EcoSpiritual Leaders: Encounters with Wholeness
An Online Course
February 8, 2024 – April 11, 2024
Live Zoom session dates listed below
Asynchronous content offered via an online course platform called Thinkific
Are you interested but still have questions about whether this course is right for you? Click below to view the recording of our "Taste Of" EcoSpiritual Leaders event. You'll get a chance to meet Kimberly, our course instructor, and Ash, our course host — as well as to hear an overview of the course and to hear the questions others raised!
View the recording
In this course we engaged our minds, bodies, and spirits in explorations of ideas and practices aligned with EcoSpirituality. We moved through four sections — Gratitude & Grief, Forest Bathing, EcoSpiritual Practices, and Creation Care. Each week participants engaged in a bit of reading to pique our curiosity, watched a video to expand our understanding, experienced embodied practice to connect us with nature, crafted a prayer to nourish our spirits, completed an “invitation,” and participated in a conversation to collaborate in our interdependent growth.
The anticipated time commitment outside of the live sessions was 2-3 hours per week, but you are welcome to spend as much time delving into the content as you desire. The course culminated in a small experiment with radical intent — something you’ll create that is tailored for use in your particular context.
This course was intended for spiritual leaders who are actively engaged in leadership in a congregational or community context. If you have questions about whether this course would be a good fit for you, please feel free to reach out to our Course Host, Ash Temin, at ash@thebtscenter.org
The course was divided into four sections:
- Part One: A Season of Gratitude & Grief – exploring The Work That Reconnects by Joanna Macy
- Part Two: A Season of Wandering & Wondering – introduction to Forest Bathing and Nature Therapy
- Part Three: A Season for Thresholds & Thin Places – creating liminal spaces online and in person
- Part Four: A Season for Harvesting & Sharing – synthesizing our learning and going forth
The material and practices in this course drew on various sources and types of contemplative, creative, and embodied practices to nourish our delight in the gifts of creation and equip us to care for each other and the planet.
This course consisted of live sessions as well as asynchronous learning activities and a half-day online retreat.
Live session (online) dates:
Thursdays, 1.00 – 2.30pm Eastern
- February 8, 2024 (Orientation)
- February 15, 2024
- February 22, 2024
- February 29, 2024
- March 7, 2024
- March 14, 2024
- March 21, 2024
- April 11, 2024
Please note: There was no class the weeks of March 25 and April 1. The course instructor scheduled one-on-one consultations with participants during those weeks.
Online Retreat Day:
Saturday, March 2, 2024 • 12.00 - 3.00pm Eastern (Online)
Course objectives:
- Strengthen resilience in the face of grief for a climate-changed world
- Deepen connection with the divine presence in Creation
- Inspire faithful practices honoring the earth
- Embolden active hope for lasting change
Course Guide:
Kimberly Knight (she/her) is a certified ANFT nature therapy guide, a certified outdoor life coach, a Veriditas-trained labyrinth guide, a nature-partnered spiritual care provider, and a digital strategist serving heart-centered wellpreneurs. Kimberly earned her MDiv from Candler School of Theology in 2009 and served as the Circuit Rider for The Beatitude Society for two years, after which she was both the Director of Digital Strategy for Agnes Scott College and Minister of Digital Community for the United Church of Christ’s online church, Extravagance.
Kimberly is the social media coordinator for the ANFT and serves the EcoSystem online community of Wild Church Community. She recently led a forest-bathing based immersion session at The BTS Center’s Convocation 2023 and co-hosted Our Sacred Nature Retreat for LGBTQIA+ folx in October of this year. She currently lives in The Netherlands, where she moved with her wife six years ago.
Kimberly notes that “The golden thread running through my life’s journey is a persistent calling to find, as Frederick Buechner describes, the place where my deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger. I hope that this offering will be one in which we can flourish and discern together how best to live into that fiercely tender calling on each of our lives. I’m here as a guide, honored to travel with you across an inner landscape, hoping to help you weave together overlapping strands of faith and a love for the natural world.”
Course Host:
Rev. Ash Temin is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) who serves as the Communications Manager at The BTS Center. She also offers spiritual direction through her independent practice in Portland, Maine.
Ash is a graduate of the University of Virginia (BA), the Irish School of Ecumenics at
Trinity College Dublin (MPhil) and Harvard Divinity School (MDiv). Her time at both the ISE and HDS sparked a passion for ecological theology and prompted her to begin delving more deeply into the experience of ecological grief. Prior to moving to Portland, she served as an Acting Associate Pastor at Hope Central Church, a UCC/DOC congregation in Boston. Before answering the call to ordination, Ash worked in various administrative roles at Harvard University. She also has worked as a hospital and hospice chaplain, an adjunct professor, and a freelance editor.
After time spent living in Texas, Virginia, Colorado, Ireland, and Massachusetts, Ash is grateful to make her home in Maine, where she spends part of most days walking on the shores of Casco Bay. When not absorbed in work, she can be found cooking with friends, laying in her garden hammock, hiking in the woods, playing in the ocean, or attempting to learn the Irish language with a cat on her lap.
