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December 1, 2023
Dear friends:
In many spiritual traditions, December is a month that holds particular sacred significance — a month that invites a different quality of reflection, a deepening, as winter summons introspection and contemplation.
For Christians, December ushers in the Season of Advent — four weeks of attentive listening, waiting, preparing for the celebration of Jesus' birth on Christmas. For those who are Jewish, December invites the lighting of candles, the counting of days, and the recalling of God's faithfulness. For all of us in the Northern hemisphere, December leads us through 21 days of deepening darkness, culminating with the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year — and then the ever-so-gradual return of lengthening light.
For those of us who are part of The BTS Center team, December has become a month in which we take a programmatic pause in order to spend time in discernment and discussion, together exploring bigger questions of strategic intent. For four weeks, we'll pause from most programs, most regular meetings, and most public communications, and we'll turn our attention inward — to share unhurried conversation with partners and program participants, and then to bring insights gleaned from these conversations into dialogue with our own deepening sense of organizational purpose, impact, and intention. Because we know the work of The BTS Center matters a great deal in this urgent moment, we hope to enter the new year with greater clarity about the change we are seeking, the methodologies we are employing, and the particular paths we are pursuing.
As we embrace this programmatic pause — a month that is sure to be productive, but differently so — we're taking you with us. (We hope you don't mind!) You — this incredible community that has formed around The BTS Center; this ever-widening circle of friends; hundreds and hundreds of you who participate in our programs from all 50 states, the Canadian provinces, and Europe and Africa, too — will be in our hearts and in our minds as we celebrate the milestones of this past year and envision what lies ahead in 2024. We are grateful for each one of you — those of you who are clergy serving in congregational contexts, those of you who are chaplains and spiritual directors, those of you who serve in higher education and nonprofit settings, all of you who serve as spiritual leaders in myriad ways, and those of you who understand that the ecological crisis we are facing demands something more of us. We are glad to be part of your journey, and we are grateful that you are part of this community.
We know that December can be an exceedingly busy month, but we hope these next four weeks will bring moments of pause for you, too — moments when you are able to step back, survey the landscape, reflect on what matters most, recalibrate where needed, engage in restorative spiritual practice, ask some big questions about purpose and identity, and recommit to the work that is yours to do.
With the start of 2024, we'll be here, holding fast to the vision of human hearts renewed, justice established, and creation restored. We will continue to pursue our mission: to catalyze spiritual imagination, with enduring wisdom, for transformative faith leadership. And we look forward to many, many opportunities to conspire with you as we strive to cultivate and nurture spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world.
Blessings of the season!
With gratitude and hope,
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