Join Us September 9th: A Conversation about All We Can Save

The BTS Center

97 India Street • Portland, ME 04101

www.thebtscenter.org

August 23, 2021

“The only answer to death is the heat and confusion of living;

the only dependable warmth is the warmth of the blood.

I can feel my own beating even now.”

— Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals

Dear Friends,

In seeking to survive and nurture a livable future we do well to look to the wisdom and leadership of those who are practiced at navigating the complicated realities that govern our world.

Audre Lorde — the Black lesbian feminist one-breasted warrior poet — knew what it was to survive and resist in a world that privileges whiteness, maleness, straightness, and symmetry.

In seminary I wrote a paper about the ways that Lorde’s offerings in her 1980 book, The Cancer Journals, might serve as a source of sacred text to guide us toward a life on earth liberated from dominating systems and habits of destruction. In reflecting on what she shared from her lived experience I solidified my identity as a feminist; as one who sees the limits of domination and trusts the wisdom of communion.

Postures of aggression and patterns of domination — championed by male-centered cultures throughout history — have tangled our world up in a knot so tight that it can be tempting to just go on living with it. It’s tempting to continue trusting in “solutions” to our problems that are themselves rooted deep in the lineage of the problems themselves. But there are alternatives; fierce, insistent, and powerful alternatives.

In All We Can Save: Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, 60 women guide us into the multi-vocal renaissance that is blooming in the climate movement: “Leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration.”

The anthology’s editors, Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson, lay out four characteristics of that faithfully feminist approach to climate leadership (“which is wide open to people of any gender”):

First, there is a clear focus on making change rather than being in charge.

Second, there is a commitment to responding to the climate crisis in ways that heal systemic injustices rather than deepen them.

Third, there is an appreciation for heart-centered, not just head-centered, leadership.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, there is a recognition that building community is a requisite foundation for building a better world.

We want to invite you into this community.

Register today to join us on September 9th for a conversation with leaders from the All We Can Save anthology, and an exploration of the ways that spiritual leadership can help foster the social transformation that a life-giving future requires.

In good faith,

Aram Mitchell

Director of Partnerships & Formation • The BTS Center

aram@thebtscenter.org

Climate Solutions & Spiritual Leadership:

A Conversation with leaders from the All We Can Save Anthology

An online event featuring Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson in conversation with Heather McTeer Toney and Mary Anne Hitt, and artwork presented by Madeleine Jubilee Saito

Thursday, September 9, 2021

7:00 pm – 8:15 pm (Eastern)

Learn more

$15 registration fee. We have unlimited scholarships available for this event. If you would like to participate but cannot afford the fee, we invite you to go ahead and select the “$0 - I’m participating with a scholarship” option on the online registration form.

This event is a celebration of The All We Can Save Project, which exists to nurture a welcoming, connected, and leaderful climate community, rooted in the work and wisdom of women*, to grow a life-giving future.

Climate change is a multi-faceted problem that requires an equally multi-faceted movement of solutions. One significant, root-level solution is spiritual reorientation to feminist wisdom. That means shifting away from delusions of individualism, toward creative collaboration; away from greed and apathy, toward generous mutuality; away from habits of domination, toward practices of regeneration. And it means heeding the leadership of those who are moving culture in that direction. The All We Can Save Project is that kind of cultural force.

In All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, editors Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson and Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson assert that — while the work at hand is hard and uncertain — “building community around solutions is the most important thing.”

We invite you into that community. Through artwork, poetry, and illuminating insight from women at the forefront of the climate movement, we will consider the roles that we all have to play in nurturing a livable future. Join us as we explore in particular how faith communities — and other communities of spiritual practice — can best contribute to spiritual reorientation and other solutions in a climate-changed world.

*The use of “women” here is open, expansive, and trans-inclusive.

Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson

Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson is an author, strategist, and teacher, working to heal the planet we call home. Her books on climate include the bestselling anthology All We Can Save (2020, co-editor), The Drawdown Review (2020, editor-in-chief and lead writer), the New York Times bestseller Drawdown (2017, lead writer), and Between God & Green. Dr. Wilkinson co-founded and leads The All We Can Save Project with Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, in support of women leading on climate. She also co-hosts the podcast A Matter of Degrees, telling stories for the climate curious with Dr. Leah Stokes.

Heather McTeer Toney

A self-proclaimed 'recovering politician', Heather McTeer Toney served as Regional Administrator for Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Southeast Region, under President Barack Obama and two term Mayor of Greenville, Mississippi. She currently serves as National Field Director for Moms Clean Air Force. She wrote the essay “Collards Are Just as Good as Kale” in the All We Can Save anthology.

Mary Anne Hitt

Mary Anne Hitt is Senior Director of Climate Imperative, an Energy Innovation project that aims to cut emissions at the speed and scale needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. She served for 12 years at the Sierra Club as National Director of Campaigns and also worked for a decade as director of the Beyond Coal Campaign. Mary Anne was listed in 2015 as one of the POLITICO 50. She co-hosts the climate storytelling podcast No Place Like Home, and wrote the essay “Beyond Coal” in the All We Can Save anthology.

Madeleine Jubilee Saito

Madeleine Jubilee Saito is an artist, UX / UI designer, and branding expert. As an artist, she makes intimate, poetic comics about the environment and the sacred, which appeared in the bestselling All We Can Save anthology and which were recognized in Best American Comics 2019. Madeleine has a BA in art (graphic design emphasis) from Yale University.

Praise for All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis

“This astounding and ambitious eco-anthology is filled with whip-smart essays, heart-wrenching poems, and stunning visual art from an all-female cast … those who’ve been left out of the climate debate for too long … a powerful chorus of women armed with solutions for our changing climate.”

— Self

“A welcome anthology, in prose and verse, of women’s writings on climate change … A well-curated collection with many ideas for ways large and small to save the planet.”

— Kirkus Reviews

”All We Can Save brings an empathetic perspective to a fraught subject … a community bound between two covers, and a gift to any who wishes to join in. Johnson and Wilkinson have set a high bar [with] this movement-forging book.”

— Bloomberg Green