October 21, 2025 • 29 mins
What does it mean to approach a climate-changed world with rigorous and reverent curiosity? Inthis special Behind the Scenes Edition of the Climate Changed Podcast, host Jessica David sits down with Ben Yosua-Davis and Rev. Ash Temin of The BTS Center. Together, they explore how curiosity—paired with imagination—can become a spiritual practice, a way of meaning-making, and a pathway toward more faithful responses in a climate-changed world.
From maple sap and chickens to contemplative practices and ecological grief, Ben and Ash share both the practical and the profound ways they cultivate curiosity in their own lives. They also reflect on how The BTS Center’s programs encourage spiritual leaders to slow down, pay attention, and imagine new ways of living and leading.
Key Quotes- Ash Temin: “Curiosity as a quiet, contemplative stance doesn’t make it any less alive. It might not be as visible, but it’s there fomenting the change that comes.”
- Ben Yosua-Davis: “If you want to change, you have to slow down. You have to create spaciousness to ask big, open-ended questions that don’t have a one-to-one correspondence with your to-do list.”
- Ash Temin: “Taking curiosity with rigor and reverence moves us out of selfishness and into an ecology of relationships, where growth and flourishing become possible.”
Ben Yosua-Davis is Director of Applied Research at The BTS Center, where he leads projects rooted in rigorous and reverent curiosity. A graduate of Drew Theological Seminary and Colby College, Ben previously co-planted a missional church and hosted the podcast Reports From the Spiritual Frontier. He lives with his family on Chebeague Island, Maine.
Rev. Ash TeminRev. Ash Temin is an ordained minister and Communications Manager at The BTS Center. She also offers spiritual direction in Portland, Maine. A graduate of UVA, Trinity College Dublin, and Harvard Divinity School, Ash brings her passion for ecological theology and grief work into her ministry and writing.
Join the Conversation:
Where do you fall on the hope spectrum? What practices do you use to cultivate hope — or maybe you don't?
Share your reflections via email at podcast@thebtscenter.org or leave a voicemail at 207-200-6986.
Climate Changed Podcast is a project of The BTS Center in Portland, Maine. Produced by Peterson Toscano. Visit climatechangedpodcast.org for more episodes of the Climate Changed podcast.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> Jessica David (00:05):
Why do certain questions or ideas catch my
attention? How do I make sense of them? Welcome to
the Climate Changed Podcast behind the Scenes
Edition with me, Jessica David. I am excited to be
here today with two members of the BTS Center's
team.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (00:24):
I'm Ben Yashua Davis, one of the regular co hosts
of this podcast and also the BTS Center's director
of Applied research. I'm also an Islander and a
father of three wonderful young children.
>> Jessica David (00:37):
And I'm Ash Tiemann, communications manager at the
BTS Center. I also coordinate our spiritual
accompaniment circles. I'm a spiritual director
and I'm a writer. I live in beautiful Portland,
Maine, traditional lands of the Wabanaki.
(01:00):
And I have to say, I'm a little intimidated being
here with Ben, um, one, uh, of the regular co
hosts. So, Ben, you've got to go easy on me.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (01:07):
My expertise is entirely overblown, I assure you.
>> Jessica David (01:11):
I don't know about that.
So let's start with this question. What is
something you are personally curious about right
now.
In these kind of crazy times that we're in, with a
lot of tumult and a lot of unknown and a lot of
fear? I've gotten really curious about the ferment
(01:33):
underneath the structures, the sort of cracks and
where energy is flowing, where people are
connecting at the edges. I think this has always
been a part of our spiritual traditions, and I
think of the monastics in Christianity, the
mystics, people who were part of, in some ways,
(01:55):
part of the institutional structures, but also
really outside of them, um, walking this kind of
fine line now in particular, I'm drawn to those
voices, both from the past and also in the
present, that are offering an invitation to new
ways of living and being, new ways of seeing the
(02:18):
world. I've also been really curious about
language as a way of reclaiming rather than owning
or dominating. So I think there's been a lot of
use of language in colonialist mentalities to sort
of claim spaces that are not ours. But then
(02:39):
there's these movements to reclaim the language
and to really, um, root ourselves in language that
speaks with the land, not dominating over the
land.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (02:53):
I really appreciate, Ash, how profound and
thoughtful that response was, but because what
came to mind for me was not where the energy is
flowing, but actually literally on my land, where
the SAP is flowing. Uh, my family, we are nascent
homesteaders. One of the things we did this last
year is we tapped our maple trees. SAP is just the
(03:16):
most amazing thing. You have these trees, they're
in your front yard. You poke a couple holes in
them and put a bucket underneath them. All of a
sudden, the most glorious substance comes out of
them. And I find myself wondering and feeling kind
of amazed about that. And more practically, how do
you keep the deer from eating your fruit trees in
(03:37):
your orchard? Because I don't know how they do it,
but they just lean right over the fencing that
we've put up and they just keep taking, like, the
top two feet off our saplings. I'm curious about
the social politics of chickens, which I've talked
about before, a little bit on this podcast. I'm
curious about how to set up rain barrels on our
property to take advantage of all the water that
(03:58):
comes off the roofs of our various structures. I'm
curious about solar panels and how to install
them. A, ah, curiosity that is perhaps less shared
by my wife and mother, who would prefer me not to
investigate that, uh, curiosity from, you know,
40ft above ground, uh, level.
