Dear friends:

Lately I've been going out for walks around my neighborhood after the darkness has fallen. There's something quite peaceful — spiritually grounding, even — about a solitary jaunt on a crisp autumn night. I cherish the leaves crunching underfoot, the light spilling from streetlamps and the windows of the homes lining the streets, and the spaciousness to take some deep breaths, to reflect on my day, to give thanks as I put one foot in front of the other, to wander without any particular destination in mind, and then to find my way home again.

I can't help but notice that darkness falls early these days — before my work is done, often before my kids are home from their after-school activities. For another five weeks, the days will continue to get shorter and shorter — the nights longer and longer — as the North Pole tilts further and further from the sun. Such is the way of the seasons, and each one brings its own unique gifts to be savored. Each one invites us into the sacred.

Later this week I'll light a fire and strike up a conversation with Victoria Loorz, spiritual director, co-founder of the Wild Church Network, and author of the newly published book Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred — my first guest for a Fireside Chat for this fall-winter season. I hope you can join us. The second gathering in our Lament with Earth series is coming up, too — this one focused on festivals and the element of fire. I'm especially looking forward to an upcoming public conversation with Hannah Malcolm and Anupama Ranawana, who will be helping us grapple with the spiritual and theological implications of ecological grief as they share Stories of Grief and Courage. You'll find details about all of these opportunities below.

In this season of lengthening nights and shortening days, of crisp autumn air and bare trees, may the Spirit guide our steps — our confident steps and our tentative steps, our grief-stricken steps and our joyous steps — as we continue to explore the sacred call to spiritual leadership in a climate-changed world.

With gratitude and hope,

Rev. Allen Ewing-Merrill

Executive Director, The BTS Center

David Benjamin Blower writes: “Guilt avoidance is a mainstream political energy in the Global North today. Denial from some of the biggest carbon emitters. Beefed-up borders to resist the mass movements of people that have already begun: a move that locates the problem outside, with other people and not with ourselves. These are the marks of a system that doesn’t want to die, and doesn’t want to admit that it knows what everybody knows. Power always resists a recognition of how much outsourced death makes our own exceptional life possible.”*

As COP26 draws to a close, we are reflecting on all that has transpired but most especially on the voices from the margins – the young, female, indigenous, those from the Global South – speaking truth to those in power. Though we hope that this summit and the agreements it brought will bring about lasting change, we also understand that entrenched systems of power will not release that power easily, and so deep change and adaptation must come from elsewhere (watch the COP26 Faith in Action: Community-led & Gender Inclusive Adaptation for Climate Justice session here). As you metabolize the short-term results of COP26, we hope that you will find community, solace, and thought-provoking conversation through some of our programs (please see below for more information on our upcoming offerings).

*Blower, David Benjamin, "The Knotted Conscience of Privilege" in Words for a Dying World: Stories of Grief and Courage from the Global Church, edited by Hannah Malcolm (London: SCM Press, 2020), p. 151

On Friday, November 19, Rev. Allen Ewing-Merrill, Executive Director of The BTS Center, will share a lunchtime Fireside Chat with Victoria Loorz, spiritual director and co-founder of the Wild Church Network and Seminary of the Wild. Loorz is the author of Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred, published in October 2021 by Broadleaf Books.

Like many who feel unfulfilled by traditional faith expressions, Victoria Loorz went in search of a spirituality strong enough to reckon with the unraveling of her vocation, identity, and planet, and found herself in the wilderness. With an ecospiritual lens on biblical narratives and a fresh look at a community larger than our own species, her book, Church of the Wild uncovers the wild roots of faith and helps us deepen our commitment to a suffering earth by falling in love with it — and calling it church. Through mystical encounters with wild deer, whispers from a scrubby oak tree, wordless conversation with a cougar, and more, Loorz helps us connect to a love that literally holds the world together — a love that calls us into communion with all creatures.

"We have lost relational language for the natural world and lost part of our own souls along with it," she writes. "Repairing the great conversation means that we approach the world as alive, respecting that every individual — every single human, every single leaf, every single ant — is unique and has their own subjective reality."

We look forward to a wide-ranging conversation about the Wild Church movement — spiritual communities popping up all over the land, like wild mushrooms after a spring rain, responding to a call from deep within to change the way we relate to the natural world — about eco-spirituality and theology, about her book, and about the spiritual leadership that is needed in a climate-changed world.

Join us, either in the Zoom room or on Facebook Live.

“The holidays... invite us not so much to dispel the darkness with light, but to enter the darkness with whatever light our consciousness brings. It is there in the darkness, as frightening as that might be, where we truly meet our spiritual selves. It is within the darkness, the unknown, that our creativity and our hope and our promise take root and have their home.” (Charles Blustein Ortman)

Festivals are times of miracles. Both the Christian story of the birth of Jesus and the Hanukkah story of the oil for the lamp point to unanticipated, and unplanned, miracles. And so many of the festivals involve candles or lights of some kind. How might we, even in our lament, make room for the inbreaking of the miraculous? What is illuminated differently by the candles of the advent wreath, or menorahs, or by solstice bonfires?

This is the second of five events we have planned with The Many. You can view the video of the first event here.

On Thursday, December 16, we invite you to join us in a conversation with Words for a Dying World: Stories of Grief and Courage from the Global Church editor Hannah Malcolm and contributor Anupama Ranawana. This anthology weaves together a rich tapestry of diverse experience, all focused around the question of how we grapple with ecological grief in a way that is particular to our location and moment.

As we come to terms with what it means, and will mean, to live in a climate-changed world, many of us are just beginning to understand our ecological grief and its connection to our places and our privileges. It takes practice and patience to meet our own grief and the grief of others with courage and compassion. And understanding these griefs through a theological lens will inform our spiritual leadership now and in the days to come.

This event is part of The BTS Center’s ongoing season of programming around ecological grief, which has included a book study of Words for a Dying World during the month of November. All are welcome, regardless of participation in other programs.

We hope you will be part of this vital conversation around ecological grief and its role in our faith communities.

 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.