September 16, 2025 • 31 mins
What does it mean to have a calling in a climate-changed world?
In this episode, Jessica David is joined by Alison Cornish and Allen Ewing-Merrill from The BTS Center team to explore the idea of “calling.” How do we know what our deepest purpose is, especially when the world is shifting beneath our feet? Through personal stories, reflections on chaplaincy, congregational life, and ecological crisis, this conversation models how calling is not just a destination—it’s an ongoing dialogue between joy and need, self and world, spirit and action.
“My calling is to be an agent of God's love, healing, justice, and peace in the world.” — Allen Ewing-Merrill
“My specific calling really came when I heard the earth calling directly.” — Alison Cornish
✨ Highlights from the Episode
- Alison and Allen reflect on their personal callings—from a childhood love of carpentry to a life of teaching and pastoring
- The BTS Center’s unique framing of vocational discernment: spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world
- A theological and interfaith understanding of calling as active, evolving, and collective
- How congregations and chaplains are responding to climate change in ways that are embodied, compassionate, and spiritually grounded
- An invitation to discern not just what you are called to do, but who you are called to be
- Frederick Buechner’s Definition of Calling: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” https://www.frederickbuechner.com/
- Refugia Faith by Debra Rienstra – framing congregations as spiritual refugia in a climate-changed world https://debriarienstra.com/refugia-faith/
- Claiming Your Call for a Climate-Changed World — A program led by The BTS Center in collaboration with: Creation Justice Ministries, Anabaptist Climate Collaborative. https://thebtscenter.org/claiming-your-call-for-a-climate-changed-world/
- Chaplaincy Innovation Lab (Partnered with BTS Center on climate chaplaincy programming) [https://chaplaincyinnovation.org]
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> Jessica David (00:03):
Welcome to the climate Change podcast Behind the Scenes
edition with me, Jessica David. Why am I
here? Does everyone have a calling? And how do
I describe any of this to my family or friends who ask
me, what do you do?
I'm excited to be here today with two members of the
BTS Center's team.
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (00:24):
I'm Alan Ewing Merrill. I serve as executive director
of the BTS center, and prior
to my role with this organization, I served as
a pastor of congregations in the Methodist
tradition for about 20 years.
And I also have some, um, experience in nonprofit
leadership and faith rooted organizing along the way.
>> Alison Cornish (00:44):
Hey, Alan and Jessica. I'm Alison.
I'm really happy to be here with you. And I
serve as the coordinator of the BTS Center's
chaplaincy initiative. I've also worked in
historic preservation and architectural history,
and I'm an ordained minister in the Unitarian
Universalist tradition, where I served several
(01:04):
congregations down on Long Island, New York.
>> Jessica David (01:08):
So, Alan and Allison, what did you want to be when you grew
up?
>> Alison Cornish (01:12):
Well, maybe following from that architectural
history and historic preservation, I wanted to be a
carpenter. In fact, I think that I
sort of dominated the workbench when I was
in preschool, nursery school.
Couldn't let anybody get near it. I just loved
wearing a pair of jeans and getting my hands
dirty and sawdust and hand
(01:34):
tools. My happy place.
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (01:37):
Allison. I love that. I'll just
say, growing up, many of my role models were
teachers, including my parents and
other important family members and also the
teachers in my own life. So I think I always wanted to
be a teacher. In fact, I went on to
do that for several years before I went to seminary.
>> Jessica David (01:57):
So I have to say neither of those answers surprises me at
all. Alan, I feel like you are still a
teacher. Alison, do you carpentry still?
>> Alison Cornish (02:06):
I don't anymore. But you can see the.
And on the video, you can see a, uh, bookshelf in the
background that I built way back when.
>> Jessica David (02:15):
And it is beautiful.
So, shifting a little bit more to the present,
do you have a calling? Would you share it with us?
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (02:24):
My calling, I think, is really to be an
agent of God's love, healing, justice and
peace in the world. And I've held that
calling for a long time. I think that was my calling even when I was a
teacher way back as a young adult. And of course,
like everyone, that calling has taken a few
different forms through my life as a teacher, as a
pastor for a couple of decades. And I'll say
(02:47):
that pastoring continually drew me
deeper into ministries of compassion
and justice, and that led Me to
co found a, uh, nonprofit that continues to welcome
and support newly arriving asylum
seekers here in Portland, Maine. And then
that led me to organizing in the faith
rooted space, particularly organizing
(03:10):
clergy and other faith leaders and some
advocacy and activism, especially during
the first Trump presidency. And even in my
current role, I still feel
that same sense of calling. And today it takes the form
of really feeling deeply called to this work of
cultivating and nurturing spiritual leadership
(03:30):
for a climate changed world. But always
it's grounded in that original central calling
to be an agent of God's love, healing,
justice, and peace in the world. How about
you, Alison?
>> Alison Cornish (03:43):
Yeah, you know, I did work that I was really
passionate about when I was in the historic
preservation world. And I was always
active as a lay member in my Unitarian
Universes congregation. And at some
point those two things, the avocation and the
vocation, kind of flipped on me. And I
felt the sense that there were a lot of
(04:05):
people in the world that could do historic preservation and
architectural history. But maybe there weren't so many people
that could accompany others through the
really dark valleys in their lives. But
my specific calling really came
when I heard the earth calling
directly. Actually, Earth said to
me, what is it that is
(04:28):
happening? What is it that your species is
doing that is making it really impossible
for the Earth to thrive? And that's what I
wrote about in my application to seminary. And I
would say since I went to seminary, you know,
25 years ago, not much has changed. It's
deepened for me. But I really have
(04:48):
a sense of call that resonates deeply with
the land and with earth herself.
