feat. Rabbi Laura Bellows, Dayenu
Jewish Spiritual Care in
the Wake of Disaster
Tuesday, October 20 • Zoom
12 – 1pm ET | 9 – 10am PT
feat. Rabbi Laura Bellows, Dayenu
Floods. Fires. Heatwaves. Hurricanes. Disaster is a threat with increasing frequency and demands for spiritual care.
Jewish tradition has always known this: facing loss with authenticity, giving it the time it requires – this is not weakness. It is how a people survives and finds a way forward, even among the ruins.
Join Rabbi Laura Bellows for an introduction to Dayenu’s newly developed resources for Jewish Spiritual Care:
After Extreme Weather
After Floods and Storms
After Heatwaves and Fires
– practical tools and sacred offerings born from a tradition that has doesn’t shun grief, built for a world that needs them now.
Participation in Jewish Spiritual Care in the Wake of Disaster is free of charge. Donations would be deeply appreciated to support our ongoing climate chaplaincy work.
Speaker
Rabbi Laura Bellows works to build climate-resilient, spiritually-rooted, justice-seeking communities centered in Jewish wisdom. She has served as a curriculum and ritual designer, outdoor experiential educator, program manager, artist, and facilitator in Jewish and inter-religious spaces. Laura studied Environmental Studies at Oberlin College and was ordained at Hebrew College, where she recently led Prozdor and Teen Learning programs. She moonlights as a soferet (scribe) and freelance rabbi for couples and communities throughout the Boston area.
Hosts
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.
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.
Partners
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. CIL’s work is shaped by four central commitments maintained by all who are connected to CIL.
Dayenu is a movement of American Jews confronting the climate crisis with spiritual audacity and bold political action. We care deeply about equity and justice in our world and about the future we create for our children and future generations. We believe that together, drawing from our Jewish tradition, experience, and faith, we have the power to create real and lasting change.