>> Jessica David (04:15):
Excellent. I did not expect chickens to come up so
early in this conversation, but thanks for
bringing us there, Ben. So I asked that question
to start because I think curious people are so
interesting. And also curiosity is contagious. So
now I'm going to be curious about chickens and
deer and the cracks. I love, I love that imagery
(04:38):
that, that you offered, Ash.
So I've heard the BTS center use a phrase that I
absolutely love, which is rigorous and reverent
curiosity. Rigorous and reverent curiosity. I just
wanted to say it again, so tell me what that means
to you.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (04:56):
The origins of this term came from our research.
In fact, one of the decisions we had to make
early, um, as we were designing our first research
projects, is how are we coming into our work as we
research practitioners? Are we coming in with a,
uh, hypothesis we're trying to prove or disprove,
or a framework we're trying to kind of lay down on
(05:16):
a group of people or a context? Or are we trying
to come in with an open mind simply to say, what
do we see happening here? How do we do so in a way
that enables us to actually pay attention to what
people are actually sharing with us rather than
hearing what our biases would predispose for us to
hear? We started talking about we want to approach
(05:39):
our work with rigorous curiosity. So we're going
to use the best of social science methodology,
we're going to be aware of our biases, we're going
to spend a lot of time reflecting on what we're
hearing. And then one of our board members,
Elizabeth Parsons, who incidentally would probably
absolutely hate that I'm giving her credit for
this. Sorry. Liz said, uh, actually, I think we
shouldn't be just talking about rigorous
(06:00):
curiosity, but rigorous and reverent curiosity.
Because what we do as we cultivate the psychology
of wisdom is actually holy work. One of the things
I say regularly to the practitioners who I
research is I say, you are my greatest teachers
and I want to name and share the wisdom that
(06:22):
you're holding with others.
>> Jessica David (06:24):
I love that so much, Ben. And I love listening to
the way that Ben frames research and our work
generally. Um, because it is really, it feels so
much love. It is a spiritual practice as well as
being all of these other things together. And for
me, any sort of spiritual practice that's worth
(06:47):
doing has a rigor to it. It has the structure that
kind of defines the practice. And then you, you
know, once you have the rigor, you get the
capacity to kind of push against it and see where
it can flex. I think it's Richard Rohr who talks
about the importance of having the walls of a
(07:09):
tradition around you so that eventually you get to
the point in your spiritual journey where you can
break the walls and go beyond them. But the, the
walls serve a really important function. And I
think about the rigor not as an inflexible thing,
but as something that offers really important
boundaries to us.
(07:31):
But in terms of like, the reverence too, I think
of curiosity as being a sort of quiet thing that
can flow from a contemplative stance. Uh, you
know, having it be quiet doesn't make it any less
alive. It doesn't make it any less vigorous. It
might not be as visible, but it's there kind of,
(07:54):
you know, fomenting the, the change that comes.
Taking curiosity, taking everything with this
spirit of rigor and reverence allows us to move
out of a, uh, selfishness, I guess. You know,
curiosity could get just like bound up in our own
kind of little world. But to move into a self
(08:16):
awareness that opens out into the possibilities of
the ecology of our networks, uh, the ecology of
our relationships, and really paying attention in
a way that allows those relationships to grow and
to flourish.
Yeah, there was so much there in what you both
(08:37):
said. And I love this notion of, well, I love
structure as a person who really appreciates what
structure can bring and open up. I think that is
such a brilliant, uh, observation, Ash. And also
really appreciate this notion of curiosity as a
spiritual practice. And also that those sorts of
(08:59):
practices require rigor. That so often I think
spirituality gets put in this bucket of, you know,
touchy feely, uh, without structure. Without, um,
consequence, uh, sort of this, this thing, stuff
that happens over here and uh, instead thinking of
(09:20):
it as, as a practice, as a, as a muscle, as
something that gets actively strengthened and
truly practiced, you know, each and every day.
It's beautiful.
So what is the BTS center curious about?
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (09:37):
As Jessica and Ash can both attest to? I am
enthusiastically curious about a lot of things.
But I have to say, practitioners, spiritual
leaders doing this work on the ground are just
endlessly fascinating to me. I remember when I was
a pastor, I was always wrestling with these kind
(09:57):
of totalizing, universal, uh, like MIC leadership
models that would say, like, there's one right way
to do this no matter what your context is. So
we're going to give it to you and if you follow
it, you'll be successful and if you don't, you're
going to fail and it's going to be your fault. Of
course, those models would evaporate almost
instantly when they came into contact with the
(10:18):
complexity that is human community. But one of the
things that I've learned in, in my work now is
just the incredible diverse creative creativity of
ways that people are responding to our climate
changed world that have patterns and connections,
but resist that kind of like, here are the five
(10:38):
things you need to do to be a good spiritual
leader in a climate changed world sort of
framework. I find this especially exciting when
looking at congregations where we see in our
research people coming back into contact with the
very best that their faith traditions have to
offer the current moment that we're in. Um, a lot
(10:59):
of our research is centered around how do
spiritual leaders in faith communities understand
their vocation, so their sense of call, their
sense of mission and identity in a climate changed
world, and how do we see those understandings
shift over time? And then what does transformative
faith leadership look like when it's embodied by
spiritual leaders and faith communities in a
(11:19):
climate changed world?