>> Jessica David (04:54):
Thank you both so much for sharing that. I know that was a
personal question.
To start with, listeners, we have jumped
right into the deep end for today's topic, which
is claiming your call. I have to
say, Alan and Allison, I love this
phrase. There are two things about it in particular
that stand out to me. First is the
(05:15):
boldness of claiming my call.
And the second is the implication that we all
have our own calls to claim.
So how intentional is this language?
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (05:27):
Yeah, it's very intentional
in my theological understanding. And here I'm
speaking from my own
Protestant Christian tradition.
God is a God who calls. God
invites us into deeper relationship. God has a
yearning for a more loving and just
(05:48):
world and a yearning for God's people to be
agents of that world. And God
is a God who whispers in our ears, or
maybe whispers in our hearts, inviting us to
claim the gifts that we have been given
and to use them for the sake of a more
loving Just compassionate world.
(06:09):
Uh, I'm speaking here in Christian terms,
and listeners may be familiar with the
concept of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of God.
Other religious and spiritual traditions would have
different ways of describing that, but I'm
often inspired by the Jewish concept of
tikkun Alam, this call to be
(06:29):
active in repairing the world, acknowledging that the world
is in many ways broken and wounded and that
we have a call to be a part of repair.
But always God is a God who calls. And if
that God language trips you up, you know, you can think
about spirit or divine or the ground of
being, or even this sense that there's a tug
(06:49):
of the universe. The question for
us is, are we listening and
do we respond? Do we answer in
a climate change world, specifically, how do we discern
that call and claim it for ourselves?
>> Alison Cornish (07:07):
Thank you so much for using the language of call
as we use it here at the BTS center in
these theological and spiritual ways.
And I think I just want to add in that the sense of call is
not just for those who identify with a faith tradition
that we have participants in BTS Center's
programs who identify with many and
(07:27):
no faith tradition at all, but still have
a sense of mission or pull to the work in
the world and their own unique gifts
to respond to the needs that we see all around us.
And I would call a. I would call a call.
I would call a call like an inner orientation.
It's like the pull of a needle of a compass. As
(07:48):
Alan says, to listen deeply and to
respond. We are called to respond. Maybe that's in
a contemplative way. Maybe it's not always
the activist way that we see, you know, at
the barricades and out on the streets. But it
is to be that presence that.
That consciousness that
responds to our very real
(08:10):
times and something that is very universal and
timeless at the same time.
>> Jessica David (08:15):
Mhm. I really love the way you
bring both the listening and the
responding and also the past and
the present. You know, there's a real both and
aspect to hearing you both speak about
calling and claiming that call
in the context of the BTS Center's work. What does
(08:35):
this actually mean? Mhm.
>> Alison Cornish (08:38):
It's such a good question. We talk about formation
and vocational formation quite a bit
at the BTS Center. And the people
that I work with, the UM sector of the
BTS Centers, participants that I work with most closely
are chaplains. Chaplains have like a
helpmate or a companion or an
(08:58):
accompaniment kind of posture in the world.
They're really called to Meet people where they are. And,
um, that's about where they're called
to be. They're, they're called to be present
to people in their
situations in this time and in this
place. So it's not an imagining
of our aspiration of like, why
(09:21):
aren't you? Or you should, but it's, this
is where you are now, and I'm going to be with you
and I'm going to do what I can to help
alleviate suffering and to make meaning
and to listen deeply to you.
For those chaplains who are been doing that
in places like hospitals and prisons and
(09:42):
universities and out on the street with
our unhoused, um, population, many are
also feeling the reality of the, uh,
climate crisis and wondering, well, how does
this change my work? I mean, I'm called to
be this kind of presence, but how
do I do that differently? Because the context
itself is changing.
(10:05):
So I would say in the context of the BTS Center's
work, people are often arriving with
one sense of call, but they're
recognizing that that call is being lived out in a
different kind of way, in a different kind
of world. Right now. What would you say,
Alan?
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (10:22):
Yeah, I love what you said, Allison. And this is such
a great reminder that when we talk about spiritual leadership
for a climate change world, we're talking about lots of
different kinds of spiritual leaders. And chaplains are
certainly one of those.
Maybe I'll shift and talk a little bit about how this lives
out in the congregational setting
because we're very interested also in the kind of
(10:45):
spiritual leadership that happens within, within
congregations. I'll share a story. You know,
beginning in early summer of 2024,
uh, in collaboration with two partner organizations,
Creation Justice Ministries and
Anabaptist Climate Collaborative, we led this program
called Claiming youg Call for a Climate
(11:05):
Changed World. That phrase probably sounds familiar.
