Lament with Earth
Five seasonal events honoring the pain of loss through the liturgical year
“We know and feel in our bones that something primal is amiss. Our extended home is being eroded. It is essential that we stop and recognize these losses...to respond with sorrow, outrage and apology at these places touched by so much loss.”
— Francis Weller
So many of us know this truth voiced by Francis Weller. And yet, we have so few opportunities to express our sorrow, fear, sadness and yes, even despair about a future of life in a climate-changed world. It takes courage to touch the places inside ourselves where these truths live — those thoughts and feelings that likely keep many of us up at night, but are too often held inside us, in a space both alone, and lonely.
To create space for these feelings, The BTS Center — together with The Many, an extraordinary group of songwriters, spoken word artists and liturgists — has created Lament with Earth — five seasonal events featuring original music, poetry, rituals, images, scripture and videos to reflect different seasons of loss through the liturgical year. These events are interactive, inviting you to pray and sing along. You are invited to bring your own sense of loss and sadness. We lament together, and also share that which has been a balm to our grief, strengthening us for the work we know awaits us.
Upcoming dates for the next series will be announced soon.
We invite you to join The BTS Center's Lament with Earth community. Register here, and we will be in touch as dates for the next series are announced.
Fall Event: Via Negativa, with the Element of Air
In the Fall, as the natural world becomes more still, and stark, we, too are invited to let go — to, in the words of Matthew Fox, "embrace the lonely, quiet moments in our lives when we are asked to sink into nothingness, to let pain be pain, and accept the mysteries of life." When the trees lose their leaves, spaces open up — and we can see things differently. We see the world starkly, as it really can be, absent the robust greenery that hides the structures of the trees’ branches and trunks — and, in the cities, can also hide the angularity of the built environment.
In the same way, when we are stripped of our illusions — the false sense that the climate isn’t really changing, it was just a particularly hot, or wet, fiery, or dry summer this year — we can see things differently. We need to have our illusions peeled away, to face the hard truths of our times. It is better to live in the truth. But we need to have real, loving company in order to do that...otherwise, in our isolation, we are far more subject to despair.
Winter Event: Festivals, with the Element of Fire
“The holidays…invite us not so much to dispel the darkness with light, but to enter the darkness with whatever light our consciousness brings. It is there in the darkness, as frightening as that might be, where we truly meet our spiritual selves. It is within the darkness, the unknown, that our creativity and our hope and our promise take root and have their home.”
— Charles Blustein Ortman
Festivals are times of miracles. Both the Christian story of the birth of Jesus and the Hanukkah story of the oil for the lamp point to unanticipated, and unplanned, miracles. And so many of the festivals involve candles or lights of some kind. How might we, even in our lament, make room for the inbreaking of the miraculous? What is illuminated differently by the candles of the advent wreath, or menorahs, or by solstice bonfires?
Heart of Winter Event: Via Creativa, with the Element of Earth
In the winter, even as the natural world looks so lifeless, there is also the reality that creative things are going on which we cannot see. Sap is rising in the trees which look dead, and bulbs and seeds are swelling under the ground which looks barren. We, too, are invited to seek, in the words of Matthew Fox, "the fertile moments in our lives when we find creative expression, and put words to our joy and suffering of our existence. Freeing creativity helps us to move beyond our sorrow or stagnation." In this moment, the climate crisis certainly looks bleak — the damage which has been done is “baked in” to the future — this is true. And yet, there is an extraordinary amount of creativity, and life force, alive and working to save what can be saved, and to mitigate the effects of rising temperatures, sea level rise, massive migrations, and other profound effects of the climate crisis.
Considering the element of earth, we are reminded this element is both something which contributes to climate change — because of the way it has been treated, in extractive and exploitative ways — and yet also holds great potential to be a factor in addressing climate change, when understood and treated with respect.
Together, we hold the space for both mourning and discovery, sorrow and inspiration.
Spring Event: Via Transformativa, with the Element of Water
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
— Robert Frost, Once by the Pacific
Spring in the northern hemisphere is filled with holidays that draw us into the forces of transformation: the resurrection of Easter, the liberation of Passover, and Beltane, the ancient springtime festival of optimism and fertility. In Matthew Fox's words, "these are the prophetic moments in our lives when we are called to use our talents and gifts with the hurting, fractured, dysfunctional aspects of our society." What better element to guide us through the themes of transformation than water, itself a shape-shifter? Water, in all its varied forms, stirs our imaginations even as it gives — and takes away — life. Water is intimately connected to our climate-changed world — as storm and drought, as acidification of the ocean and rain, as sea level rise and rising saline levels of fresh water sources. And, water moves turbines, grows food hydroponically, cools desert-like air, and bears life into the future.
Together, we lament, and celebrate, the transformative power of water, holding space for mourning and discovery, sorrow and inspiration.
The Season of Via Positiva, featuring All Beings
“In a healthy environment, our first spiritual moments are moments of awe and wonder, and delight. The mystics call this the Via Positiva. When we allow these gifts to penetrate our souls the organic response includes: gratitude, reverence, and joy.”
— Matthew Fox
As days lengthen and temperatures warm, many of us are drawn outside to first-hand experiences of awe and wonder, and delight — the characteristics of creation spirituality's via positiva. Our creatureliness awakens and is enlivened by the blooming, burgeoning, bountiful world. Yet the more we are aware and alive, the more keenly we feel the threats to our fellow beings — the extinction of species, their loss of habitat, and the despoiling of dwelling places by powerful forces which threaten the extraordinarily diverse and resplendent world which we share with all that lives and breathes along with us. We welcomed you to join us as we celebrated and mourned, awakened and grieved, loved and despaired. Coming to be together, to share these feelings, thoughts, and sadnesses is the key to moving towards life.
Meet our Co-Creators:
The Many is a creative collective making music and new kinds of inclusive, justice-building gatherings that offer space for faith and doubt, lament and gratitude. The feet-on-the-ground, heart-in-hands songs and liturgies they create remind us we aren’t alone and that all belong here. And they help us find the courage to authentically love God, love ourselves, love others and this whole, aching planet. The Many includes Darren Calhoun, Hannah Rand, Christa Sangster Monroe, Jonathan Ulanday, Kristina Sinks, Gary Rand and Lenora Rand. 
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 by offering theologically grounded programs of continuing education and spiritual formation, including workshops and retreats, learning cohorts, public conversations, and projects of applied research, all focused around spiritual leadership in a climate-changed world.
Meet our Partners:
An Offering from Radical Joy for Hard Times, one of our Lament with Earth Partners
Earth Hospice Rites is an online, ongoing gathering place to lament, celebrate, share, and offer mindful attention to the places and species we love that are endangered by climate change. We meet on Zoom every other Wednesday for 20 minutes. Hosted by Trebbe Johnson and Alison Cornish, Chaplaincy Initiative Coordinator at The BTS Center. Learn more here.
