August 25, 2023

Dear friends,

As August nears its close and we look toward the autumn, we want to draw your attention toward two very special offerings from The BTS Center in September — Convocation 2023 and the launch of the second season of our podcast, Climate Changed.

During Convocation 2023 this September — in person in Hallowell, Maine — we'll dive into the theme of "Kinship: Re-Weaving the Great Web of Belonging." We hope you'll join us for two days of talks, meals, contemplative practice, music, and spiritual exploration as we seek to understand together what weaving this great web of connection and intention means in our lives and our work.

We are also offering a Special Group Rate for faith communities through the month of August! You can register four people from your group for a price of $500 — just $125 per person. Please click here for more information on the group rate.

Although Convocation this year will be in person, we remain committed to our community, which stretches far and wide beyond our immediate home in Maine. With this in mind, we're pleased to offer an Online Companions Track for Convocation. Registration for the Online Companions Track is now live!

Recognizing that the web of belonging can exist in digital spaces as well as physical ones, we are also delighted to be releasing the second season of Climate Changed — The BTS Center's podcast — in September. This season features a roster of profound and insightful guests joining our hosts, Nicole Diroff and Ben Yosua-Davis, exploring collective honesty and complicated hope. We hope you will listen and share when the season premieres on September 26. In the meantime, Season One is always available for listening on your favorite podcast platform!

We look forward to weaving webs of connection with you — in person or online — in the coming months!

With best wishes,

Join us for Convocation 2023, coming up in just over a month! Inspired by a group of thoughtful presenters, artists, and spiritual leaders, with a posture of reverence and humility, we’ll explore possibilities for nurturing a sense of wonder, gratitude, and hope as we celebrate our profound interconnectedness with all who share our common home.  

Over the course of two days — Thursday and Friday, September 28 and 29 — we will gather to learn and explore, to nurture a sense of community, and to seek respite and renewal. Victoria Loorz, author and co-founder of the Wild Church Network, and John Bear Mitchell, musician, storyteller, and Lecturer of Wabanaki Studies and Multicultural Studies at the University of Maine, will inspire us with wisdom and guide us to experience how nature invites us into the sacred. Rev. Liz Fulmer, queer pastor, musical storyteller, and recording artist, will lead us in song. Convocation 2023 will include music, poetry, and ritual; plenary sessions and small-group conversation; opportunities to engage with nature; and both embodied and contemplative practice. We hope you will join us!

Held annually, continuously since 1905, Convocation is a legacy program of Bangor Theological Seminary, predecessor to The BTS Center. We are delighted to carry on this tradition, 118 years in the making, drawing upon the enduring wisdom of the generations of leaders who have come before us while exploring today’s most urgent and compelling issues.

While we look forward with great anticipation to our first in-person Convocation in several years, we also know that many of you would love to join us but are unable to attend due to distance or other factors. WIth this in mind, we are pleased to offer an Online Companions Track, hosted by our friend Peterson Toscano. 

This online offering will include livestreams of the plenary sessions, as well as exclusive online conversations and opportunities to connect with others who are part of the online community. We look forward to having you as part of Convocation 2023!

Cultivating and nurturing spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world, including equipping faith communities — both ordained and lay leaders — to face the urgent challenges of our day, is at the core of what we do at The BTS Center. As a way of honoring and encouraging our relationships with faith communities, we are pleased to offer a Special Group Rate through the month of August.

If four people from your faith community register together, you will pay just $500 — a price of just $125 per person.

If you have any questions, please reach out to info@thebtscenter.org

Creative / Contemplative Immersion Sessions

We've got a gifted team of Creative / Contemplative Immersion Leaders who will be leading breakout sessions during Convocation — poets and pastors and scholars and practitioners who will be inviting us to go deeper with creative and contemplative practice, on both Thursday and Friday. Dr. Preeta Banerjee, Marpheen Chann, Rev. Liz Fulmer, Kimberly Knight, Rev. Andy Nagy-Benson, Rev. Dr. Andi Lloyd, Rev. Holly Morrison, Rev. Steve Garnaas-Holmes, and Dr. Rebecca Kneale Gould will all bring their wisdom and experience to offer unique and thoughtful immersion sessions for Convocation participants. Read more about the Immersion Session and the leaders at the link below!

Season 2 of Climate Changed is coming on September 26!

We are thrilled to be bringing you another season of our podcast, co-hosted by Nicole Diroff and Ben Yosua-Davis and produced by Peterson Toscano. Each episode features thoughtful and thought-provoking interviews and reflections, this season centering on the theme of collective honesty and complicated hope.

Featuring conversations with Rob Shetterly, Susi Moser, Eileen Flanagan, Keisha McKenzie, Rob Buckley, Margaret Wheatley, Debra Rienstra, and Shanon Shah, Season 2 is sure to spark your imagination and curiosity.

Why not listen to Season 1 again (or for the first time!) while you wait for Season 2? All episodes are available on your favorite podcast platform. Find more information and listen here!

During the Jewish month of Elul, The BTS Center is pleased to bring you a selection of the "Earth Etudes of Elul," compiled and curated by Rabbi Katy Allen.

Creatress of Day and Night

by Rabbi Louis Polisson

Blessed is She

Who causes day to pass and brings the night (1)

May She raise up perfect healing to all who are struck (2)

Whether they are silent, plant, a living animal, a speaking being (3)

Light from darkness, darkness from light (1)

May She bring us out from the demonic fire (4)

Selfishness

The harmful impulse

May She cause us to cleave to the good impulse and acts of repair (5)

Deeds of healing

In wisdom She opens the gates of righteousness (1, 6)

And in understanding she diversifies created beings (1, 7)

At the end of the year

Facing the head of the year

We have come to sanctify the darkness (8)

To repair the world through the sovereign presence of the Mighty One (9)

To distinguish and to unite and to become one

Between day and night (1)

Living and enduring Spirit (10)

May You always guide us, forever and ever

Blessed is She

Creatress of the mixtures of evenings (1)

בוראת לילה ויום

ברוכה היא

מעבירה יום ומביאה לילה

הַעֲלִי רפואה שלמה לכל מכותינו

בין שהוא דומם, צומח, חיה, מדברת

אור מחשך וחשך מאור

הוֹצִיאִינו מאור שדי

אנוכיות

יצר הרע

ודבקי אותנו ביצר הטוב ומעשי תיקון

מעשי רפואה

בחכמה פותחת שערי צדק

ובתבונה מְשַׁנָּה את הבריות

בסוף השנה

פני ראש השנה

באנו חשך לקדש

לתקן עולם במלכות שדי

להבדיל ולאחד אלהאחד 

בין יום ובין לילה

רוח חי וקים

תמיד תִּמְלְכִי עלינו לעולָם ועד

ברוכה היא

המעריבה ערבים

Louis Polisson is a musician, poet, and rabbi, ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2018, where he also earned an MA in Jewish Thought focusing on Kabbalah and Ḥasidut. He currently serves as the Associate Rabbi and Music Director at Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck, New Jersey. He previously served for five years as the solo clergy of Congregation Or Atid in Wayland, Massachusetts. Louis and his wife Gabriella Feingold released an album of original Jewish and nature-based spiritual folk music in November 2018 — listen at this link.

Sources cited and/or paraphrased: See https://mayantikvah.blogspot.com/

The BTS Center | 207.774.5212 | info@thebtscenter.org | www.thebtscenter.org

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