We brought Together Teams from 12
Northern New England congregations. So these
were congregations situated in Maine, New Hampshire,
Vermont and Massachusetts. And they
represented a number of different Christian or Christian
adjacent traditions. For a three day
retreat at Schoodic Institute at
(11:27):
Acadia national park here in Maine. During those
three days, we wove together these three strands. So
first, Indigenous wisdom. We were really blessed to have
two Indigenous leaders that were with us for the entire
time kind of woven together with Christian
theology and then also with Western
science. And we were blessed to have a scientist from the Skoodic
(11:48):
Institute who brought that kind of scientific wisdom.
And then throughout the three days, of course, there was music
and spiritual practice, but we also brought
these congregations together in what we called
vocational discernment groups. So
here we're applying the concept of claiming your call to the
congregational setting and this idea
(12:08):
that congregations might have a particular
call as well, or a particular vocation.
Not just individuals, but congregations themselves. A
unique call from God,
specifically in a, uh, climate change world. And so we
engage them in this process of discernment
to identify first what we called a
radical intent, and then
(12:31):
to embrace a, uh, small experiment which would help
them to pursue that radical intent. So
small experiments with radical intent.
This theme around discernment vocation, claiming your
call shows up in a number of our programs,
including our annual Green Teams gathering, where
we bring together congregational green teams, or
(12:52):
climate action teams, eco justice teams,
to help them think holistically. So
after recycling, after solar panels,
after trying to reduce your carbon footprint, what comes
next? We really believe that this is a
moment when, um, God the divine
is calling not just individuals, but also
(13:13):
congregations, spiritual communities, to open
our eyes, to open our hearts and our
minds to the urgent realities
confronting us and to believe that there's something
unique that faith communities can offer in this
moment. In particular,
congregations bring spiritual resources to this
(13:33):
moment that I believe can't be filled by any
other sector. Our world is
crying out for bold
moral leadership, uh, individuals and
communities who are willing to truthfully
name this predicament, to work
to transform the misguided priorities that have
(13:53):
brought this crisis to our doorstep, to
make meaning, to tend to ritual,
and to accompany people as they
hold these really heavy emotions that come with
ecological crisis.
>> Jessica David (14:06):
Hmm. That's lovely.
I want to talk more in a minute about this sense of collective
call, but first I have to ask this question
for those who may be listening, like me, who
maybe have trouble hearing the whisper and need something a
little louder.
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (14:22):
How.
>> Jessica David (14:23):
How do you know when you're being called? What are the
signs? What. What do we look for?
>> Alison Cornish (14:29):
People may have, like, a road to Damascus kind
of imagination of what being
called is about, or, you know, even more
sort of silly, like the phone rings, and there it is on the
other end. Right.
>> Jessica David (14:41):
That doesn't seem too much to ask for.
>> Alison Cornish (14:44):
That's true. It's true. It would be so
nice. First, uh, once again, that
reminder that not every tradition uses this language
and not every tradition would have those images.
In fact, you know, the image of something,
a voice or a sense coming from the
divine. But I think it's really helpful to think of it in the
(15:05):
words of the, uh, great writer Frederick
Buechner, who said, the place God
calls you to is the place where your
Deep gladness and the world's deep hunger
meet, where the deep gladness
for you and the world's deep
hunger meet. So,
again, this is about your called being in
(15:27):
conversation. It means that we have
to have our eyes open and we have to meet
reality of our times and our place
in. In very loving ways
to activate. I, uh, sometimes I
think that inner sense that
we cannot not act, we
cannot not respond, we cannot
(15:50):
not see the real suffering
or the real needs or the real joy
and opportunities that are out there in the world.
Again, it's that sense of an inner pull in
conversation with our specific times and
experiences. And I love, love, love
that Frederick Buechner talks about gladness, or I would say
(16:10):
joy responding. Because
there is something for us in the
responding as well as for answering
the world's needs.
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (16:21):
I love that response, Allison. And I'm so glad you brought
the, uh, Frederick Buechner quote, because that's where
I always go to when I think about call. Uh, I
think those few words just say it so
succinctly. There's this intersection,
right? So your deep gladness. And I agree
with you, Allison, there has to be an element of joy.
God doesn't invite us to be miserable. God
(16:43):
doesn't invite us to, you know, approach our work with dread.
So when we've tapped into a, uh, calling and we're
using the gifts that God has given us, there
can be joy even when there's
challenge or struggle, or even when the work is.
Is really, really hard or it feels really
uphill. So the intersection of your deep
gladness with the world's deep hunger.
(17:06):
To me, that means there has to be an element of need. So that
we contributing in some way to the work of
God's love, healing, justice and peace in the world,
uh, waking up to an awareness that
there's some deep hunger in the world. And
I. Or we have the gifts to respond to it in a
way that increases love, that facilitates
(17:27):
healing, that advances
justice and promotes peace. And that in
doing so, I. Or we also
find joy. So back to your question, though,
Jessica. How do we know? I'm not sure there's
any perfect way to know with certainty.
Uh, for me, it's always about just taking the next faithful
step in answering a felt sense of
(17:49):
God's call and doing that prayerfully and
really trusting your gut and then see
what happens next. If it doesn't seem to
be meeting the world's deep hunger and bringing joy,
then maybe that's not it. I don't think this is a Perfect way
to know. But just again, taking that next faithful
step.
>> Jessica David (18:07):
I had a feeling that was what you were going to say, Alan.
