October 28, 2021
Dear friends,
If you’ve been hanging out with The BTS Center, perusing our website, or opening our email messages, you may have noticed that we have a new look — a more colorful look! With the help of our friends at KDK Consulting Group, we’ve recently developed and adopted a new logo and tagline, and we’re thrilled about how they express our programmatic focus and emerging identity.
First the tagline: Spiritual Leadership for a Climate-Changed World. This tagline is meant to be clear, honest, and thought-provoking. Climate scientists tell us that we are already living in a climate-changed world. Truthfully, climate change is not something off in the distance; it is here and now — and this moment demands bold, creative, faithful, engaged spiritual leadership oriented to 21st century challenges and opportunities.
With our new logo, we aimed for movement, warmth, and connectedness. The circle shape hints at the earth, our common home. Perhaps the colors remind you of water, land, and sky. Some have noted that they see the branches of a tree; others see the movement and flow of water; others see stained glass; still others note the hint of roots that remind us of our heritage and the nourishment we receive from the earth. We think it’s a compelling image, and over time, we hope you will associate it with the work of The BTS Center.
We hope the logo and tagline work together to convey the energy, posture, and priorities of The BTS Center as we honor our rich heritage and embrace the future.
Another milestone! We’re excited to introduce you to a new member of The BTS Center team: Rev. Ash Temin, who has joined our small staff as Communications Manager. Ash has been collaborating with The BTS Center in a program consulting role, helping to shape some fall programming around ecological grief, and this week she steps into a brand new role as a member of our core staff team. As Communications Manager, Ash will oversee external communications, produce high-quality content that engages constituents, ensure consistency of messaging, and help to promote programs that align with our mission, vision, and core values. You’ll find her bio below. Please join us in welcoming Ash!
We’ve got some important programs coming up, so please read on for details. In particular, we hope you’ll join us this evening for Lament with Earth, the first of five online seasonal events, in partnership with The Many, honoring the pain of ecological loss. Please note, also, that today is the deadline to register for a Book Study group that begins next week, focusing on the collection Words For a Dying World — details below.
We are so glad to call you a friend of The BTS Center!
With gratitude and hope,
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Lament with Earth
Five seasonal events honoring the pain of loss through the liturgical year
Tonight: Thursday, October 28
7:30-8:30 pm (Eastern) • via Zoom
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To create space for the reality of ecological grief, The BTS Center has teamed up with The Many, an extraordinary group of songwriters, spoken word artists, and liturgists, to create Lament with Earth — five seasonal online events which will include original music, poetry, rituals, images, scripture and videos to reflect different seasons of loss through the liturgical year. The first is this evening — Thursday, October 28 — and four additional gatherings will follow in the coming months. These events will be interactive, inviting you to pray and sing along.
Prefer to take part via Facebook Live? In addition to gathering in the Zoom room, we will be streaming this event live on The BTS Center Facebook page, so feel free to check it out there — same time: 7:30 pm (Eastern).
This event series is free, but contributions will be gratefully received to support The BTS Center's partnership with The Many and ongoing eco-grief programming.
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Stillpoint
Weekly facilitated online groups
exploring ecological grief
Our work
Immerse in mourning
Inhale distilled sorrow
Become an alchemist
Convert loss into love.
― Rebecca del Rio
Six sessions on Wednesdays
November 3 – December 8, 2021
4:30-5:15 pm (Eastern) • via Zoom
$30 Cohort participant fee
* In order to make this program accessible to all, we have scholarships available. If this would be helpful to you, please select the $0 payment option.
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We know from experience the power of gathering in small groups, and so we are offering Stillpoint — weekly, facilitated online groups designed to “tune in, and touch in” to the ecological and climate losses we are all experiencing, but not necessarily expressing. What are the losses you need to mourn? What are the tears you need to shed?
We do this so we may have company in our grief, share rituals and practices that help us to move through these feelings — and so rededicate ourselves to the work of planetary healing and health.
Whether these are familiar feelings for you which you have held inside for lack of a place to express them, or are just becoming aware of these often-unfamiliar emotions, we invite you to join us. We'll be offering these in cohorts of 6 weekly sessions, following on, or leading up, to one of the Lament for Earth events.
Dates
- Wednesday, November 3, 2021
- Wednesday, November 10, 2021
- Wednesday, November 17, 2021
- Wednesday, November 24, 2021
- Wednesday, December 1, 2021
- Wednesday, December 8, 2021
Note: We are planning three other Stillpoint cohorts for Jan.-Feb., March-April and May-June, days and times TBD.
