Standing with Lewiston, Maine

On October 25, the city of Lewiston, Maine — just north of our home location of Portland — was the site of a mass shooting, the latest community to be targeted in what has become a pandemic of gun violence in this country. We are heartbroken for the loss of at least eighteen lives — mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, friends — who were out enjoying time in spaces that should be safe for everyone. We are grieving for the loved ones they left behind, and for everyone — all of us — who find ourselves confronting yet another violent trauma. Read our full statement at this link.
 

Research Collaborative Report Published

The BTS Center celebrates the publication of its Research Collaborative Final Report, entitled "Cultivating Earth-Shaped Leadership: Ecological Imagination in Organizational Life." In 2021, we invited seven organizations to join us for an 18-month journey of co-learning, exploring together the question "How would organizations act differently today if they embodied an ecological imagination?” Prepared by Ben Yosua-Davis, Director of Applied Research, this Report discusses the methodology we employed in this 18-month research undertaking, and then it details some of our key findings, some of the patterns that emerged as leaders attempted to integrate ecological imagination into their organizations, and a few lingering questions. Learn more.

Climate Changed

A Podcast from The BTS Center

The BTS Center's podcast, Climate Changedoffers intimate interviews and conversations around some of the most pressing questions about faith, life, and climate change. Hosted by Ben Yosua-Davis, Director of Applied Research, and Nicole Diroff, Program Director, and produced by Peterson Toscano, the upcoming second season, premiering on September 26, features acclaimed guests such as Margaret Wheatley, Susi Moser, Debra Rienstra, Ray Buckley, and many more, all exploring what collective honesty and complicated hope mean in a climate-changed world. New episodes will premiere monthly. You can click here to find Climate Changed on your favorite listening platform – subscribe now so you can listen to new episodes as soon as they are available!

 

Climate Conscious Chaplaincy

The BTS Center is pleased to offer a series of programs, an emerging network, and a growing collection of resources for chaplains serving in a variety of settings

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
A Documentary Film Discussion

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

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.

 

Group Spiritual Direction Circles

For Spiritual Leaders in a Climate-Changed World

March/April  - October/November 2024, dates and times vary

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.

 

Singing the Psalms with My Son: Praying and Parenting for a Healed Planet

A Book Study

May - June 2024

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.

 

Green Teams Gathering

An in-person gathering of members and friends of congregational Green Teams, Earth Care Teams, and Climate Action Teams from around Southern Maine and beyond

May 19, 2024

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. 

 

Lament with Earth

Five seasonal events honoring the pain of loss through the liturgical year

Wednesdays  7:30 - 8.30pm (Eastern) • Online
November 2023 - June 2024

“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. 

 

Claiming Your Call for a Climate-Changed World

A Three-Day Retreat and Community of Practice
for teams from Northern New England congregations

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.

 

Report to the Community 2023

We are delighted to share The BTS Center’s 2023 Report to the Community, compiled with joy and shared with immense gratitude for all the ways you support, encourage, and enliven the work of this organization as we seek to cultivate and nurture spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world.
 
Please take some time to flip through the pages of this Report, scan its colorful images, and read the stories within — and as you do, please join us in giving thanks for a year of creative and meaningful programs, for a year of learning and exploration and growth, for a year of deepening, ever-expanding community.
 

Upwelling

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.

Learn more …
 

 

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?
 
— Bishop Steven Charleston, retired Bishop of the Episcopal
Diocese of Alaska and elder in the Choctaw Nation

 


Announcements

 
  • We are delighted to share The BTS Center’s 2023 Report to the Community. Learn more.
  • Welcome to Upwelling, The BTS Center’s occasional print newsletter. Click here to read our recent issues.
  • We recently bid farewell to two members of our Board of Trustees, Rabbi Erica Asch and Dr. Natasha DeJarnett, who have completed their service to The BTS Center as they take on new responsibilities. Click here to learn more.
  • Introducing The BTS Center’s new podcast, Climate Changed. New episodes will premier monthly. Click here to learn more and to find Climate Changed on your favorite listening platform.
The BTS Center is a proud partner organization in the One Home One Future campaign. Learn more.