Um,
so going back to what Alan had said around
congregational location, I'm still
wondering, how does that group decide
(18:29):
upon a collective calling? Could you maybe
give us an example of a time you've seen a congregation
find its calling?
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (18:40):
Sure. We've been really inspired by the work of
Deborah Reenstra, um, who teaches at Calvin
University, and she wrote this incredible book called
Refugia Faith.
So refugia is this scientific concept that
refers to little pockets of
life where life persists in times of
(19:00):
devastation
and from which life regenerates.
So if you think about, you know, a volcano
erupting and everything is devastated,
and you could look at that scene and think, oh my gosh,
like there won't be life here for
the foreseeable, foreseeable future.
(19:24):
But actually what happens is that life
kind of finds a way. Life persists
kind of in, under rocks and roots and in little crevices
and very quickly life begins to
regenerate. That's just a scientific
fact and that's just one example. But we've been applying
this, as Deborah does, uh, to the, the,
(19:45):
to the spiritual context.
I like to think about congregations
as spiritual refugia in a climate
changed world. So to get to some examples,
really inspired by this little
United Methodist church in Cape Elizabeth, Maine,
(20:06):
they several years ago began to discern a
particular calling to embrace a
deep and sacred connection with this tract of
forest adjacent to their, their church facility.
They, over time, they sold an easement to the local
land trust to ensure that that property would never be
developed. That was one step. But maybe even more
importantly, they began to tend trails,
(20:28):
they built an outdoor chapel, they,
they lead naturalist events and prayer
walks. They formed this deep relationship and
are, uh, really drawing community to be in relationship with
that piece of land. They formed an eco team
and they're continually asking God,
uh, what's next? So that's one
example. Thinking also about Taftsville
(20:51):
Chapel, which is a Mennonite fellowship in Vermont
that meets in an old schoolhouse. And
they took part in our claiming your call retreat and
discerned a calling to establish what they call a
schoolhouse for simple living. And just as kind
of a first step, they held a community wide
canning workshop where members of the
(21:12):
congregation taught the skills of canning
and food preservation. And that's just the
beginning. Uh, thinking about Main
Street United Methodist Church in Nashua, New Hampshire
that embraced a calling to collaborate with
some of the secular nonprofits in their community
to plant a pollinator garden on this
(21:33):
abandoned lot in one of the heat islands in the middle of
their city. And amazing things have
happened in. In the process of. Of
creating that pollinator garden. So these are just
small little steps, but in one way or another,
uh, whether they're using this language or not, each of
these three congregations that I've described are embodying
(21:53):
this concept of refugia. These small,
hyper local expressions of community where
values are named and preserved, where
life persists, and where we trust that
life will just continue to regenerate.
>> Jessica David (22:09):
M What I really appreciate about those
examples, Alan, is the. Is the sense of
scale and actually the sense of smallness. I think
when I conceive of calling, it feels like it has
to be this grand vision or plan.
And I take some comfort
in hearing that it can be very small,
(22:29):
very local.
So you touched on this earlier, but I'm going to
ask anyway. Do callings change over
time? Is that okay if. If
our calling changes, if we feel called in a different
direction?
>> Alison Cornish (22:43):
Well, Jessica, I would say absolutely,
positively, yes. Because if we're deeply
listening, then we recognize that not only
do the needs of the world change, we change over time.
As we evolve and grow and age,
you know, there are different things that we're paying attention to, and
there are different things that we're, uh, able to do as well.
(23:04):
So we need to keep listening, we need to keep checking in,
and that's what we're seeing with chaplains in
the work that we've been doing. I'm thinking particularly of one of
our chaplains who did a program on climate
chaplaincy with us and the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab.
Two years ago, she was a palliative care
chaplain. That is, somebody who sits with
(23:25):
people who have decided that,
you know, traditional treatment for a
medical issue is beginning to wane
and they're stepping into a new phase of life.
At the same time, she was also on the board of a climate
activist organization, and she found
herself taking some of the
skills that she had developed in her vocation
(23:48):
as a chaplain and applying them
to that context of the
activist organization, particularly
when the activist organization didn't have a win,
when something that they had planned and hoped for
didn't come out the way that they had hoped, and they had
grief. They had a sense of, how
(24:09):
do I go on? What do we do now, collectively
and individually? So she
really understood that, that the
ways in which we look at our life and the way
our life evolves also happen within the
organizational context. Right. And in
our activist work, we have to continue
(24:30):
to dig deep into the
ways in which we've evolved and apply
that wherever we are. And, in fact, she
went on to talk about the fact that her
community was deeply and profoundly,
um, impacted by a, uh,
wildfire. And she needed
(24:51):
to figure out, well, how do I show up as
chaplain and as resident and as
neighbor and as colleague and as friend
in this space, and led us
through the way in which she discerned
that, you know, not necessarily
being a first responder, but being sort of a mental
health first responder and a spiritual health
(25:13):
first responder. And how did. How do you show up in
those spaces? So that's just one example
of how one person
carrying a calling as a chaplain
had to and is adapting to each of
the contexts that she's showing up in.
