The BTS Center's podcast, Climate Changed,
The climate has changed, and is changing, disrupting lives in significant, life-altering ways. Acute, discrete events are now shaping a world characterized by continuous, unprecedented change. Individuals and communities will have increasing immediate, pragmatic, and emergent needs that must be met through adaptation in ways that are yet to be really understood.
The climate crisis is also a spiritual crisis. The BTS Center’s work explores the ways in which long-held practices, worldviews, and intertwining crises — materialism, colonialism, racism, and radical individualism, to name just a few — have given rise to a climate-changed world where humans, disconnected from the sources of Earth’s sacredness and generativity, have created the conditions for Earth’s desecration and destruction. But the climate crisis is also a spiritual crisis in the ways it is causing a loss of belief, spirit, meaning, purpose, and hope.
There is a need for responsive, skilled, compassionate spiritual care to address the short- and long-term needs of those who are, and will be, affected by the reality of conditions to which we must adapt, and of the changed landscape of which we must make sense.
INUNDATION DISTRICT, the newest film from David Abel and Ted Blanco, explores the implications of the City of Boston’s decision to spend more than $20 billion on building a new waterfront district — on landfill, at sea level. The film raises awareness about an era of rising seas and strengthening storms and the impacts on coastal communities.
Unlike other places imperiled by climate change, this neighborhood of glass towers housing some of the world’s largest companies was built well after scientists began warning of the threats, including many at Boston’s own renowned universities. The city, which already has more high-tide flooding than nearly any other in the United States, called its new quarter the Innovation District. However, with seas rising inexorably, and at an accelerating rate, others are calling the neighborhood by a different name: Inundation District.
Throughout cultures and across time, people have gathered to share stories. Stories of becoming and stories of ending. Stories about small things like seeds and beans and big stories about floods and famine. Storytelling and story-hearing are parts of how we make sense of our lives and imagine our futures. In our current crises, we need these tellers and hearers, those with the capacity and the will to name ways through that other models of response have not yet been able to capture.
In this spirit, we are pleased to offer an eight-month opportunity with The BTS Center, in which spiritual leaders are strengthening their holy hearing and sharing in group spiritual direction / companioning. Gathering monthly from March through November in groups of six over Zoom, each two-hour session is centered on a prompt related to climate change, liminality, or uncertainty. Rather than a solution-seeking conversation, group members are invited to respond from their hearts to that prompt and each other, together investigating spirit-centered responses.
5 Weekly Online Sessions
Two days and times available each week — attend whichever works for you week by week
This spring, The BTS Center is pleased to collaborate with Moms Clean Air Force and Lutherans Restoring Creation to offer this 5-week book study of Wilson Dickinson’s book, Singing the Psalms with My Son: Praying and Parenting for a Healed Planet. In seeking a path of parenting which will focus on transformation and hope, Dickinson turns to the Psalms, finding in these ancient texts the language and practice for lament, for joy, and for navigating the complexities of a world of constant change.
The book study will take place over five sessions, with each session being offered at two different times each week (come to either at your convenience) and two facilitators guiding each conversation. Author Wilson Dickinson will join both sessions during the final week.
This spring, The BTS Center is pleased to offer a gathering opportunity for members and friends of congregational Green Teams, Earth Care Teams, Climate Action Teams, and other congregational teams (by any name!) that are exploring the impacts of climate change, pursuing sustainable practices, embracing ecological understandings, or organizing collective action in this time of planetary upheaval.
Over the course of a Sunday afternoon, we will meet in Southern Maine to learn and connect with one another — to share what work our Green Teams are doing and to imagine collectively how they may evolve to meet the challenges of these times.
“We know and feel in our bones that something primal is amiss. Our extended home is being eroded. It is essential that we stop and recognize these losses...to respond with sorrow, outrage and apology at these places touched by so much loss.”
— Francis Weller
So many of us know this truth voiced by Francis Weller. And yet, we have so few opportunities to express our sorrow, fear, sadness and yes, even despair about a future of life in a climate-changed world. It takes courage to touch the places inside ourselves where these truths live — those thoughts and feelings that likely keep many of us up at night, but are too often held inside us, in a space both alone, and lonely.
To create space for these feelings, The BTS Center — together with The Many, an extraordinary group of songwriters, spoken word artists and liturgists — has created Lament with Earth — five seasonal events featuring original music, poetry, rituals, images, scripture and videos to reflect different seasons of loss through the liturgical year. These events are interactive, inviting you to pray and sing along. You are invited to bring your own sense of loss and sadness. We lament together, and also share that which has been a balm to our grief, strengthening us for the work we know awaits us.
The BTS Center invites you to recruit a team of four from your congregation, including the lead pastor (or functional equivalent), and to apply to participate in this three-day retreat and community of practice. Nine congregations will be selected.
Dates: Thursday, June 20, 2024 (11:00 am) through Saturday, June 22, 2024 (1:00 pm)
Location: Schoodic Institute, Winter Harbor, Maine
Apply to join us for this formational opportunity, offered at no cost to your congregation. “Claiming Your Call for a Climate-Changed World” begins with a three-day retreat at the Schoodic Institute in Acadia National Park, Maine, where your congregational team will share deep conversation with theologians, scientists, and indigenous scholars about how climate change will impact the communities where you live and what a spiritually-grounded, justice-seeking response could look like for your church. It continues as you integrate what you’ve learned by undertaking a “small experiment with radical intent” in the context of a supportive community of practice.
Welcome to Upwelling, The BTS Center’s occasional print newsletter. We are delighted to connect with you in this way, and we hope that when you are finished reading, you might pass your copy along to someone else who might be interested.
Would you believe me if I told you we were the forerunners a great spiritual renewal? What if I said this renewal would change our global culture at the end of this century? That it will see the emergence of a new mysticism in contrast to technology and a strong social conscience of sustainability and justice. We are at the very beginning of this movement. We will not all live to see its first moments of birth, but we will have the joy of knowing that we were the shoulders on which others stood to make it a reality. History will show that what we did today to lift up an open-minded spirituality, welcoming to all people, made a difference. Our choice to stand together, to advocate for justice, and to heal this planet will be recognized as the breakthrough. Because we did not give up, they excelled. Would you believe me if I told you that?
The BTS Center
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Portland, Maine 04101
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