February 17, 2022
Dear Friends,
As winter begins to soften, ever so slightly, toward spring, we have a unique opportunity to pause and center ourselves. We know that our roots have been nourished under the dormant soils of winter, even while we feel the longing for new life and growth ahead.
At The BTS Center, we have been working on a series of day-long, online retreats to help nurture your creative spirit and resilience in these times of change. We would love to have you join us for one of these three offerings, each facilitated by brilliant and thoughtful leaders and artists. We hope you'll find something here to connect you to a deeper community of practice.
Also, should you be yearning for an in-person retreat, we invite you to check out Discovering Renewal, an exciting offering from Montreat Conference Center in North Carolina, which will take place in April and will be co-facilitated by Aram Mitchell, Director of Partnerships and Formation at The BTS Center.
Wishing you all the best in these February days,
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Learning the Language of Wild Paradox
Engaging with poetry to explore faith in a time of climate change
A day-long online retreat guided by eco-justice poet Lilace Mellin Guignard
Thursday, February 24, 2022
9:00 am – 3:30 pm (Eastern)
Registration fee: $50/person
The first 50 people to register by February 14 will receive a retreat care package from The BTS Center!
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Most of our talk around climate change – the effects that are already here and those on the horizon – does not include art, but in fact art has a vital role to play in our struggle to salvage a livable future. To Lilace Mellin Guignard, art, as a practice, is not primarily about creating beauty; it is first and foremost a survival skill.
As the language of paradox, poetry offers a wild space – undomesticated by Western civilization – where doubt and faith, terror and joy, can all exist at once. At its best a poem is not an explanation or expression. It is an experience, a way to participate in the great mystery.
During this retreat, we will spend the day engaging with poetry, exploring the polarities and binaries we perpetuate and how they are linked with our understanding of nature and climate change. We will learn to use poetry to participate in the mystery of creation, and how art is an essential part of our individual and collective efforts at adaptation and mitigation. Lilace will guide us through readings, discussions, and reflections, with time to respond to writing prompts.
“Poetry, much more than nonfiction prose, pushes me past the paraphrasable to the place where I can inhabit other perspectives, push myself off the cliff of what’s comfortable, and put my most terrifying and shameful thoughts where I can look them in the eye. As soon as I do, they cease to paralyze me.” – Lilace Mellin Guignard
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Creating a New Story
The Role of Imagination and Place in Addressing Our Collective Future
A day-long retreat with Rev. Alison Cornish and Rev. Maria Anderson-Lippert
Thursday, March 24, 2022 • 9:00 am - 4:00 pm (Eastern)
Registration fee: $50/person
The first 50 people to register by March 15 will receive a retreat care package from The BTS Center!
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“Humans are capable of a unique trick, creating realities by first imagining them, but experiencing them in their minds ... As soon as we sense the possibility of a more desirable world, we begin behaving differently, as though that world is starting to come into existence, as though, in our mind's eye, we are already there. The dream becomes an invisible force which pulls us forward. By this process it begins to come true. The act of imagining somehow makes it real ... And what is possible in art becomes thinkable in life.” — Brian Eno
It can be easy to bear witness to the circumstances of our common shared life these days — prolonged pandemic, droughts, wildfires, floods, continued political divide — and experience fear, dread, or despair. There aren't many hopeful stories about what kind of a future we are headed towards. However, the particular challenges of living in a climate-changed world require resilient, grounded, and connected individuals who are able to imagine and articulate a different future, hopeful stories about what might be possible. In other words, the particular challenges of our time require all of us, and all our inherent creativity!
Join us for a spacious, day-long retreat in exercising imagination, grounding us in what could be, and connecting with companions along the way. We’ll engage practices of contemplation and reflection on specific places in our lives, fueling our imaginations and our spirits for telling new stories about what could be, about the future we are headed towards. As this is a day of embodiment, we invite you to come to our day of retreat holding a specific place in your heart and in your mind — perhaps a spot in nature, or your home; maybe a congregational space, or someplace public. Consider coming to our retreat day with a companion, or even a group, all holding the same space in intention and care.
During our day together, Alison and Maria will lead individual and group spiritual practices of connecting to a specific place, and imagining a different future for that place. We’ll be exploring questions such as: What do you observe? What stories do you know about this place? What was it like here … a decade ago? a century? a millennium? Who (in addition to you and God) cares about what happens to and with this place?
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Shining in the Shadows
Leading with Hope in a Time of Despair
A day-long retreat with Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Thursday, April 7, 2022 • 9:00 am - 4:00 pm (Eastern)
Registration fee: $50/person
The first 50 people to register by March 30 will receive a retreat care package from The BTS Center!
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This is a hard time to be hopeful. Climate change, Trumpism, White Supremacy, Covid and world politics wear on us. There's a sense we're nearing collapse. The whole society — including the church and its leaders — is weary and a little depressed. In such times, how do we function as spiritual leaders? How do we lead with hope, and help others find hope, when it looks hopeless, and we ourselves are faltering?
Hope isn't optimism. It's trust in the unseen. A whole universe of life-giving energy flows beneath us, around us and through us — but most of the time we're closed off to it. In this retreat, we'll explore practices to renew our hope. In both gathered activities and in solitude, in online sessions and times apart, we'll engage in some contemplative practices, creative exercises, re-imagining some biblical texts, and small group conversations. We'll explore practices of lament, "divine mindfulness," gratitude, reframing, and reconnecting, to discover trust and courage. Even when times are hard, the future looks bleak, and the air is murky, we can find joy — yes, joy, even! — and shine with light in the shadows, and lead with hope, helping others recover their hope and bear light.
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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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