And I'm just thinking of another example that I just
(25:34):
learned about yesterday, uh, from one of our
participants in our conversation circles for
chaplains and the climate. She is
wondering, how do I bring
the earth and contact with the earth into
the very, very sterile settings that I serve
in the hospital? Other people have wondered the same thing about
prisons. How do I work on the
(25:56):
reconnection to the, you know,
the source of all, for all of us, the
elements and the actual Earth? How do
I bring that into context that are
intentionally, in many ways, blocking
that out? And that, again, is a
sense of. This person had never thought about
(26:17):
that when they went into hospital chaplaincy. Just. The
hospital is my environment. That's where I go to work.
But now, as more Earth
consciousness is arising, these questions are
arising.
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (26:30):
I really appreciate those stories, Allison,
and, um, yeah, I wholeheartedly agree that
callings do change over time. Absolutely. In fact,
in my experience, the call is
always evolving. It's never static. Uh, that's been
true in my own life, and it's led me to pursue
lots of different pathways. It's certainly been true of
(26:51):
the congregations I've served and accompanied over the years as
well. And when you think about it, it only makes sense that
callings will change over time because the world's hungers
change over time. And what brings us
joy can change over time as well.
I wonder if that might even be one way
to know that it's really a calling, that it. That
it evolves, that we're continually listening, we're paying
(27:14):
attention, continually responding, never being
content with status quo, but always
aiming to take the next faithful step.
>> Jessica David (27:23):
Very helpful and reassuring. I have to say
something. I take away from this conversation that hadn't been in my head
before is how interactive it is. My
conception has always been it's something I have to
it comes from within me as opposed to
being in conversation with the world or
with the spirits or with other
(27:43):
people and with my own experiences.
So that's definitely one of my takeaways from this
conversation.
I, um, really want to thank you Alan and Alex
for this beautiful and important and
really helpful conversation. It's
(28:04):
been just a pleasure to have you both
here to talk about this and to bring your
experiences and work to the conversation. So thank
you
listeners.
Now it is your turn. What is
calling you and how do you know? Please
(28:25):
contact me about this episode or uh, with any
questions you want to ask. You can call,
text or email. Leave a voice Message
at AH,
207-200-6986
that's
207-200-69861.
Of course, if you are calling from outside the U.S.
(28:47):
you can also text that number,
207-200-6986
or if you prefer, you can email me. The
email address is
podcasthebtscenter.org
that's
podcasthebtscenter.org
(29:11):
thank you for listening to the Climate Changed
Podcast behind the Scenes Edition with me,
Jessica David. Do you consider yourself
a curious person? Coming up in our next
episode, we are going to have great fun talking about
curiosity. Visit
climatechangedpodcast.uhorg
for show notes, a, uh, transcript and
(29:32):
more. That website again is climate
changedpodcast.org
Many thanks to my guests Alan Ewing Merrill
and Alison Cornish for today's conversation
and special thanks to producer Peterson Toscano
for producing this episode and to Nicole
Daroff for your assistance and support in the
(29:53):
series. Climate Changed Podcast
is a project of the BTS center in
beautiful Portland, Maine. Learn more
about the many resources we offer along with our
in person and online programs by
visiting our website, the BTC
btscenter.org that's
the btscenter.org
(30:15):
Goodbye for now.
Mhm it
(31:00):
Sam.
Welcome to the climate Change podcast Behind the Scenes
edition with me, Jessica David. Why am I
here? Does everyone have a calling? And how do
I describe any of this to my family or friends who ask
me, what do you do?
I'm excited to be here today with two members of the
BTS Center's team.
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (00:24):
I'm Alan Ewing Merrill. I serve as executive director
of the BTS center, and prior
to my role with this organization, I served as
a pastor of congregations in the Methodist
tradition for about 20 years.
And I also have some, um, experience in nonprofit
leadership and faith rooted organizing along the way.
>> Alison Cornish (00:44):
Hey, Alan and Jessica. I'm Alison.
I'm really happy to be here with you. And I
serve as the coordinator of the BTS Center's
chaplaincy initiative. I've also worked in
historic preservation and architectural history,
and I'm an ordained minister in the Unitarian
Universalist tradition, where I served several
(01:04):
congregations down on Long Island, New York.
>> Jessica David (01:08):
So, Alan and Allison, what did you want to be when you grew
up?
>> Alison Cornish (01:12):
Well, maybe following from that architectural
history and historic preservation, I wanted to be a
carpenter. In fact, I think that I
sort of dominated the workbench when I was
in preschool, nursery school.
Couldn't let anybody get near it. I just loved
wearing a pair of jeans and getting my hands
dirty and sawdust and hand
(01:34):
tools. My happy place.
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (01:37):
Allison. I love that. I'll just
say, growing up, many of my role models were
teachers, including my parents and
other important family members and also the
teachers in my own life. So I think I always wanted to
be a teacher. In fact, I went on to
do that for several years before I went to seminary.
>> Jessica David (01:57):
So I have to say neither of those answers surprises me at
all. Alan, I feel like you are still a
teacher. Alison, do you carpentry still?
>> Alison Cornish (02:06):
I don't anymore. But you can see the.
And on the video, you can see a, uh, bookshelf in the
background that I built way back when.
>> Jessica David (02:15):
And it is beautiful.
So, shifting a little bit more to the present,
do you have a calling? Would you share it with us?
