January 14, 2022
Dear friends,
Every year, after the holidays, I’m surprised to blink and find myself mid-way through January already. We are still deep in winter here in Maine – as I write this, snow is falling and the world outside my window has a quiet to it. Yet already we are dreaming of spring, knowing that the seeds we’ve planted these last months are germinating and waiting to emerge when the time is right.
Winter offers us an invitation to slow down a bit, to be more contemplative in our rhythms, though those rhythms may be shifting constantly in these times of pandemic. Whatever you are experiencing right now, whether it is answering the call to go inward or juggling many responsibilities, we have some beautiful opportunities for connection and community for you.
On Monday, we offer our second annual Committed to Listen event in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. With a reading of one of Dr. King’s powerful sermons, poetry from Portland’s Poet Laureate Maya Williams, and music from Kelly Muse, this event is a wonderful opportunity to re-ground ourselves in our commitments to the work of justice in our own hearts and our own communities.
We hope that you will join us for one or more of these programs to find connection and nourishment through this season and as we anticipate the warmer, longer days to come.
With all best wishes,
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Rev. Ash Temin
Communications Manager, The BTS Center
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Committed to Listen
MLK Day 2022
Monday, January 17 • 12:15 pm (Eastern) • Online
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On Monday, January 17, 2022, The BTS Center invites you to join us for a public reading of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s sermon “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” Originally delivered on 31 March 1968 at Washington National Cathedral, this sermon is still prophetic over a half-century later, as we continue to struggle with the injustices of racism, war, poverty, and now also climate change and a global pandemic.
This event will include a reading of a new poem by Portland’s Poet Laureate Maya Williams commissioned for the occasion.
In his sermon, Dr. King writes: “…one of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution.”
With all that demands our attention in the world today, Dr. King’s words point to a powerful truth – it is easier to sleep through a revolution than to be an active, thoughtful, engaged participant in the ongoing work of justice. It is even easier to feel discouraged to the point of turning away when we feel isolated by our own individual lives and struggles. Yet as Dr. King reminds us:
“We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.”
We hope that you will join us for this public reading, reflection, and celebration of Dr. King’s message. Co-hosted by The BTS Center, the Maine Council of Churches, and Atlantic Black Box, this event will include multiple voices, contemplative music, and space for reflection.
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Eco Grief Circle
Offered collaboratively with the Creation Care Alliance of Western North Carolina
Seven Mondays, starting February 7, 2022, 7:00 - 8:15 pm ET
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This program has a maximum enrollment of 24 individuals, including facilitators. There are ten spots for those who register through The BTS Center on a first come first serve basis. We ask, if you register, you make a commitment to attending as many of the sessions as possible.
"Every one of us must undertake an apprenticeship to sorrow."
- Francis Weller
We live in a culture that generally ignores grief, which makes it very difficult to give our sorrow the kind of sacred attention it requires in order to help us stay fully open. This is particularly true for the growing sadness so many of us feel as we witness the damage and loss of our planetary home. 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 in company and companionship as we create and hold space for not only grief and sorrow, but also other feelings of anxiety and fear, guilt and shame, anger, and despair. Engaging in the grief process in community supports resiliency, and helps us, in the words of Francis Weller, "to keep our hearts open and soft," which, in turn, allows us to be more deeply attuned to the actions we are called to take.
We know from experience the power of gathering in small groups, and so we are co-offering Eco Grief Circles in collaboration with our friends at the Creation Care Alliance of Western North Carolina. This series of seven weekly, facilitated online groups are designed to offer time and space for the ecological and climate losses we are all experiencing, but not necessarily expressing. 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.
Eco Grief Circles are designed to offer mutual support, healing, insight, and love, though are not intended to be therapy. Participants have expressed profound gratitude for being among people who could talk honestly about grief, suffering, and the ecological and social challenges of our time. The leadership team and facilitators include counselors, pastors, and environmental advocates. Each session includes a brief teaching, opportunities for individual reflection and meditation, conversation in small groups, and rituals for self-care.
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Lament with Earth
Thursday, February 10 • 7:30-8:30 pm (Eastern) • Online
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Heart of Winter Event: Via Creativa, with the Element of Earth
The third of our five seasonal Lament with Earth events
In the winter, even as the natural world looks so lifeless, there is also the reality that creative things are going on which we cannot see. Sap is rising in the trees which look dead, and bulbs and seeds are swelling under the ground which looks barren. We, too, are invited to seek, in the words of Matthew Fox, "the fertile moments in our lives when we find creative expression, and put words to our joy and suffering of our existence. Freeing creativity helps us to move beyond our sorrow or stagnation." Right now, the climate crisis certainly looks bleak - the damage which has been done is “baked in” to the future - this is true. And yet, there is an extraordinary amount of creativity, and life force, alive and working to save what can be saved, and to mitigate the effects of rising temperatures, sea level rise, massive migrations, and other profound effects of the climate crisis.
Considering the element of earth, we are reminded this element is both something which contributes to climate change - because of the way it has been treated, in extractive and exploitative ways - and yet also holds great potential to be a factor in addressing climate change, when understood and treated with respect.
To create space for these feelings, 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 events which will include original music, poetry, rituals, images, scripture and videos to reflect different seasons of loss through the liturgical year. These events will be interactive, inviting you to pray and sing along. You are invited to bring your own sense of loss and sadness. We will lament together, and also share that which has been a balm to our grief, strengthening us for the work we know awaits us.
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“I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address those problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy... and to deal with those we need a spiritual and cultural transformation...” — James “Gus” Speth
Climate change is no longer the science community’s prediction for the future — we are now living in a climate-changed world. This reality raises provocative questions, challenges, and responsibilities, especially for people whose worldview has been formed by a Western perspective, and in particular for spiritual leaders. We are pleased to be offering this course in partnership with the Maine School of Ministry as an opportunity for spiritual leaders in the Global North to engage those questions, navigate those challenges, and embrace those responsibilities in their particular contexts.
Over the course of four months, students will engage assigned readings and other multimedia resources, form and share personal reflections, participate in four day-long facilitated sessions featuring guest presenters, and complete a final project. This course is designed for self-directed students whose learning needs are related to their professional roles as ministers — ordained and non-ordained, clergy and laypersons, leaders of traditional religious communities and other communities of practice.
Our present reality is a tumultuous reality. While we may not be able to smooth out the complications, this course will provide accompaniment and a community of mutual learning to form and inform how leaders might embody their vocation of spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world.
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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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