>> Jessica David (11:22):
Ben, I love how you frame that. And I do feel like
as an organization we've gotten super curious
about this idea of collective call or collective
vocation. You know, so often we frame calling or
vocation, or at least I've heard it framed as an
individual thing, which is totally true and
lovely. But the idea that in a climate changed
(11:43):
world, when we're meeting these challenges that
are new and emergent and changing, and there's
very little stability in the way that we might
have experienced it previously, that we're called
into collective vocation as communities, as
watersheds to meet this moment. And really the
(12:05):
idea that everyone can be is a spiritual leader.
So within this network of spiritual leaders, how
does this ecosystem grow? How does it thrive? How
do we offer resources and framing and programs
that really nurture these, these communities and
(12:30):
how can we resource them to take on a life of
their own? And we've seen this so many times. You
know, Ben's research in some programs, they've
done a small experiment with radical intent. And
that has been like beautiful to see where people
go with this, where they take it, where these
communities move and explore with this, with these
(12:53):
ideas that we're offering to them and with them.
And I will say also, you know, as we're looking at
different ways of resourcing spiritual leaders, of
offering community. I've been really delighted to
be involved in the spiritual accompaniment part of
our programming, which is really giving folks a
(13:16):
space to be quiet, to discern, to hear the
movements of the spirit, not only in a personal
way, although that, but also to, to take that
outward into the communities of which they're a
part.
I really appreciate how you each speak about
curiosity in different ways, and yet they, they
(13:39):
come together and they intersect and really weave
together at the same time.
Let's touch on the relationship between curiosity
and something else that I know is important to the
BTS center, which is imagination. Do m those two
(13:59):
things ever conflict for you? Curiosity and
imagination?
Curiosity and imagination are really two sides of
possibility. You really have to have one to fully
engage the other. You know, if you're curious
about something, that what is right now, but you
(14:21):
might also take that into the imagination of what
could be. The curiosity gets expanded, nourished,
blooms into something else. With the addition of
imagination, it's hard for me to separate them
(14:44):
out. Imagination is such a huge part of our work
in terms of giving people the permission to
imagine a world that is beautiful and flourishing,
rooted in kinship, offering a very different
paradigm for what relationship means, for what a
(15:07):
human society could be in the midst of a more than
human world. I love that curiosity and imagination
go hand in hand.
M.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (15:25):
You know what you say, Ash reminds me of our first
major research project we did, cultivating Earth
Shaped Leadership, which we did in collaboration
with seven different cross sector organizations
where we asked them to engage with the question,
how would organizations act differently today if
they embodied an ecological imagination? As part
(15:47):
of that co learning community, we really encourage
people to engage in the practices of curiosity and
imagination. And uh, one really interesting thing
that came up was this kind of new theory of change
that emerged for these leaders. Oftentimes when we
think about what it means to change an
Organization. We talk about kind of change your
thinking, change your organization. We're all
(16:08):
going to read this book and then we're going to go
out and change what we do or change your programs
and change your organization. We're going to start
a new initiative, we're going to start a new
project. But participants came up with a new
theory. Change what you see, change your
organization. We can't change what we can't see.
(16:30):
And I think this connects back, Ash, to what you
were talking about earlier in terms of
contemplative practice. Contemplative practice, it
starts with seeing. It starts with being aware and
noticing what's going on in yourself and the
divine and the world. And this is what this group
of leaders came to as well is when we can see
what's happening in our organizations, then change
(16:52):
becomes possible. That was a really key part of
how curiosity enabled them to interrogate a lot of
their kind of givens that were invisible. And
imagination allowed them to kind of expand their
frameworks to start thinking about what might be
some other ways for us to do this together.
>> Jessica David (17:10):
Hmm. I have this sort of image in my head of just
deepening and going deeper. And the rigorous and
the reverent are about uncovering layers. It not
being a ah, single task you check off your list.
But this ever present practice and way of seeing
(17:32):
as well. If I'm remembering correctly Ben, that
came out of that research was also the need for
space for imagination and curiosity. It's not easy
to layer in when we are already super busy and
being pulled in a million different directions.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (17:47):
Yeah, yeah. Again, uh, going back to contemplative
practice requires time, requires space. Likewise,
it's impossible to really get at these givens.
It's impossible to be curious when you're really
really busy because all that matters is the next
item on your to do list. That was part of what we
discovered is actually if you want to change, you
(18:07):
have to slow down because you have to create
spaciousness for you to ask some of these big open
ended questions that don't have a one to one
correspondence with your daily calendar or your to
do list.
>> Jessica David (18:18):
Hmm.
Mhm.
If you want to change, you have to slow down. That
is a tidbit of wisdom right there Ben. Thank you.
So give some examples of how you at the BTS Center
Center. Imagination or curiosity?