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (02:24):
My calling, I think, is really to be an
agent of God's love, healing, justice and
peace in the world. And I've held that
calling for a long time. I think that was my calling even when I was a
teacher way back as a young adult. And of course,
like everyone, that calling has taken a few
different forms through my life as a teacher, as a
pastor for a couple of decades. And I'll say
(02:47):
that pastoring continually drew me
deeper into ministries of compassion
and justice, and that led Me to
co found a, uh, nonprofit that continues to welcome
and support newly arriving asylum
seekers here in Portland, Maine. And then
that led me to organizing in the faith
rooted space, particularly organizing
(03:10):
clergy and other faith leaders and some
advocacy and activism, especially during
the first Trump presidency. And even in my
current role, I still feel
that same sense of calling. And today it takes the form
of really feeling deeply called to this work of
cultivating and nurturing spiritual leadership
(03:30):
for a climate changed world. But always
it's grounded in that original central calling
to be an agent of God's love, healing,
justice, and peace in the world. How about
you, Alison?
>> Alison Cornish (03:43):
Yeah, you know, I did work that I was really
passionate about when I was in the historic
preservation world. And I was always
active as a lay member in my Unitarian
Universes congregation. And at some
point those two things, the avocation and the
vocation, kind of flipped on me. And I
felt the sense that there were a lot of
(04:05):
people in the world that could do historic preservation and
architectural history. But maybe there weren't so many people
that could accompany others through the
really dark valleys in their lives. But
my specific calling really came
when I heard the earth calling
directly. Actually, Earth said to
me, what is it that is
(04:28):
happening? What is it that your species is
doing that is making it really impossible
for the Earth to thrive? And that's what I
wrote about in my application to seminary. And I
would say since I went to seminary, you know,
25 years ago, not much has changed. It's
deepened for me. But I really have
(04:48):
a sense of call that resonates deeply with
the land and with earth herself.
>> Jessica David (04:54):
Thank you both so much for sharing that. I know that was a
personal question.
To start with, listeners, we have jumped
right into the deep end for today's topic, which
is claiming your call. I have to
say, Alan and Allison, I love this
phrase. There are two things about it in particular
that stand out to me. First is the
(05:15):
boldness of claiming my call.
And the second is the implication that we all
have our own calls to claim.
So how intentional is this language?
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (05:27):
Yeah, it's very intentional
in my theological understanding. And here I'm
speaking from my own
Protestant Christian tradition.
God is a God who calls. God
invites us into deeper relationship. God has a
yearning for a more loving and just
(05:48):
world and a yearning for God's people to be
agents of that world. And God
is a God who whispers in our ears, or
maybe whispers in our hearts, inviting us to
claim the gifts that we have been given
and to use them for the sake of a more
loving Just compassionate world.
(06:09):
Uh, I'm speaking here in Christian terms,
and listeners may be familiar with the
concept of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of God.
Other religious and spiritual traditions would have
different ways of describing that, but I'm
often inspired by the Jewish concept of
tikkun Alam, this call to be
(06:29):
active in repairing the world, acknowledging that the world
is in many ways broken and wounded and that
we have a call to be a part of repair.
But always God is a God who calls. And if
that God language trips you up, you know, you can think
about spirit or divine or the ground of
being, or even this sense that there's a tug
(06:49):
of the universe. The question for
us is, are we listening and
do we respond? Do we answer in
a climate change world, specifically, how do we discern
that call and claim it for ourselves?
>> Alison Cornish (07:07):
Thank you so much for using the language of call
as we use it here at the BTS center in
these theological and spiritual ways.
And I think I just want to add in that the sense of call is
not just for those who identify with a faith tradition
that we have participants in BTS Center's
programs who identify with many and
(07:27):
no faith tradition at all, but still have
a sense of mission or pull to the work in
the world and their own unique gifts
to respond to the needs that we see all around us.
And I would call a. I would call a call.
I would call a call like an inner orientation.
It's like the pull of a needle of a compass. As
(07:48):
Alan says, to listen deeply and to
respond. We are called to respond. Maybe that's in
a contemplative way. Maybe it's not always
the activist way that we see, you know, at
the barricades and out on the streets. But it
is to be that presence that.
That consciousness that
responds to our very real
(08:10):
times and something that is very universal and
timeless at the same time.
>> Jessica David (08:15):
Mhm. I really love the way you
bring both the listening and the
responding and also the past and
the present. You know, there's a real both and
aspect to hearing you both speak about
calling and claiming that call
in the context of the BTS Center's work. What does
(08:35):
this actually mean? Mhm.
>> Alison Cornish (08:38):
It's such a good question. We talk about formation
and vocational formation quite a bit
at the BTS Center. And the people
that I work with, the UM sector of the
BTS Centers, participants that I work with most closely
are chaplains. Chaplains have like a
helpmate or a companion or an
(08:58):
accompaniment kind of posture in the world.
They're really called to Meet people where they are. And,
um, that's about where they're called
to be. They're, they're called to be present
to people in their
situations in this time and in this
place. So it's not an imagining
of our aspiration of like, why
(09:21):
aren't you? Or you should, but it's, this
is where you are now, and I'm going to be with you
and I'm going to do what I can to help
alleviate suffering and to make meaning
and to listen deeply to you.
