Immersion Sessions: Details & Leaders

Ash Temin

Soft Fascinations: Odes to the (Extra)Ordinary

The term “soft fascination” is used to describe the state of our attention when we find ourselves in the natural world without our usual distractions. Somewhere between the conscious attention of meditation and the open freedom of a wandering mind, this state invites us into a different spaciousness of mind and body and has been shown to expand our creative capacities.

In this immersion, we’ll first spend time practicing soft fascination focused on our relationship to the soil and foodways of the Saco River watershed. Then we’ll return to our group to bring what’s sparking for us into the practice of writing odes — a poetic form of celebration and affection — in order to explore our connection with the mystery of the more-than-human world as part of our understanding of seeking justice for this land. No writing or poetic skills necessary — simply bring your creative and curious self for a playful, gentle, imaginative experience.

Rev. Ash Temin is a program consultant at The BTS Center, as well as a spiritual director and writer. Until recently, Ash served as the Staff Writer + Program Manager at The BTS Center. 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.

Before her time at The BTS Center, Ash held roles as an acting associate pastor and as a hospital and hospice chaplain, as well as various administrative roles at Harvard University. She also has worked as an adjunct professor and a freelance editor. After time spent living in Texas, Virginia, Colorado, Ireland, and Massachusetts, Ash is grateful to call Maine home. She lives with her husband and two cats and enjoys cooking with friends, laying in her garden hammock, hiking in the woods, playing in the ocean, and attempting to learn the Irish language with a cat on her lap.

Bill Reed

Working with Essence – and the shift from transaction to reciprocity

This immersion will explore the process of co-discovering the essence of place. This work is not about imposing a plan but convening those who inhabit a place so they can sense, name, and align around its unique essence — the whole, dynamic story that makes this place unlike any other, whether that is Portland or Skowhegan. Out of that shared sensing grows a network of people and businesses willing to tend their place together, crossing the silos that usually separate them so that thinking and action can cross-fertilize in service of the whole community, economy, and ecosystem. What begins as a few consistently engaged people gathered around a common and potential-filled purpose becomes a field of energy and relationship strong enough to draw others in — a community of practice, entrepreneurship, and learning that generates its own creative agency.

The heart of this shift is a move away from transactional relationships (where each exchange is oriented toward extracting the most value for the initiative) and toward reciprocity, where exchange is intended to grow the vitality and evolutionary capacity of the whole system. The forest offers a working image: trees bound to fungi, soil bacteria, and one another in symbiotic webs of mutual support, healthier and longer-lived for working on behalf of the whole rather than competing against – a network of mutual tending rather than a transaction between separate entities.

An internationally recognized practitioner, teacher, and leading authority on integrative systems design and regeneration. Bill Reed is an architect/ecologist at Regenesis Group.

Regenerative Development is a living systems meta-discipline that unifies the pattern practices of Social and Ecological Design into a process that lifts people, building design, and community planning into co-evolutionary relationship.

Bill is one of the founders and implementers of the LEED rating system, author of many articles, contributor to multiple books – including “Regenerative Development and Design” and co-authorship of “Integrative Design Guide to Green Building”. He has consulted on hundreds of deep green design commissions — buildings and city/regional master plans — and teaches, lectures, practices in universities and countries around the world.

The Ecology School

Food Systems & Agroecology

Join program and farm staff from The Ecology School staff to learn about the various growing space on campus from our nascent food forest, to our greenhouse, to our pollinator garden to our production fields. We will explore and do activities throughout to engage with these ecosystems and deepen understanding of the food systems that sustain us.

At The Ecology School, we study the relationships that all living organisms have with one another and with our shared environment. We explore ways that we, as humans, can build communities that sustain the very ecosystems that in turn sustain us. Our program and farm staff work with students and guests to deepen their understanding of the world around through hands-on exploration and play through the woods, riverside and farm fields that are River Bend Farm.

Before her time at The BTS Center, Ash held roles as an acting associate pastor and as a hospital and hospice chaplain, as well as various administrative roles at Harvard University. She also has worked as an adjunct professor and a freelance editor. After time spent living in Texas, Virginia, Colorado, Ireland, and Massachusetts, Ash is grateful to call Maine home. She lives with her husband and two cats and enjoys cooking with friends, laying in her garden hammock, hiking in the woods, playing in the ocean, and attempting to learn the Irish language with a cat on her lap.

Sherene Maren

Accepting the Gift: Attentive Devotion to the Magic that Feeds Us

An integral part of making our activism sustainable is integrating our activism with our lives: developing healthful lifeways. Embodiment practices are more than theoretical. How we source, fund, and share food is an opportunity to strengthen our values, honor intimacy with the whole of creation, and practice community care every day. Our consumer choices, our alignment with convenience, our priority for our own needs- these play into the catastrophes we are experiencing on a global scale. When we slow down and learn new ways together, we are not just divesting. We are also establishing new systems that lead away from harm. We are also creating the sustainable inner practice to work together to meet our needs. This is foundational activism –– something we are desperately missing in our social transformation spaces.

Food holds a lot of magic. We all need it every day. What we eat and how we source it are interwoven with our identity. All of our food is waiting for us to remember that it exists in relationship with us. Our food has much to teach us about belonging, interdependence, and relinquishing control. All of the land wants to support our healing and our ability to recognize the mystic connection and heal the systems of oppression within us.

During this immersion, Sherene will offer commentary and conversation regarding her doctoral research about how our connection with our food system affects our connection with all else (ourselves, each other, Earth, and a sense of the divine). She will offer a guided workbook to participants so they can continue to engage sustainable food systems embodiment practices for mending these connections.

Sherene Maren is a board-certified health and wellness coach, licensed Pagan clergy, mother, good friend, and a mystic pursuing a doctoral degree in ministry. 

She studies, practices, and fosters subversive scaffolding to heal issues related to dominant culture conditioning. Her process is rooted in ecology and deep listening to the ways of the untamed entities all around us. Her unique observations about organic boundaries and belonging support processes of interdependence.