Leadership Commons Open House
Occurred on February 7, 2024
This winter, The BTS Center invited you to the next of our quarterly virtual Open Houses showcasing the offerings of our Leadership Commons.
The Leadership Commons is a space where we develop and feature new content from a variety of collaborators — as well as gathering materials adapted from past programs — to help equip faith leaders in the work of guiding communities of spiritual practice through the uncertainties of life on a changing planet.
Our offerings continue to grow as our community of collaborators expands, and the Open House will be an opportunity to learn more about how you and your congregation or community can access and make use of these vibrant resources.
For our February Open House, Rev. Alison Cornish and Trebbe Johnson joined us to discuss their program, Earth Hospice Rites, for which they have developed a guide for those wishing to lead such programs in their own communities. Earth Hospice Rites has offered a gathering space for those experiencing climate grief to gather in community and be held in their experiences and emotions. Thank you to those who joined us to learn more from Alison and Trebbe about how to lead these kinds of programs with your own congregation or group.
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.
Trebbe Johnson is the author of Radical Joy for Hard Times: Finding Meaning and Making Beauty in Earth’s Broken Places, and other books, as well as many articles and essays that explore the human bond with nature. She is also the founder and director of the global community Radical Joy for Hard Times, devoted to finding and making beauty in wounded places. She lives in Ithaca, New York.