Sitting across from Warren Harbeck at coffee is like sitting with a great owl perched waiting for the mouse to go by.
He listens hard and he watches every movement of your face. He lets the other person talk until they are talked out, and then asks a question to take the conversation in a completely different direction. He drops the name of prominent wisdom thinkers alongside philosophers to make a cogent point about some sage topic, usually related to the spirit or nature. He mentions these names right alongside the names of old cowboys and Stoney Indigenous chiefs who he has spoken with in the past.
Warren’s office is all over town at coffee shops, at chance meetings in grocery stories, or other places along the way, but most often he can be found at the corner table of Cochrane Coffee Traders drinking his one third cup of light speaking with the many who know him, or have read his column, over these past 23 years in The Eagle.
For the past year Warren has been mulling a potential retirement from his weekly “Coffee with Warren” columns, but a few weeks ago he made it official, telling us at The Eagle he felt it was time.
So to end it where it all began, Warren and I sat down for an interview at Coffee Traders last week in the same spot where he and former Eagle owner and publisher Jack Tennant dreamt it all up 23 years ago.
The Eagle began publishing in 2001, and Warren’s column has been a mainstay of the weekly newspaper ever since. He has written 1,212 columns touching on variety of topics from the beauty seen in the flight of ospreys, to the importance of silence in the ancient wisdom traditions, to comparative theology between various religious traditions throughout the world– his columns run the gamut and offer a rare voice and insight into matters of the spirit not discussed too often in the mainstream media these days.
“Life is a whole, and spirituality is part of the whole picture,” Warren stated when asked why these matters were so meaningful to him. “So I don’t separate the two. It’s not religion versus life, but spirituality is part of the whole essence of life. It’s what motivates and gives us direction.”
Warren is a devout Christian, but he also knows there are many other paths toward God and spiritual enlightenment as humanity climbs the mountains of wisdom together. Nothing evidences this more than Warren’s great regard for First Nations spirituality and wisdom.
“The Elders taught me a very important lesson,” explained Warren. “The importance of the listening heart. It’s more important to listen than to talk. Their emphasis on a listening heart has become sort of a motto for me. It goes along with people like the Russian writer Dostoevsky, who talks about how the world will be saved by beauty and you have to open your eyes and ears to experience it. Your heart has to listen.”
Another element intrinsic to Warren’s worldview and spirituality is his and wife Mary Anna’s deep connection to nature. Through 61 years of marriage nature has been a place of pilgrimage for them, and the ground of their being.
“When I was a kid, I used to go out on the trail with a neighbour of ours quite a bit,” Warren recalled when asked how this deep sense of natural connection started. “He took me hunting and stuff like that. That got me comfortable in nature. In my later years, from 65 onward, I reached a point in my life where I realized the importance of being embraced by nature.”
For Warren, he explained it was like he is sending out a signal to nature and is receiving one in turn as he and Mary Anna walk beneath the turning golden leaves. He said he is like that autumn tree– now 84 years-old– having lived all the seasons of his life from the first shoots of spring green, to the full burst of summer forest, to the shining glory of autumn. And now increasingly cognizant of the winter to come when the snows will lie on the bare branches.
The spirit is still strong, says Warren, but the body is becoming more and more tired.
“It’s not a happy decision (to end the column),” said Warren, “because I so enjoy connecting, but my body is getting very tired. And my mind is having a harder time fitting the pieces together. Also, in a strange sort of a way, the COVID pandemic began to change the picture. Until that time, I could sit at this table every single day, and people I had never met before would sit down with me … The tradition of sitting at this coffee table every day was replaced by remote viewing. Zoom does not sip coffee.”
Warren said what he takes most from his time writing his column is a feeling of gratitude to all the people he has met in Cochrane and around the world through it.
“To me, the column is an exclamation of our shared humanity; our oneness,” he said. “The Christ in you recognizes the Christ in me, and between us is sacred ground. This coffee table for me is our sacred ground where we experience the innermost being in each other.”
On behalf of the community, and on behalf of The Eagle, thank you Warren for so many years of sharing and wisdom.