For those chaplains who are been doing that
in places like hospitals and prisons and
(09:42):
universities and out on the street with
our unhoused, um, population, many are
also feeling the reality of the, uh,
climate crisis and wondering, well, how does
this change my work? I mean, I'm called to
be this kind of presence, but how
do I do that differently? Because the context
itself is changing.
(10:05):
So I would say in the context of the BTS Center's
work, people are often arriving with
one sense of call, but they're
recognizing that that call is being lived out in a
different kind of way, in a different kind
of world. Right now. What would you say,
Alan?
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (10:22):
Yeah, I love what you said, Allison. And this is such
a great reminder that when we talk about spiritual leadership
for a climate change world, we're talking about lots of
different kinds of spiritual leaders. And chaplains are
certainly one of those.
Maybe I'll shift and talk a little bit about how this lives
out in the congregational setting
because we're very interested also in the kind of
(10:45):
spiritual leadership that happens within, within
congregations. I'll share a story. You know,
beginning in early summer of 2024,
uh, in collaboration with two partner organizations,
Creation Justice Ministries and
Anabaptist Climate Collaborative, we led this program
called Claiming youg Call for a Climate
(11:05):
Changed World. That phrase probably sounds familiar.
We brought Together Teams from 12
Northern New England congregations. So these
were congregations situated in Maine, New Hampshire,
Vermont and Massachusetts. And they
represented a number of different Christian or Christian
adjacent traditions. For a three day
retreat at Schoodic Institute at
(11:27):
Acadia national park here in Maine. During those
three days, we wove together these three strands. So
first, Indigenous wisdom. We were really blessed to have
two Indigenous leaders that were with us for the entire
time kind of woven together with Christian
theology and then also with Western
science. And we were blessed to have a scientist from the Skoodic
(11:48):
Institute who brought that kind of scientific wisdom.
And then throughout the three days, of course, there was music
and spiritual practice, but we also brought
these congregations together in what we called
vocational discernment groups. So
here we're applying the concept of claiming your call to the
congregational setting and this idea
(12:08):
that congregations might have a particular
call as well, or a particular vocation.
Not just individuals, but congregations themselves. A
unique call from God,
specifically in a, uh, climate change world. And so we
engage them in this process of discernment
to identify first what we called a
radical intent, and then
(12:31):
to embrace a, uh, small experiment which would help
them to pursue that radical intent. So
small experiments with radical intent.
This theme around discernment vocation, claiming your
call shows up in a number of our programs,
including our annual Green Teams gathering, where
we bring together congregational green teams, or
(12:52):
climate action teams, eco justice teams,
to help them think holistically. So
after recycling, after solar panels,
after trying to reduce your carbon footprint, what comes
next? We really believe that this is a
moment when, um, God the divine
is calling not just individuals, but also
(13:13):
congregations, spiritual communities, to open
our eyes, to open our hearts and our
minds to the urgent realities
confronting us and to believe that there's something
unique that faith communities can offer in this
moment. In particular,
congregations bring spiritual resources to this
(13:33):
moment that I believe can't be filled by any
other sector. Our world is
crying out for bold
moral leadership, uh, individuals and
communities who are willing to truthfully
name this predicament, to work
to transform the misguided priorities that have
(13:53):
brought this crisis to our doorstep, to
make meaning, to tend to ritual,
and to accompany people as they
hold these really heavy emotions that come with
ecological crisis.
>> Jessica David (14:06):
Hmm. That's lovely.
I want to talk more in a minute about this sense of collective
call, but first I have to ask this question
for those who may be listening, like me, who
maybe have trouble hearing the whisper and need something a
little louder.
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (14:22):
How.
>> Jessica David (14:23):
How do you know when you're being called? What are the
signs? What. What do we look for?
>> Alison Cornish (14:29):
People may have, like, a road to Damascus kind
of imagination of what being
called is about, or, you know, even more
sort of silly, like the phone rings, and there it is on the
other end. Right.
>> Jessica David (14:41):
That doesn't seem too much to ask for.
>> Alison Cornish (14:44):
That's true. It's true. It would be so
nice. First, uh, once again, that
reminder that not every tradition uses this language
and not every tradition would have those images.
In fact, you know, the image of something,
a voice or a sense coming from the
divine. But I think it's really helpful to think of it in the
(15:05):
words of the, uh, great writer Frederick
Buechner, who said, the place God
calls you to is the place where your
Deep gladness and the world's deep hunger
meet, where the deep gladness
for you and the world's deep
hunger meet. So,
again, this is about your called being in
(15:27):
conversation. It means that we have
to have our eyes open and we have to meet
reality of our times and our place
in. In very loving ways
to activate. I, uh, sometimes I
think that inner sense that
we cannot not act, we
cannot not respond, we cannot
(15:50):
not see the real suffering
or the real needs or the real joy
and opportunities that are out there in the world.
Again, it's that sense of an inner pull in
conversation with our specific times and
experiences. And I love, love, love
that Frederick Buechner talks about gladness, or I would say
(16:10):
joy responding. Because
there is something for us in the
responding as well as for answering
the world's needs.
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (16:21):
I love that response, Allison. And I'm so glad you brought
the, uh, Frederick Buechner quote, because that's where
I always go to when I think about call. Uh, I
think those few words just say it so
succinctly. There's this intersection,
right? So your deep gladness. And I agree
with you, Allison, there has to be an element of joy.
