How’s the Weather? News from The BTS Center

The BTS Center

97 India Street • Portland, ME 04101

www.thebtscenter.org

April 15, 2021

Dear Friends of The BTS Center,

‘How’s the weather up there in Maine?’ is a question I get often from family, friends, and out-of-state colleagues. The question seems even more common during these pandemic times when we are gathering online, while longing to feel safe breathing the same air.

I’ve always thought about weather conversations as warm-up conversations, a way to start with the light stuff by commenting on the shared experience of rain or wind or heat. Increasingly, though, the changing weather is a topic that, for me, touches a place of deep anxiety, loss and uncertainty.

Here’s one of The BTS Center’s teachers, Joanna Macy, reflecting on the dualism of our lives today:

“On one level we maintain a more or less upbeat capacity to carry on as usual, getting up in the morning and remembering which shoe goes on which foot, getting the kids off to school, meeting our appointments, cheering up our friends. All the while, there is an unformed awareness in the background that our world could be extensively damaged at any moment. Awesome and unprecedented in the history of humanity, the awareness lurks there, with an anguish beyond naming.”[1]

Weather: A Novel by Jenny Offill shines a light on this dynamic in poignant, vulnerable, and at times, humorous ways. The author’s vignette style reads almost like a journal filled with the main character’s reflections on daily life, increasing concern over climate devastation, and desires for spiritual enlightenment. The book has the potential to spark important conversations around identity and meaning in a time of global, existential crisis – the sort of deep conversations, I believe, faith communities hold a unique opportunity to foster.

On May 13, we will be hosting an online event with author Jenny Offill that will include a reading, moderated conversation and Q&A. Afterwards we will be facilitating pop-up book group conversations for anyone interested.

We are so grateful to be partnering with the Portland Public Library and Print: A Bookstore on this offering. I invite you to register for this event, pick up an autographed copy from Print, and spend some time with a good book.

With care, Nicole

Rev. Nicole Diroff

Program Director • The BTS Center

[1]Joanna Macy, "Working Through Environmental Despair," in Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind, eds. Theodore Roszak, Allen D. Kanner, Mary E. Gomes.

Weather: A Novel

Author Event with Jenny Offill

Thursday, May 13, 2021

4:00-5:15pm (Eastern) • Author reading, facilitated conversation and Q&A

5:30-6:00pm (Eastern) • Pop-up book discussion groups (optional)

Learn more

Free Online Event • Open to the Public

Books can be purchased from Print: A Bookstore, located around the corner from The BTS Center offices in Portland, Maine • (207) 536-4778 • www.printbookstore.com. A limited number of autographed copies are available. Click here to purchase.

Weather is an extraordinary novel that showcases Jenny Offill's adventurous prose, intelligence and lyricism across a range of disciplines, from deep ecology to mystical theology to the politics of collective action. The author’s vignette style reads almost like a journal filled with the main character’s reflections on daily life, increasing concern over climate devastation, and desires for spiritual enlightenment.

The book has the potential to spark important conversations around identity and meaning in a time of global, existential crisis. We invite you to join us for one of those conversations.

"Tiny in size but immense in scope, radically disorienting yet reassuringly humane and completely irresistible... Utterly exhilarating in its wit and intelligence... Luminous."

— The Boston Globe

Jenny Offill

JENNY OFFILL is the author of the novels Last Things (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the L.A. Times First Book Award), Dept. of Speculation, which was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Pen Faulkner Award and the International Dublin Award and most recently, Weather. She lives in upstate New York and teaches at Syracuse University and in the low residency program at Queens University.