Climate Change and Moral Suffering
Meet Our Presenter
Liz Farmer (she/her) is an ordained chaplain and lay teacher of Zen Buddhism, under the guidance of Roshi Joan Halifax. She has served as a chaplain and meditation teacher in health care, education, and carceral settings. She currently works for Spiritual Care Services of Maine, where she provides telehealth chaplaincy as well as mobile outreach to people experiencing homelessness in Portland. Liz additionally co-leads a spiritual community in Southern Maine dedicated to the intersection of social justice and Buddhist teachings, and serves as a mentor for students in Upaya Zen Center’s chaplaincy training program. During her own chaplaincy training, Liz wrote a Masters level thesis on spiritual care for veterans experiencing moral injury, and has since taught on moral suffering and moral resilience in a variety of settings.
Meet Our Hosts
The Rev. Alison Cornish serves as the Coordinator of the Chaplaincy Initiative at the BTS Center. Alison spent the first half of her professional life working as an historic preservationist and architectural historian, primarily in New England and on Long Island, NY. After 20 years of work with museums, municipalities and nonprofit organizations, Alison attended Andover Newton Theological Seminary in response to a felt sense of call directly from Earth to address what is it that we are doing in our daily lives and habits that is destroying the planet that we inhabit.
Following CPE, field education in interfaith work and parish ministry, and ordination in the Unitarian Universalist tradition, Alison served congregations on Long Island while also embarking on studies with the Buddhist teacher Joanna Macy and Dominican sister Miriam McGillis. Alison became a GreenFaith Fellow in 2013, and a Climate Reality Project presenter in 2017. She has served as Senior Director of Programs at Partners for Sacred Places, Executive Director of Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light, Director of Seminary and Congregational Initiatives at Interfaith Philadelphia, and as the Affiliated Community Minister at First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia. When not working, Alison can be found along, on, and in, a local natural body of water, currently the Deerfield River.
Michael Skaggs, PhD is Director of Programs of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, overseeing the Lab’s education and networking initiatives as well as public relations. He is the host and producer of the Lab’s webinar series and editor of the Lab’s eBook series and newsletter.
Trained at the University of Notre Dame as a historian of American religion, Michael has a particular interest in interfaith dialogue and has served in innovative theological education programs. His work has appeared in Sociology of Religion, International Journal of Maritime History, American Catholic Studies, U.S. Catholic Historian, Books & Culture, and elsewhere. He previously served as Communications Director for Transforming Chaplaincy.
Meet Our Event Partner
