Climate Advocacy & the Sacred Wild
A Retreat for Senior Leadership in the Faith & Climate Movement
Tuesday, June 20, 2023 – Friday, June 23, 2023
Location: Medomak Retreat Center • Washington, Maine
- All expenses paid, other than travel to/from Portland, Maine
-
Participants will be housed in single-occupancy rustic cabins
-
Meals will be catered by the retreat center; most dietary restrictions are able to be accommodated
-
This retreat will include significant time spent outside in the woods
Please contact BTS Center Program Director, Nicole Diroff, at nicole@thebtscenter.org with any questions about this retreat.
Registration for this event is closed. Additional registrations are no longer being accepted.
As spiritual leaders and faith communities mobilize in response to the growing threat of climate change, Earth offers an echoing call for renewal and re-grounding. As a response to this call, The BTS Center invites national leaders working fulltime and whole-heartedly at the intersection of faith and climate justice to retreat with the sacred wild and engage the gifts and lessons of nature to invigorate their spirit and inspire their work.
This three-day retreat, June 20-23, in-person at the lovely Medomak Retreat Center in Washington, Maine, held spiritual space for grief and lament, rest and reorientation. Together, we explored deep, loving, reciprocal relationships with local ecosystems as a crucial component of Earth-based activism. Through guided spiritual practice, intentional dialogue, and independent activities, leaders were invited to experience nature as a source of guidance, resilience, joy, inspiration, and hope. Enjoying the beautiful Maine landscape and nurturing connection with Spirit, nature, and one another, this retreat was intended to energize, inspire, and spiritually equip participants for the crucial work of climate activism.
Retreat Intentions:
- To provide the opportunity to experience first-hand how nature is a source of guidance, resilience, joy, inspiration and hope which can be of personal benefit as well as integrated into activist work within participant communities
- To provide the opportunity to experience first-hand how nature can be a place to process and hold grief, sorrow, lament and our own complicity in threats to our Earth home and its most marginalized communities
- To encourage participants to understand the importance, for Earth-based activism and beyond, of developing deep, loving relationships with Earth
- To introduce spiritual practices designed specifically for a deep experience of Spirit in and through nature to help participants and their communities re-ground their work
- To provide a time of individual reflection and renewal for participants
- To nurture relationships between participants with intentionality and to provide a time of communal reflection for participants
- To provide the context and groundwork for offering future opportunities and resources to help deepen participants’ constituents’ relationships with nature
Meet Our Hosts
Rev. Dr. Allen Ewing-Merrill joined The BTS Center as Executive Director in July 2019, succeeding Rev. Dr. Robert Grove-Markwood. A Maine native, ordained in the United Methodist tradition, Allen served as the co-pastor (with his wife, The Rev. Sara Ewing-Merrill) of HopeGateWay in Portland from 2007-2019. He is also the founder and former convener of Moral Movement Maine, a network of multifaith leaders and people of conscience that advocates for social justice in the state. For 11 years he served on the Board of Directors of the Maine Council of Churches, as well as six years on the Board of the United Methodist Foundation of New England; presently he serves on the Board of Maine People’s Resource Center, the sister organization to Maine People’s Alliance.
Rev. Nicole Diroff is ordained in the United Church of Christ. Having served as Program Director for The BTS Center since 2020, with primary responsibility for coordinating the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the Center’s programmatic offerings, Nicole recently assumed a new role as Associate Director, effective July 1, 2024. She holds expertise in facilitation, data management, and strategic planning. Nicole is a certified Maine Master Naturalist, serves as Chair of the Spiritual Formation Committee at Williston-Immanuel United Church and Co-Chair of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Committee for the Scarborough Public School District. She lives with her family in Scarborough, Maine.
Meet Our Guides
Beth Norcross brings her training and experience in both theology and ecology in founding and leading The Center for Spirituality in Nature. She is most at home, and at peace, in the natural world, where she loves to share her passion and affection for both Earth and Spirit with others. She regularly speaks, teaches and writes about the importance of immersion in nature as an essential way to encounter the Divine Mystery deeply and intimately, and to foster a healthy relationship with Earth.
Beth is the author of Inside Out: Practices for Going Deeper in Nature and Start SINGing: How To Form Your Own Spirituality in Nature Group. She has written articles and developed educational materials on deepening spirituality through nature, including a video education series through Wesley Seminary – Nature, Our First Way of Knowing God and a 6-part interactive video course, The Spiritual Wisdom of Trees: Insights from Our Elders, co-written with Leah Rampy and filmed by award-winning filmmaker, Jane Pittman, both released in 2021. She also wrote popular Christian and inter-spiritual study guides to Ken Burns’ film, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.”
Payton Hoegh is the Spiritual Communities Director for the Center for Spirituality in Nature. A postulant in the Episcopal Church, he is passionate about community weaving, ecology, environmentalism, agriculture, justice, and equity. He holds a Master’s of Divinity from the Claremont School of Theology.
In the past decade, Payton has worked as a chaplain, coordinator, and director of a faith-based young adult service program as well as a communications professional specializing in creative digital design and storytelling for church and non-profit partners.
Payton’s personal faith walk and his work in ministry are centered on connecting with the Divine in nature. He is an avid reader, hiker, trail-runner, and climber. His interest in eco-theology, church deconstruction, and liberated spaces for worship and spiritual connection led him to found the Church of All Wanderers, a small interfaith community that gathers in nature to hike, break bread, and together engage what it means to be a spiritual being in the contemporary world.