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Words for a Dying World:
Book Study Group
Four Mondays in November
12:45-2:00 pm (Eastern) • Online via Zoom
TODAY IS THE REGISTRATION DEADLINE
$30/person covers all four sessions
* In order to make this program accessible to all, we have scholarships available. If this would be helpful to you, please select the $0 payment option.
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“...if grief is an expression of love, our grief takes on the shape of the places and creatures to whom we intimately belong. We mourn the death of the world because it is where we come from.” – Hannah Malcolm
This November, we invite you to join a reading group using the collection of essays Words for a Dying World: Stories of Grief and Courage from the Global Church, edited by Hannah Malcolm. As part of The BTS Center’s season of programming around ecological grief, we will gather to share responses and conversation around the text as well as ritual and grounding for our grief.
Over the course of four weekly sessions, we will read and discuss select essays from the book as a way of understanding ecological grief as both local and global, particular and universal. The program is oriented toward spiritual leaders* who are experiencing their own grief and may be seeking resources for their communities.
We hope to offer a theologically grounded space in which to deeply engage with the spiritual impact of the climate crisis as well as a place in which to begin to name our losses and understand the ways in which we are carrying our grief.
* We define “spiritual leaders” broadly to include not only clergy and other faith leaders, but also laypersons serving in leadership roles, nonprofit leaders, chaplains, spiritual directors, students, university and seminary faculty, denominational executives, and others with a committed and world-engaging spiritual practice.
Dates
All sessions are at 12:45-2:00 pm (Eastern) • hosted on Zoom
- Monday, November 1, 2021
- Monday, November 8, 2021
- Monday, November 15, 202
- Monday, November 22, 2021
Book purchasing
Order from Print: A Bookstore here.
Order for your Kindle (or other e-reader) here.
Order from the publisher here.
Book scholarships are available as needed.
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About the book
How do we talk about climate grief in the church? And when we have found the words, what do we do with that grief?
There is a sudden and dramatic rise in people experiencing a profound sense of anxiety in the face of our dying planet, and a consequent need for churches to be better resourced pastorally and theologically to deal with this threat.
Words for a Dying World brings together voices from across the world — from the Pacific islands to the pipelines of Canada, from farming communities in Namibia to activism in the UK.
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AND AS A CULMINATING EVENT:
PUBLIC CONVERSATION
with Editor Hannah Malcolm
+ contributor Anupama Ranawana
Thursday, December 16
4 pm (Eastern) • Online
Hannah Malcolm is training to be a priest in the Church of England and writing a PhD on theology and climate and ecological grief. She regularly speaks on the Church and climate, and has written for Theos Think Tank, Church Times, and Christian Climate Action's Time to Act.
Anupama Ranawana is a writer and theologian based in Oxford. Her work focuses primarily on feminist religious thought and decolonial and critical race theory approaches to religion and global politics.
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The BTS Center Welcomes New Communications Manager, Rev. Ash Temin
The BTS Center is pleased to welcome Rev. Ash Temin to its staff team, serving in the role of Communications Manager. Ash has been collaborating with The BTS Center over the past several weeks as a program consultant, assisting with some fall programming, and she officially assumes this new role effective October 25.
Rev. Ash Temin is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) who offers spiritual direction and contemplative grief accompaniment through her independent practice in Portland, Maine. A graduate of the University of Virginia (BA), the Irish School of Ecumenics at Trinity College Dublin (MPhil), and Harvard Divinity School (MDiv), Ash brings a passion for ecological theology and a particular interest in the experience of ecological grief. Prior to moving to Portland, she served as an Acting Associate Pastor at Hope Central Church, a UCC/DOC congregation in Boston, where she has been and continues to be a part of the leadership initiatives for racial justice and reparations. Before answering the call to ordination, Ash worked in various administrative roles at Harvard University. She also has worked as a hospital and hospice chaplain, a freelance editor, and as a family minister at a Catholic church in Colorado.
After time spent living in Texas, Virginia, Colorado, Ireland, and Massachusetts, Ash is grateful to make her home in Maine, where she spends part of most days walking on the shores of Casco Bay. When not absorbed in work, she can be found cooking with friends, laying in her garden hammock, hiking in the woods, playing in the ocean, or attempting to learn the Irish language with a cat on her lap.
In her role as Communications Manager, Ash will work closely with The BTS Center's team, overseeing external communications, producing high-quality content that engages constituents, ensuring consistency of messaging, and helping to promote programs that align with the organization’s mission, vision, and core values.
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Our mission is to catalyze spiritual imagination with enduring wisdom for transformative faith leadership. We offer theologically grounded programs of continuing education and spiritual formation, including workshops and retreats, learning cohorts, public conversations, and projects of applied research.
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