May 19, 2022
Dear friends:
Here in Maine, the tulips I planted last fall have opened in colorful array, the flowering trees and lilacs around my neighborhood are abloom, and the grass is green and growing — so many signs of new life!
Meanwhile, Roe v. Wade is on the verge of being overturned, more than a million people have now died of Covid in the US alone, and our nation grieves yet another mass shooting fueled by white supremacist rage. Life is a mixture of joyful growth and burdensome fears; of hopeful progress and infuriating setbacks; of the best of humanity and the very worst of devastating injustice. Spring beckons us forward, and sometimes the struggles of the world are almost paralyzing.
A couple of weeks ago, some of us spent three days at a Southern Maine retreat center for a long-anticipated in-person retreat as part of our Research Collaborative. It was a phenomenal gathering, with leaders from several organizations together, in real life, for 48 hours of conversation and sharing, of creative exploration, of shared meals and laughter, of deep work and play. As part of our time together, in three different segments, we explored Margaret Wheatley’s Who Do We Choose to Be? — subtitled “Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity.” In this book, published in 2017, Wheatley acknowledges that as a society we are in a time of disintegration, chaos, and collapse. She writes:
"This book is born of my desire to summon us to be leaders for this time as things fall apart, to reclaim leadership as a noble profession that creates possibility and humaneness in the midst of increasing fear and turmoil. I know it is possible for leaders to use their power and influence, their insight and compassion, to lead people back to an understanding of who we are as human beings, to create the conditions for our basic human qualities of generosity, contribution, community, and love to be evoked no matter what. I know it is possible to experience grace and joy in the midst of tragedy and loss. I know it is possible to create islands of sanity in the midst of wildly disruptive seas. I know it is possible because I have worked with leaders over many years in places that knew chaos and breakdown long before this moment. And I have studied enough history to know that such leaders always arise when they are most needed. Now it’s our turn."
Now it’s our turn, and so here at The BTS Center we are keeping our attention focused on this important mission: to catalyze spiritual imagination with enduring wisdom for transformative faith leadership.
Now it’s our turn, and so we are leaning more intently into this compelling vision: human hearts renewed, justice established, and creation restored.
In a world swirling with chaos and crisis — ecological devastation, yes, and also endless injustice and human suffering, all of it intersecting and interconnected, rooted in systems of domination, extraction, and exploitation — spiritual leadership matters. In the words of Margaret Wheatley once again, “Our confidence is not conditioned by success or failure, by praise or blame. It arises naturally as we see clearly into the nature of things.”
We hope you will join us as we embrace this moment, with all of the possibility and pain it brings, as we strive to see clearly into the nature of things.
With gratitude and hope,
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Rev. Allen Ewing-Merrill
Executive Director, The BTS Center
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Spring and summer bring new events and programs at The BTS Center! We hope you will join us for one or more of these offerings:
Save these Dates – More Information Coming Soon:
- In-Person Gathering – Wonder and Wander, a day-long retreat with Linda Littlefield Grenfell
- Friday, June 17 • Wells Reserve at Laudholm (Wells, Maine)
- Online Gathering – Spiritual Direction for a Climate-Changed World
- Thursday, June 23 • 1.00 - 4.30pm (Eastern)
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What we're reading, listening to, and engaging:
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Not Yet
by Jane Hirshfield
Morning of buttered toast;
of coffee, sweetened, with milk.
Out of the window,
snow-spruces step from their cobwebs.
Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone.
A single cardinal stipples an empty branch –
one maple leaf lifted back.
I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:
Not-yet-dead, not-yet-lost, not-yet-taken.
Not-yet-shattered, not-yet-sectioned,
not-yet-strewn.
Ample litany, sparing nothing I hate or love,
not-yet-silenced, not-yet-fractured, not-yet-
Not-yet-not.
I move my ear a little closer to that humming figure,
I ask him only to stay.
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As we work with the ebb and flow of our world, we invite you to try this Trailside Practice from our own Aram Mitchell. |
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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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