We do a lot with our programs that I think is
(18:39):
unexpected for a lot of folks. Yeah M. In our
public conversations with some really incredible
thought leaders, we always have music. We have a
professional musician come in and Be a part of the
program. We have poetry, we have art. These are
things that in a zoom space or in person are not
(19:04):
necessarily things that folks would expect from a
conversation about a climate changed world. You
know, they understand that we are spiritually
rooted and that we're oriented towards spiritual
leadership. But I think even upending in a small
way people's expectations of what, uh, a gathering
space means, bringing in those elements that feel
(19:26):
really sacred, offer people really different
doorways into the divine. These spaces where we
can drop through logic into something else. We
hear over and over again that people have these
experiences of the programs that we offer. It's
(19:47):
not just the information that they're giving or
the connections that they're making with one
another. All those are, those are incredibly
important elements. There's also this sense of,
oh, I'm here and I've. I'm really being seen and
I'm, I'm getting, being offered this space that
feels like respite or it feels like worship, or it
(20:10):
feels like something sacred that I can be a part
of. And I think that really does serve to ignite
their curiosity, their imagination, in ways that
they can take back into their own communities and
might invigorate their work in a way that is
unexpected.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (20:29):
I've been doing a lot of research recently around
how people understand what it means to care for
creation. How do they define that? What do they
imagine? Responses are one of the things that
we've begin to notice in a lot of our programming
as part of the process that happens for people,
people come in and when you talk about engaging
with the environment, care for creation, or
(20:50):
climate change, people come in with a very narrow
framework for what that means. Either we engage in
some personal lifestyle or technology changes. You
know, we walk to work, we recycle, we use less
plastic, we install solar, or it means political
advocacy trying to change systems. What we
discover is that over time, as people engage with
our programming, not that those things become
(21:12):
unimportant, but actually imaginatively, the
possibilities for what it means to be faithful in
a climate changed world begin to expand. There's
an understanding that if you engage in local
action around an industrial waste site in your
community, that's climate work. If you plant a
community garden on your congregation's property,
(21:33):
that's climate work. If you engage in shared
rituals of grief and lamentations, if you deepen
relationships with indigenous neighbors, if you
collaborate with secular nonprofits to strengthen
the human and the more than human ecosystems that
you're a part of, all of that is also Climate
work. And that to me is really exciting because we
(21:56):
begin to see how expanding people's capacities of
imagination allow them to engage out of the best
of their identity and the best of their tradition
in a way that these narrow possibilities really
don't.
>> Jessica David (22:09):
Yeah, that connection between the unexpected or
the different and both curiosity and imagination,
it jars us into a different way of being which
unlocks certain things.
I want to shift to a few. Maybe selfish questions
(22:31):
are practical questions. As individuals, what
should we do with curiosity? Is it a state of
being? Or does being curious call us to something
else? Some kind of behavior?
In Western Hawaii society that a lot of us have
(22:52):
been raised in, there is an automatic impetus to
do something. I try to go back to the
contemplative stance of being first, being with
it, feeling the curiosity, being curious about the
curiosity, but not staying there. I mean, there is
(23:13):
then a movement into action. Curiosity naturally
opens us and guides us and invites us if we're
listening, listening but not pushing. I like the
idea of slow curiosity, where it might not look
like much is happening, but it is under the
(23:36):
surface. You know, it is bubbling away. You never
know where it's going to emerge and where it's
going to take.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (23:53):
I love that idea of slow curiosity, and it makes
me immediately think about our current moment.
Post, um, election is a great example of a moment.
I feel anxious, I feel a desire to speed up and
do, do, do, do, do. What I'm, uh, hearing in this
moment is actually a call to, is to take a deep
(24:16):
breath, take a step back and say, what is actually
happening here? If our individual politicians or
political parties are the symptom, then what are
the systems that are at work underneath the
surface that requires exactly what you're talking
about, which is slow curiosity that can allow us
(24:39):
to kind of take one step back from the immediacy
of our current situation and say, okay, I'm
curious, what's, what is actually going on here?
>> Jessica David (24:48):
For, uh, those of us who maybe as Ash said, are in
that space of thinking that having something to do
is the answer, what are some practices or tools
that help you each maintain a posture or a stance
of curiosity?
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (25:05):
It's about releasing control. It's about being
prepared for surprise and seeing surprise as a
good thing and not as a sign that something's
going wrong.
>> Jessica David (25:16):
Oof, that's a great one, Ben. For, um, me, it's
about taking a stance of non judgment, of asking
questions. I often find that when I catch myself
being extremely judgmental, it's coming from a
place of fear. Or instability or uncertainty, and
(25:38):
to just be able to take a step back and just be
curious about my own responses. It's, uh, about
what Ben said. It's about releasing control.
Wow. Is there something special about the kind of
curiosity that enables meaning making and real
(25:58):
understanding?
Yeah, I would, I would go back to our stance of
rigorous and reverent curiosity. That interplay of
both what we talked about in the structure, but
also the openness, the flexibility allows us to
turn our attention in different directions and
(26:21):
root into this possibility of making meaning. In
my experience. Good spirituality or healthy
spirituality? Healthy religion doesn't give you
the answers. It turns things upside down. It asks
us to enter in through the unexpected. It doesn't
(26:43):
quote, unquote, make sense in the way that we as
humans really want it to make sense. That model is
really the model I look to when I think about
meaning making and I think about staying curious
about everything.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (27:01):
Yeah. It's important for me to remember that my
story is not the only story at work in the world.
It's really hard to be curious about things that
we don't think are really alive. White Western
folk have been taught that the rest of the world
really isn't alive. One of the things I've learned
that's really important when it comes to curiosity
(27:21):
and meaning making is to go, actually this world
is alive. God is alive, the trees are alive, there
are ecosystems are alive. There are so many beings
that are not human, that have their own stories,
their own hopes, their own struggles, their own
fears. They are trying to speak to us. Certainly
(27:43):
people like me have forgotten how to listen. So
curiosity is actually about learning to be in a
reciprocal conversation that can change me.
>> Jessica David (27:56):
Mhm. Meaning is not certainty and it's not
control. Curiosity is an invitation to go deeper,
to see differently, but it doesn't necessarily
provide us with answers. Thank you so much, Ash
and Ben, for this illuminating, warm and tender
conversation. I so appreciated learning from you.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (28:20):
Thanks for your great questions, Jessica.
