the camp chaplain, when I learned the terrible news .

Throughout the night that followed, a question kept coming back to my mind: what will be left of my deceased brother? What is resurrection? The answer that came to me is that there remains precisely the relationship. Both the privileged moments of exchange experienced in the past with our dead (like so many prefigurations of the parousia), as well as the inner relationship, through signs and dreams, that I myself have long sought to establish with Rémi and that I sometimes still experiment with Joseph, my husband, who died in 2021.

The axes of his work: spiritual life, body and psyche

As a psychotherapist, I never stopped trying to better understand the links between the body and the psyche. This questioning, to which I was naturally introduced by the assiduous practice of dance, led me to train myself for five years in body-mediated analysis, which can be summed up by attentive listening to both history of the subject than of the bodily manifestations associated with it. Two parallel paths whose simultaneous consideration is effective.

At the same time, I felt the desire to better understand how my spiritual life articulates with my work as a psychiatrist. With colleagues of Christian sensibility, I formed a group which met for a long time twice a year in the Drôme to share our practices and questions. Father Marie-Joseph Perrin (1905-2002) came to join us and assist us.

This Dominican had been the spiritual guide of the philosopher Simone Weil and, luckily there again, he became mine for about ten years. It was he who insisted that I undertake theological studies. I carried them out, parallel to my professional life, at the Faculty of Catholic Theology in Strasbourg, the only one in France to be recognized as much by the State as by the Holy See, and where clerics and laity, Catholics and Protestants, benefit with great openness.

At the age of 56, after 12 years of study, I defended my doctoral thesis. Entitled “Learning brotherhood. From interiority to otherness”, it concerns a dozen small groups that met for a decade to read the Gospel and be nourished by it. And who, although being “on the courts”, have formed real Church cells, like the basic ecclesial communities widespread especially in Latin America and then in Africa.

Creation of think tanks

I also formed with others in 1998, in Chambéry (Savoie) the Agapé fraternity. Always active, it brings together lay Christians every week to pray, discuss, revitalize themselves in the Gospel and help people in spiritual search, but far from the Churches. To help these new spiritual adventurers, we have created with Lytta Basset (Swiss Protestant philosopher and theologian, editor’s note) and other theologians the Association for spiritual accompaniment (Aaspir) intended for people wishing to train in this discipline regardless of their ecclesial or religious affiliations.

In addition to my work as a clinical psychologist, I became a spiritual guide for people in great physical or psychological pain. Finally, my interest in religions and the desire to bring them into dialogue led me, still in Chambéry, to launch the Café Théo intertraditions.

The quest for a life in harmony with nature

And ecology in all this, you ask? To tell the truth, my spiritual questioning has always gone hand in hand with my ecological fiber. A member of the Greens from the start, I have been involved in all historic battles such as the anti-nuclear demonstrations or the fight against the extension of the Larzac military park. And I have not stopped mobilizing myself, for example to maintain the SNCF Dijon Bourg-en-Bresse line. It must also be said that I have always (or almost) lived in the countryside, where I raised my two children, notably in a village near Chambéry.

The desire to lead a life more in harmony with our love of nature and the desire to share it led us, my husband and I, to look for another place to live. A place big enough, both to create a gîte and accommodate families or personal development sessions as well as to house our accommodation and my psychologist’s office.

We also wanted a space located in the heart of an authentic and still wild nature. I was looking for five hectares of silence and I found it here, near Chapelle-Saint-Sauveur (Saône-et-Loire), in Burgundy’s Bresse, a country of woods and ponds. Five hectares around an old large farm and its buildings, the Reure. An eco-place that we have restored, through hard work, favoring the choice of natural materials and renewable energies: solar panels, geothermal energy, wood heating. And where I cultivate a large vegetable garden to provide my guests with as many good vegetables as possible.

Anxious, moreover, to integrate myself at the local level, I created with my husband in 2011 in Louhans (Saône-et-Loire) the Éco-Bresse café, a space to welcome speakers on environmental issues. And, in the process, the Bresse Transition association. His goal ? Unite local ecological transition initiatives and disseminate their information so that everyone can prepare for current and future social and environmental upheavals.

In times of crisis, better grounding ourselves in reality

In my consultations, I have measured over the years their growing impact on individual and collective behavior, especially family behavior. Faced with systemic collapses that endanger the planet and humanity, the most common reaction is denial of the facts. But when people admit its seriousness, they often develop acute worry, eco-anxiety, or its variant, solastalgia.

As a therapist concerned with protecting life, freeing it from its shackles and allowing it to flourish according to each person’s path, I could not remain insensitive. In fact, I have been convinced for years that the globalized crisis we are experiencing is a crisis of meaning because materialism, individualism and ambient fatalism have crushed our essential spring, that is to say the heart, the spirit, the soul, as each will choose to call it.

In my first book, Engage and meditate in times of crisis, I invite us to mourn an idealized future, saved by technical progress, to better anchor ourselves in reality. With courses of action such as caring for others and nature, local roots, community life and personal development. In Small manual of interior ecology, I developed this approach by proposing a spirituality of life, with as points of support not only the advances of ecopsychology but also those of ecospirituality and ecotheology.

I confess that the encyclical Laudato si’ of Pope Francis helped me to understand how spirituality is an integral part of a radical ecological conversion. Being nourished by the writings of Maurice Bellet, Annick de Souzenelle, Marcel Légaut, Michel Maxime Egger, Léonardo Boff, Juan José Tamayo, and many others, I would say that this spirituality is (whether or not anchored in a religion ) open, respectful, in connection with all living things; based on responsibility for life. It pushes us to take our responsibilities to anticipate and build the world of tomorrow while being well aware of the inscription of our life in the infinity of life.

The stages of his life
1951
Born in Valence (26).
1973 Diploma in clinical psychology. Worked for many years in Chambéry (73).
2008 Defense of a doctorate in theology on evolution
small groups of adults at the frontiers of the Church.
2005 Purchase with her husband of an old farm in Burgundy which they transform into a place of reception and training.
2016 Publish Engage and Meditate in Times of Crisis (Present time).
2021 Small Handbook of Interior Ecology. How to take care of yourself and the world (Present time).

The urgency of real change
“To be an actor, to take care of the links, to ourselves, to others, to society and to “Mother nature”. These essential links help us to fight with confidence and determination against the ongoing destruction, to redefine the meaning of our life, the meaning of Life on this planet Earth (life of humans and all living beings). It is an active path of personal and collective transformation. It is necessary because we are all concerned, at all levels, by the urgency of real change. The context of the global crisis we are going through is heavy and prevents us from imagining a future. Caring for humanity and the Earth is the immense challenge to which we are called. »
Small Handbook of Inner Ecology, by Cécile Entremont, Present Time, €17.

Cécile Entremont: “Spirituality is an integral part of a radical ecological conversion”