Conversation Circles: Earth and Climate Chaplaincy
February - August 2024 • Online
The BTS Center, in collaboration with the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, offerred four new opportunities for chaplains committed to working at the intersection of Earth, climate change, and spiritual care to be in ongoing conversation with one another, sharing experiences, offering support, and seeking inspiration for their ongoing work.
Conversation Circles’ format and themes are co-created between the participants and their co-facilitators. Some typical themes include caregivers’ diagnosis and intervention, livelihood, environmental justice and activism, chaplaining one another, and climate grief. Groups engage these themes through practices, case studies, peer presentations, and small-group discussions.
These Conversation Circles were open to chaplains who are seeking to engage with one another about the work of spiritual care in a supportive environment. We intend for these groups to offer support for personal well-being and community-building in the midst of all the ways in which long-held practices, worldviews, and intertwining crises — materialism, colonialism, racism, and radical individualism, to name just a few — have given rise to a climate-changed world where humans, disconnected from the sources of Earth’s sacredness and generativity, have created the conditions for Earth’s desecration and destruction. We welcomed chaplains of all levels of experience, and particularly invited spiritual caregivers serving in settings where the effects of a climate-changed world are already being experienced.
Conversation Circles are comprised of participants from diverse sectors and geographic locations, and are guided by two trained chaplain facilitators. Circles met 12 times over the course of 6 months. Sessions were offered on the Zoom video-conferencing platform.
Circle led by Gabrielle Gelderman and Rev. Stephen Blackmer
Wednesdays, 7:30 pm (Eastern) • February 28 - July 31, 2024
All circles will meet every other week.
This group is full. Contact alison@thebtscenter.
Circle led by Gabrielle Gelderman and Rev. Stephen Blackmer
Thursdays, 12:00 pm (Eastern) • February 29 - August 1, 2024
All circles will meet every other week.
This group is full. Contact alison@thebtscenter.
Circle led by Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner and Rev. Alison Cornish
Mondays 7:30 pm (Eastern) • February 26 - July 29, 2024
All circles will meet every other week.
This group is full. Contact alison@thebtscenter.org to be added to a waiting list.
Circle led by Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner and Rev. Alison Cornish
Tuesdays, 11:00 am (Eastern) • February 27 - July 30, 2024
All circles will meet every other week.
This group is full. Contact alison@thebtscenter.
Meet Our Facilitators
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.
Gabrielle Gelderman is a hospital and movement chaplain based on Treaty 6 territory in amiswaciwaskahikan / Edmonton, AB, Canada. Raised in a tight-knit setter community of Dutch Christian Reformed farmers, and a family of avid hikers, growing up, Gabrielle encountered God in the surrounding fields, mountains, and lakes of Alberta.
As a young adult, Gabrielle spent as much time outside as possible, working 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, volunteer-led organization working for environmental, economic, and racial justice.
Eventually, Gabrielle decided to return to school to become a chaplain. In 2021, she completed her 2nd 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 regular, 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, and on her Instagram at @theclimatechaplain.
Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner is the founder of Exploring Apocalypse, a non-denominational climate change chaplaincy practice. She holds space for her clients to tell the truth of this moment, and helps folks experiencing climate anxiety and despair access ease and purpose as they engage with climate change. In addition to her work with individuals, Ora teaches on intergenerational trauma’s role in climate anxiety, the moral injury of the climate crisis, and climate chaplaincy.
Prior to becoming a climate change chaplain, Ora served as rabbi of the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation (Ann Arbor MI), an oncology and hospice chaplain at East Jefferson General Hospital (New Orleans LA), program manager of Resurrection After Exoneration (New Orleans LA), and a yoga and meditation teacher in Toronto and Philadelphia. A published liturgist, poet, and essayist, Ora is the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships, including an Ontario Graduate Scholarship and a Wexner Graduate Fellowship. Originally from Toronto, ON, she lives in New Haven CT with her partner Asa and their sweet dog Tuna.
The Rev. 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. His work (along with hundreds of others) has led to permanent conservation of nearly 4 million acres (over 16,000 square kilometers) in the northeastern United States, and a growing movement for sustainable, vibrant human communities. 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 as a solitary monastic in a beautiful off-the-grid chapel/monk’s cell, where in addition to offering spiritual support to humans who love and grieve for the land, he serves as chaplain to all creatures great and small on 106 acres (43 hectares) of sacred woods and wetlands at Church of the Woods. Steve’s emerging writing can be followed on Substack at Becoming Sacred Space.
Meet Chaplaincy Innovation Lab
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.
Meet The BTS Center
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.