>> Jessica David (28:22):
Yeah, this has been wonderful. It's been a joy.
Listeners, it's your turn now. Is there a time in
your life that being curious about something has
opened up new understandings for you? I hope
you'll share with me by emailing us
podcasthebtscenter.org or calling and leaving a
(28:43):
voice message at 207-200-6986. Thank you for
listening to the Climate Changed podcast Behind
the Scenes edition with me, Jessica David. Coming
up in our next episode, we are going to talk about
experimentation. Visit climatechangedpodcast.org
(29:04):
for show notes, a uh, transcript and more. Climate
changed podcast.org Many thanks to my guests Ash
Tiemann and Ben Yoshua Davis. Also thanks to
producer Peterson Toscano for producing this
episode and to Nicole Deroff for all your support
and assistance. Climate Changed Podcast is a
(29:25):
project of the BTS center in beautiful Portland,
Maine. Learn about the many resources we offer
along with our in person and online programs by
visiting our website, thebtscenter.org Goodbye for
now.
Why do certain questions or ideas catch my
attention? How do I make sense of them? Welcome to
the Climate Changed Podcast behind the Scenes
Edition with me, Jessica David. I am excited to be
here today with two members of the BTS Center's
team.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (00:24):
I'm Ben Yashua Davis, one of the regular co hosts
of this podcast and also the BTS Center's director
of Applied research. I'm also an Islander and a
father of three wonderful young children.
>> Jessica David (00:37):
And I'm Ash Tiemann, communications manager at the
BTS Center. I also coordinate our spiritual
accompaniment circles. I'm a spiritual director
and I'm a writer. I live in beautiful Portland,
Maine, traditional lands of the Wabanaki.
(01:00):
And I have to say, I'm a little intimidated being
here with Ben, um, one, uh, of the regular co
hosts. So, Ben, you've got to go easy on me.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (01:07):
My expertise is entirely overblown, I assure you.
>> Jessica David (01:11):
I don't know about that.
So let's start with this question. What is
something you are personally curious about right
now.
In these kind of crazy times that we're in, with a
lot of tumult and a lot of unknown and a lot of
fear? I've gotten really curious about the ferment
(01:33):
underneath the structures, the sort of cracks and
where energy is flowing, where people are
connecting at the edges. I think this has always
been a part of our spiritual traditions, and I
think of the monastics in Christianity, the
mystics, people who were part of, in some ways,
(01:55):
part of the institutional structures, but also
really outside of them, um, walking this kind of
fine line now in particular, I'm drawn to those
voices, both from the past and also in the
present, that are offering an invitation to new
ways of living and being, new ways of seeing the
(02:18):
world. I've also been really curious about
language as a way of reclaiming rather than owning
or dominating. So I think there's been a lot of
use of language in colonialist mentalities to sort
of claim spaces that are not ours. But then
(02:39):
there's these movements to reclaim the language
and to really, um, root ourselves in language that
speaks with the land, not dominating over the
land.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (02:53):
I really appreciate, Ash, how profound and
thoughtful that response was, but because what
came to mind for me was not where the energy is
flowing, but actually literally on my land, where
the SAP is flowing. Uh, my family, we are nascent
homesteaders. One of the things we did this last
year is we tapped our maple trees. SAP is just the
(03:16):
most amazing thing. You have these trees, they're
in your front yard. You poke a couple holes in
them and put a bucket underneath them. All of a
sudden, the most glorious substance comes out of
them. And I find myself wondering and feeling kind
of amazed about that. And more practically, how do
you keep the deer from eating your fruit trees in
(03:37):
your orchard? Because I don't know how they do it,
but they just lean right over the fencing that
we've put up and they just keep taking, like, the
top two feet off our saplings. I'm curious about
the social politics of chickens, which I've talked
about before, a little bit on this podcast. I'm
curious about how to set up rain barrels on our
property to take advantage of all the water that
(03:58):
comes off the roofs of our various structures. I'm
curious about solar panels and how to install
them. A, ah, curiosity that is perhaps less shared
by my wife and mother, who would prefer me not to
investigate that, uh, curiosity from, you know,
40ft above ground, uh, level.
>> Jessica David (04:15):
Excellent. I did not expect chickens to come up so
early in this conversation, but thanks for
bringing us there, Ben. So I asked that question
to start because I think curious people are so
interesting. And also curiosity is contagious. So
now I'm going to be curious about chickens and
deer and the cracks. I love, I love that imagery
(04:38):
that, that you offered, Ash.
So I've heard the BTS center use a phrase that I
absolutely love, which is rigorous and reverent
curiosity. Rigorous and reverent curiosity. I just
wanted to say it again, so tell me what that means
to you.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (04:56):
The origins of this term came from our research.
In fact, one of the decisions we had to make
early, um, as we were designing our first research
projects, is how are we coming into our work as we
research practitioners? Are we coming in with a,
uh, hypothesis we're trying to prove or disprove,
or a framework we're trying to kind of lay down on
(05:16):
a group of people or a context? Or are we trying
to come in with an open mind simply to say, what
do we see happening here? How do we do so in a way
that enables us to actually pay attention to what
people are actually sharing with us rather than
hearing what our biases would predispose for us to
hear? We started talking about we want to approach
(05:39):
our work with rigorous curiosity. So we're going
to use the best of social science methodology,
we're going to be aware of our biases, we're going
to spend a lot of time reflecting on what we're
hearing. And then one of our board members,
Elizabeth Parsons, who incidentally would probably
absolutely hate that I'm giving her credit for
this. Sorry. Liz said, uh, actually, I think we
shouldn't be just talking about rigorous
(06:00):
curiosity, but rigorous and reverent curiosity.
