Navigating Climate Spiritual Care: A Learning Community
We are living in times of intersecting calamities, with the climate crisis adding increased instability, uncertainty, and suffering to systemic injustices including racism, inadequate healthcare, poverty, disenfranchisement, homelessness, war, the oppression of LGBTQIA+ communities — and more. No longer can those of us who offer spiritual care avoid the impacts of the climate crisis and these intersectional issues in our own settings, whether we work in health care, community chaplaincy, university settings, or within spiritual communities.
Spiritual care in this time of climate change — with so many social, emotional, and spiritual consequences resulting from such instability — is both deeply necessary and, in many ways, uncharted territory.
The BTS Center is pleased to offer this learning community, originally developed in an asynchronous format by our friends Jessica Morthorpe and Blair Nelsen, and offered by our partner Waterspirit. We will engage the materials from the Climate Pastoral Care course together as a learning community, guided by three hosts and facilitators, meeting twice each month, to deepen our understanding of the physical, emotional, mental health, and spiritual impacts of the climate crisis, and to explore how to address these impacts through the practice of spiritual care.
In this learning community, participants will explore a range of resources for addressing the climate crisis within their chosen vocations. Together we will navigate this landscape by drawing on already-established spiritual care skills and wisdom that we bring to this work as practitioners, and which can reassure us of our preparedness for the challenge.
Topics for discussion will include:
climate anxiety and grief
race-conscious spiritual care
care to peoples of the land
natural disaster and climate migrants
ministry to climate activists and climate-anxious people
spiritual care to children
contextualizing self-care and self-differentiation
complicated hope
Participants will engage in discussion in both small groups and in the larger, cross-sector group, thereby developing a network of peers for ongoing support and consultation. Our hosts, Rev. Alison Cornish, Nicholas Collura, and Rev. Ash Temin — each of them deeply experienced in spiritual care settings — will guide participants through discussions and practices based on online materials within the Waterspirit course.
Program Fee: $200
Scholarships are available. Prior participants are eligible for a reduced registration. Please contact alison@thebtscenter.org to inquire.
Time commitment: Meetings will run for 90 minutes twice monthly, starting November 10, and participants can expect to spend an equivalent amount of time engaging with online materials on non-gathering weeks.
Program Dates
Mondays, 4 – 5:30pm (Eastern), Online
November 10, 2025
November 24, 2025
December 8, 2025
January 12, 2026
January 26, 2026
February 9, 2026
February 23, 2026
March 9, 2026
March 23, 2026
April 6, 2026
Deadline to submit applications: October 20
Deadline to submit commitment forms: October 27
Learn more and register here.
Want a taste before you apply?
If you are interested in the Navigating Climate Spiritual Care Learning Community but would like to learn more before deciding to apply, please join us online on Monday, September 22 from 1.00 – 2.00pm (Eastern) for “A Taste of Navigating Climate Spiritual Care,” an informal gathering where you will be able to meet that facilitators, learn more about the program, and as questions!
We’ll be joined by:
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.
Nicholas Collura currently directs the Radius program for ethical reflection on technology and culture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also serves as a campus chaplain. Prior to his time at MIT, he trained as a board-certified healthcare chaplain and worked in both caregiving and supervisory roles in palliative care and hospice for several years in Philadelphia. There, he also co-founded and co-coordinated EcoPhilly, a faith-based organizing initiative dedicated to creation care in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
Rev. Ash Temin is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) who serves as the Communications Manager at The BTS Center. She also offers spiritual direction through her independent practice in Portland, Maine. Ash is a graduate of the University of Virginia (BA), the Irish School of Ecumenics at Trinity College Dublin (MPhil) and Harvard Divinity School (MDiv). Her time at both the ISE and HDS sparked a passion for ecological theology and prompted her to begin delving more deeply into the experience of ecological grief. Prior to moving to Portland, she served as an Acting Associate Pastor at Hope Central Church, a UCC/DOC congregation in Boston. Before answering the call to ordination, Ash worked in various administrative roles at Harvard University. She also has worked as a hospital and hospice chaplain, an adjunct professor, and a freelance editor.
