Conversation Circles
Being Chaplains in a Climate-Changed World

Stephen Blackmer is a lifelong forest guardian and advocate for Mother Earth. In 2014, he founded Church of the Woods in Canterbury, New Hampshire to love, heal, and bless the Earth and one another, and was a co-founder of the Wild Church Network. Before being ordained in the Episcopal Church, Steve served as organizer, coalition-builder, and advocate with the Northern Forest Center, Northern Forest Alliance, Appalachian Mountain Club, and Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. He holds Master’s degrees in Forestry and in Religion and Ecology, both from Yale University, and a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Dartmouth College. Steve lives in the woods in an off-grid chapel / monk’s cell, where in addition to offering spiritual support to humans who love and grieve for the land, he is chaplain to all creatures great and small on 106 acres of sacred woods and wetlands. Steve retired as leader and priest of Church of the Woods in September 2024; follow his next steps on Substack at Becoming Sacred Space.

Gabrielle Gelderman is a hospital and social movement chaplain. She was raised on Treaty 6 territory in amiswaciwaskahikan / Edmonton, AB, Canada and now lives with her wife outside of San Diego on unceded Kumeyaay territory. Gabrielle spent much of her twenties working around Western Canada as a trip guide, park interpreter, and environmental educator. Her love of the land also led her in 2017 to become a co-founder and organizer with Climate Justice Edmonton, a grassroots organization working for environmental, economic, and racial justice.

Eventually, Gabrielle decided to return to school to become a chaplain. In 2021, she completed her second CPE unit and graduated with her MTS, writing her thesis on group healing and climate grief in young climate organizers. Since then, Gabrielle has offered 1:1 spiritual direction and facilitated drop-in grief circles on the topic of climate and political grief. In addition to her formal CPE chaplaincy training and her Master of Theological Studies, Gabrielle has training in the contemplative Christian tradition through The Living School, in the embodied healing tradition through Somatic Experiencing, and in movement chaplaincy through the Faith Matters Network.

She is excited about the emerging field of environmental chaplaincy and thrilled to support and learn from others doing similar work. You can learn more about Gabrielle's work on her website, or on her Instagram at @theclimatechaplain. 

Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner is a climate change chaplain, educator, and innovative spiritual leader. As the founder of Exploring Apocalypse — a trauma-informed climate chaplaincy practice — she helps individuals and communities across faith traditions explore the spiritual disruptions, invitations, and reorientations of climate change.  

Rabbi Ora sees curiosity as an important spiritual posture for living in a time of climate crisis. Her work moves folks from reactivity into responsiveness, and from self-abandonment into vulnerability-inspired care. Prior to her role as a climate change chaplain, Rabbi Ora served as a spiritual leader and pastoral caregiver in prisons, hospitals, and congregations across the United States. A poet, liturgist, and meditation teacher, she holds a BA and MA from the University of Toronto, as well as rabbinic ordination and an MA from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

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.  Alison’s facilitation work includes the Work That Reconnects, training-the-trainers for Civil Conversations, group practice of Nonviolent Communication, and the curriculum “Healthy Congregations.” A Program Consultant for the BTS Center since 2021, her work has focused on ecological and climate grief, religious imagination, and chaplaincy in a climate-changed world. Alison and her husband Pat live in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, on the unceded lands of the Nipmuc and Pocumtuc peoples, in the watershed of the Connecticut River.  When not working, Alison can be found along, on, and in, a local natural body of water, currently the Deerfield River.

The Chaplaincy Innovation Lab (CIL), based at Brandeis University, launched in October 2018 to bring chaplains, theological educators, clinical educators and social scientists into conversation about the work of chaplaincy and spiritual care. As religious and spiritual life continues to change, the CIL sparks practical innovations that enable chaplains to nurture the spirits of those they serve and reduce human suffering.

With roots dating back to 1814, The BTS Center is a private foundation in Portland, Maine, building on the legacy of the former Bangor Theological Seminary. Today The BTS Center seeks to catalyze spiritual imagination, with enduring wisdom, for transformative faith leadership. Guided by the vision of human hearts renewed, justice established, and creation restored, The BTS Center offers theologically grounded workshops and retreats, learning cohorts, courses, public conversations, and projects of applied research, all focused around spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world.