Because what we do as we cultivate the psychology
of wisdom is actually holy work. One of the things
I say regularly to the practitioners who I
research is I say, you are my greatest teachers
and I want to name and share the wisdom that
(06:22):
you're holding with others.
>> Jessica David (06:24):
I love that so much, Ben. And I love listening to
the way that Ben frames research and our work
generally. Um, because it is really, it feels so
much love. It is a spiritual practice as well as
being all of these other things together. And for
me, any sort of spiritual practice that's worth
(06:47):
doing has a rigor to it. It has the structure that
kind of defines the practice. And then you, you
know, once you have the rigor, you get the
capacity to kind of push against it and see where
it can flex. I think it's Richard Rohr who talks
about the importance of having the walls of a
(07:09):
tradition around you so that eventually you get to
the point in your spiritual journey where you can
break the walls and go beyond them. But the, the
walls serve a really important function. And I
think about the rigor not as an inflexible thing,
but as something that offers really important
boundaries to us.
(07:31):
But in terms of like, the reverence too, I think
of curiosity as being a sort of quiet thing that
can flow from a contemplative stance. Uh, you
know, having it be quiet doesn't make it any less
alive. It doesn't make it any less vigorous. It
might not be as visible, but it's there kind of,
(07:54):
you know, fomenting the, the change that comes.
Taking curiosity, taking everything with this
spirit of rigor and reverence allows us to move
out of a, uh, selfishness, I guess. You know,
curiosity could get just like bound up in our own
kind of little world. But to move into a self
(08:16):
awareness that opens out into the possibilities of
the ecology of our networks, uh, the ecology of
our relationships, and really paying attention in
a way that allows those relationships to grow and
to flourish.
Yeah, there was so much there in what you both
(08:37):
said. And I love this notion of, well, I love
structure as a person who really appreciates what
structure can bring and open up. I think that is
such a brilliant, uh, observation, Ash. And also
really appreciate this notion of curiosity as a
spiritual practice. And also that those sorts of
(08:59):
practices require rigor. That so often I think
spirituality gets put in this bucket of, you know,
touchy feely, uh, without structure. Without, um,
consequence, uh, sort of this, this thing, stuff
that happens over here and uh, instead thinking of
(09:20):
it as, as a practice, as a, as a muscle, as
something that gets actively strengthened and
truly practiced, you know, each and every day.
It's beautiful.
So what is the BTS center curious about?
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (09:37):
As Jessica and Ash can both attest to? I am
enthusiastically curious about a lot of things.
But I have to say, practitioners, spiritual
leaders doing this work on the ground are just
endlessly fascinating to me. I remember when I was
a pastor, I was always wrestling with these kind
(09:57):
of totalizing, universal, uh, like MIC leadership
models that would say, like, there's one right way
to do this no matter what your context is. So
we're going to give it to you and if you follow
it, you'll be successful and if you don't, you're
going to fail and it's going to be your fault. Of
course, those models would evaporate almost
instantly when they came into contact with the
(10:18):
complexity that is human community. But one of the
things that I've learned in, in my work now is
just the incredible diverse creative creativity of
ways that people are responding to our climate
changed world that have patterns and connections,
but resist that kind of like, here are the five
(10:38):
things you need to do to be a good spiritual
leader in a climate changed world sort of
framework. I find this especially exciting when
looking at congregations where we see in our
research people coming back into contact with the
very best that their faith traditions have to
offer the current moment that we're in. Um, a lot
(10:59):
of our research is centered around how do
spiritual leaders in faith communities understand
their vocation, so their sense of call, their
sense of mission and identity in a climate changed
world, and how do we see those understandings
shift over time? And then what does transformative
faith leadership look like when it's embodied by
spiritual leaders and faith communities in a
(11:19):
climate changed world?
>> Jessica David (11:22):
Ben, I love how you frame that. And I do feel like
as an organization we've gotten super curious
about this idea of collective call or collective
vocation. You know, so often we frame calling or
vocation, or at least I've heard it framed as an
individual thing, which is totally true and
lovely. But the idea that in a climate changed
(11:43):
world, when we're meeting these challenges that
are new and emergent and changing, and there's
very little stability in the way that we might
have experienced it previously, that we're called
into collective vocation as communities, as
watersheds to meet this moment. And really the
(12:05):
idea that everyone can be is a spiritual leader.
So within this network of spiritual leaders, how
does this ecosystem grow? How does it thrive? How
do we offer resources and framing and programs
that really nurture these, these communities and
(12:30):
how can we resource them to take on a life of
their own? And we've seen this so many times. You
know, Ben's research in some programs, they've
done a small experiment with radical intent. And
that has been like beautiful to see where people
go with this, where they take it, where these
communities move and explore with this, with these
(12:53):
ideas that we're offering to them and with them.
And I will say also, you know, as we're looking at
different ways of resourcing spiritual leaders, of
offering community. I've been really delighted to
be involved in the spiritual accompaniment part of
our programming, which is really giving folks a
(13:16):
space to be quiet, to discern, to hear the
movements of the spirit, not only in a personal
way, although that, but also to, to take that
outward into the communities of which they're a
part.
I really appreciate how you each speak about
curiosity in different ways, and yet they, they
(13:39):
come together and they intersect and really weave
together at the same time.
Let's touch on the relationship between curiosity
and something else that I know is important to the
BTS center, which is imagination. Do m those two
(13:59):
things ever conflict for you? Curiosity and
imagination?
Curiosity and imagination are really two sides of
possibility. You really have to have one to fully
engage the other. You know, if you're curious
about something, that what is right now, but you
(14:21):
might also take that into the imagination of what
could be. The curiosity gets expanded, nourished,
blooms into something else. With the addition of
imagination, it's hard for me to separate them
(14:44):
out. Imagination is such a huge part of our work
in terms of giving people the permission to
imagine a world that is beautiful and flourishing,
rooted in kinship, offering a very different
paradigm for what relationship means, for what a
(15:07):
human society could be in the midst of a more than
human world. I love that curiosity and imagination
go hand in hand.
M.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (15:25):
You know what you say, Ash reminds me of our first
major research project we did, cultivating Earth
Shaped Leadership, which we did in collaboration
with seven different cross sector organizations
where we asked them to engage with the question,
how would organizations act differently today if
they embodied an ecological imagination? As part
(15:47):
of that co learning community, we really encourage
people to engage in the practices of curiosity and
imagination. And uh, one really interesting thing
that came up was this kind of new theory of change
that emerged for these leaders. Oftentimes when we
think about what it means to change an
Organization. We talk about kind of change your
thinking, change your organization. We're all
(16:08):
going to read this book and then we're going to go
out and change what we do or change your programs
and change your organization. We're going to start
a new initiative, we're going to start a new
project. But participants came up with a new
theory. Change what you see, change your
organization. We can't change what we can't see.
(16:30):
And I think this connects back, Ash, to what you
were talking about earlier in terms of
contemplative practice. Contemplative practice, it
starts with seeing. It starts with being aware and
noticing what's going on in yourself and the
divine and the world. And this is what this group
of leaders came to as well is when we can see
what's happening in our organizations, then change
(16:52):
becomes possible. That was a really key part of
how curiosity enabled them to interrogate a lot of
their kind of givens that were invisible. And
imagination allowed them to kind of expand their
frameworks to start thinking about what might be
some other ways for us to do this together.
>> Jessica David (17:10):
Hmm. I have this sort of image in my head of just
deepening and going deeper. And the rigorous and
the reverent are about uncovering layers. It not
being a ah, single task you check off your list.
But this ever present practice and way of seeing
(17:32):
as well. If I'm remembering correctly Ben, that
came out of that research was also the need for
space for imagination and curiosity. It's not easy
to layer in when we are already super busy and
being pulled in a million different directions.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (17:47):
Yeah, yeah. Again, uh, going back to contemplative
practice requires time, requires space. Likewise,
it's impossible to really get at these givens.
It's impossible to be curious when you're really
really busy because all that matters is the next
item on your to do list. That was part of what we
discovered is actually if you want to change, you
(18:07):
have to slow down because you have to create
spaciousness for you to ask some of these big open
ended questions that don't have a one to one
correspondence with your daily calendar or your to
do list.
>> Jessica David (18:18):
Hmm.
Mhm.
If you want to change, you have to slow down. That
is a tidbit of wisdom right there Ben. Thank you.
So give some examples of how you at the BTS Center
Center. Imagination or curiosity?
We do a lot with our programs that I think is
(18:39):
unexpected for a lot of folks. Yeah M. In our
public conversations with some really incredible
thought leaders, we always have music. We have a
professional musician come in and Be a part of the
program. We have poetry, we have art. These are
things that in a zoom space or in person are not
(19:04):
necessarily things that folks would expect from a
conversation about a climate changed world. You
know, they understand that we are spiritually
rooted and that we're oriented towards spiritual
leadership. But I think even upending in a small
way people's expectations of what, uh, a gathering
space means, bringing in those elements that feel
(19:26):
really sacred, offer people really different
doorways into the divine. These spaces where we
can drop through logic into something else. We
hear over and over again that people have these
experiences of the programs that we offer. It's
(19:47):
not just the information that they're giving or
the connections that they're making with one
another. All those are, those are incredibly
important elements. There's also this sense of,
oh, I'm here and I've. I'm really being seen and
I'm, I'm getting, being offered this space that
feels like respite or it feels like worship, or it
(20:10):
feels like something sacred that I can be a part
of. And I think that really does serve to ignite
their curiosity, their imagination, in ways that
they can take back into their own communities and
might invigorate their work in a way that is
unexpected.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (20:29):
I've been doing a lot of research recently around
how people understand what it means to care for
creation. How do they define that? What do they
imagine? Responses are one of the things that
we've begin to notice in a lot of our programming
as part of the process that happens for people,
people come in and when you talk about engaging
with the environment, care for creation, or
(20:50):
climate change, people come in with a very narrow
framework for what that means. Either we engage in
some personal lifestyle or technology changes. You
know, we walk to work, we recycle, we use less
plastic, we install solar, or it means political
advocacy trying to change systems. What we
discover is that over time, as people engage with
our programming, not that those things become
(21:12):
unimportant, but actually imaginatively, the
possibilities for what it means to be faithful in
a climate changed world begin to expand. There's
an understanding that if you engage in local
action around an industrial waste site in your
community, that's climate work. If you plant a
community garden on your congregation's property,
(21:33):
that's climate work. If you engage in shared
rituals of grief and lamentations, if you deepen
relationships with indigenous neighbors, if you
collaborate with secular nonprofits to strengthen
the human and the more than human ecosystems that
you're a part of, all of that is also Climate
work. And that to me is really exciting because we
(21:56):
begin to see how expanding people's capacities of
imagination allow them to engage out of the best
of their identity and the best of their tradition
in a way that these narrow possibilities really
don't.
>> Jessica David (22:09):
Yeah, that connection between the unexpected or
the different and both curiosity and imagination,
it jars us into a different way of being which
unlocks certain things.
I want to shift to a few. Maybe selfish questions
(22:31):
are practical questions. As individuals, what
should we do with curiosity? Is it a state of
being? Or does being curious call us to something
else? Some kind of behavior?
In Western Hawaii society that a lot of us have
(22:52):
been raised in, there is an automatic impetus to
do something. I try to go back to the
contemplative stance of being first, being with
it, feeling the curiosity, being curious about the
curiosity, but not staying there. I mean, there is
(23:13):
then a movement into action. Curiosity naturally
opens us and guides us and invites us if we're
listening, listening but not pushing. I like the
idea of slow curiosity, where it might not look
like much is happening, but it is under the
(23:36):
surface. You know, it is bubbling away. You never
know where it's going to emerge and where it's
going to take.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (23:53):
I love that idea of slow curiosity, and it makes
me immediately think about our current moment.
Post, um, election is a great example of a moment.
I feel anxious, I feel a desire to speed up and
do, do, do, do, do. What I'm, uh, hearing in this
moment is actually a call to, is to take a deep
(24:16):
breath, take a step back and say, what is actually
happening here? If our individual politicians or
political parties are the symptom, then what are
the systems that are at work underneath the
surface that requires exactly what you're talking
about, which is slow curiosity that can allow us
(24:39):
to kind of take one step back from the immediacy
of our current situation and say, okay, I'm
curious, what's, what is actually going on here?
>> Jessica David (24:48):
For, uh, those of us who maybe as Ash said, are in
that space of thinking that having something to do
is the answer, what are some practices or tools
that help you each maintain a posture or a stance
of curiosity?
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (25:05):
It's about releasing control. It's about being
prepared for surprise and seeing surprise as a
good thing and not as a sign that something's
going wrong.
>> Jessica David (25:16):
Oof, that's a great one, Ben. For, um, me, it's
about taking a stance of non judgment, of asking
questions. I often find that when I catch myself
being extremely judgmental, it's coming from a
place of fear. Or instability or uncertainty, and
(25:38):
to just be able to take a step back and just be
curious about my own responses. It's, uh, about
what Ben said. It's about releasing control.
Wow. Is there something special about the kind of
curiosity that enables meaning making and real
(25:58):
understanding?
Yeah, I would, I would go back to our stance of
rigorous and reverent curiosity. That interplay of
both what we talked about in the structure, but
also the openness, the flexibility allows us to
turn our attention in different directions and
(26:21):
root into this possibility of making meaning. In
my experience. Good spirituality or healthy
spirituality? Healthy religion doesn't give you
the answers. It turns things upside down. It asks
us to enter in through the unexpected. It doesn't
(26:43):
quote, unquote, make sense in the way that we as
humans really want it to make sense. That model is
really the model I look to when I think about
meaning making and I think about staying curious
about everything.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (27:01):
Yeah. It's important for me to remember that my
story is not the only story at work in the world.
It's really hard to be curious about things that
we don't think are really alive. White Western
folk have been taught that the rest of the world
really isn't alive. One of the things I've learned
that's really important when it comes to curiosity
(27:21):
and meaning making is to go, actually this world
is alive. God is alive, the trees are alive, there
are ecosystems are alive. There are so many beings
that are not human, that have their own stories,
their own hopes, their own struggles, their own
fears. They are trying to speak to us. Certainly
(27:43):
people like me have forgotten how to listen. So
curiosity is actually about learning to be in a
reciprocal conversation that can change me.
>> Jessica David (27:56):
Mhm. Meaning is not certainty and it's not
control. Curiosity is an invitation to go deeper,
to see differently, but it doesn't necessarily
provide us with answers. Thank you so much, Ash
and Ben, for this illuminating, warm and tender
conversation. I so appreciated learning from you.
>> Ben Yosua-Davis (28:20):
Thanks for your great questions, Jessica.
>> Jessica David (28:22):
Yeah, this has been wonderful. It's been a joy.
Listeners, it's your turn now. Is there a time in
your life that being curious about something has
opened up new understandings for you? I hope
you'll share with me by emailing us
podcasthebtscenter.org or calling and leaving a
(28:43):
voice message at 207-200-6986. Thank you for
listening to the Climate Changed podcast Behind
the Scenes edition with me, Jessica David. Coming
up in our next episode, we are going to talk about
experimentation. Visit climatechangedpodcast.org
(29:04):
for show notes, a uh, transcript and more. Climate
changed podcast.org Many thanks to my guests Ash
Tiemann and Ben Yoshua Davis. Also thanks to
producer Peterson Toscano for producing this
episode and to Nicole Deroff for all your support
and assistance. Climate Changed Podcast is a
(29:25):
project of the BTS center in beautiful Portland,
Maine. Learn about the many resources we offer
along with our in person and online programs by
visiting our website, thebtscenter.org Goodbye for
now.
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