God doesn't invite us to be miserable. God
(16:43):
doesn't invite us to, you know, approach our work with dread.
So when we've tapped into a, uh, calling and we're
using the gifts that God has given us, there
can be joy even when there's
challenge or struggle, or even when the work is.
Is really, really hard or it feels really
uphill. So the intersection of your deep
gladness with the world's deep hunger.
(17:06):
To me, that means there has to be an element of need. So that
we contributing in some way to the work of
God's love, healing, justice and peace in the world,
uh, waking up to an awareness that
there's some deep hunger in the world. And
I. Or we have the gifts to respond to it in a
way that increases love, that facilitates
(17:27):
healing, that advances
justice and promotes peace. And that in
doing so, I. Or we also
find joy. So back to your question, though,
Jessica. How do we know? I'm not sure there's
any perfect way to know with certainty.
Uh, for me, it's always about just taking the next faithful
step in answering a felt sense of
(17:49):
God's call and doing that prayerfully and
really trusting your gut and then see
what happens next. If it doesn't seem to
be meeting the world's deep hunger and bringing joy,
then maybe that's not it. I don't think this is a Perfect way
to know. But just again, taking that next faithful
step.
>> Jessica David (18:07):
I had a feeling that was what you were going to say, Alan.
Um,
so going back to what Alan had said around
congregational location, I'm still
wondering, how does that group decide
(18:29):
upon a collective calling? Could you maybe
give us an example of a time you've seen a congregation
find its calling?
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (18:40):
Sure. We've been really inspired by the work of
Deborah Reenstra, um, who teaches at Calvin
University, and she wrote this incredible book called
Refugia Faith.
So refugia is this scientific concept that
refers to little pockets of
life where life persists in times of
(19:00):
devastation
and from which life regenerates.
So if you think about, you know, a volcano
erupting and everything is devastated,
and you could look at that scene and think, oh my gosh,
like there won't be life here for
the foreseeable, foreseeable future.
(19:24):
But actually what happens is that life
kind of finds a way. Life persists
kind of in, under rocks and roots and in little crevices
and very quickly life begins to
regenerate. That's just a scientific
fact and that's just one example. But we've been applying
this, as Deborah does, uh, to the, the,
(19:45):
to the spiritual context.
I like to think about congregations
as spiritual refugia in a climate
changed world. So to get to some examples,
really inspired by this little
United Methodist church in Cape Elizabeth, Maine,
(20:06):
they several years ago began to discern a
particular calling to embrace a
deep and sacred connection with this tract of
forest adjacent to their, their church facility.
They, over time, they sold an easement to the local
land trust to ensure that that property would never be
developed. That was one step. But maybe even more
importantly, they began to tend trails,
(20:28):
they built an outdoor chapel, they,
they lead naturalist events and prayer
walks. They formed this deep relationship and
are, uh, really drawing community to be in relationship with
that piece of land. They formed an eco team
and they're continually asking God,
uh, what's next? So that's one
example. Thinking also about Taftsville
(20:51):
Chapel, which is a Mennonite fellowship in Vermont
that meets in an old schoolhouse. And
they took part in our claiming your call retreat and
discerned a calling to establish what they call a
schoolhouse for simple living. And just as kind
of a first step, they held a community wide
canning workshop where members of the
(21:12):
congregation taught the skills of canning
and food preservation. And that's just the
beginning. Uh, thinking about Main
Street United Methodist Church in Nashua, New Hampshire
that embraced a calling to collaborate with
some of the secular nonprofits in their community
to plant a pollinator garden on this
(21:33):
abandoned lot in one of the heat islands in the middle of
their city. And amazing things have
happened in. In the process of. Of
creating that pollinator garden. So these are just
small little steps, but in one way or another,
uh, whether they're using this language or not, each of
these three congregations that I've described are embodying
(21:53):
this concept of refugia. These small,
hyper local expressions of community where
values are named and preserved, where
life persists, and where we trust that
life will just continue to regenerate.
>> Jessica David (22:09):
M What I really appreciate about those
examples, Alan, is the. Is the sense of
scale and actually the sense of smallness. I think
when I conceive of calling, it feels like it has
to be this grand vision or plan.
And I take some comfort
in hearing that it can be very small,
(22:29):
very local.
So you touched on this earlier, but I'm going to
ask anyway. Do callings change over
time? Is that okay if. If
our calling changes, if we feel called in a different
direction?
>> Alison Cornish (22:43):
Well, Jessica, I would say absolutely,
positively, yes. Because if we're deeply
listening, then we recognize that not only
do the needs of the world change, we change over time.
As we evolve and grow and age,
you know, there are different things that we're paying attention to, and
there are different things that we're, uh, able to do as well.
(23:04):
So we need to keep listening, we need to keep checking in,
and that's what we're seeing with chaplains in
the work that we've been doing. I'm thinking particularly of one of
our chaplains who did a program on climate
chaplaincy with us and the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab.
Two years ago, she was a palliative care
chaplain. That is, somebody who sits with
(23:25):
people who have decided that,
you know, traditional treatment for a
medical issue is beginning to wane
and they're stepping into a new phase of life.
At the same time, she was also on the board of a climate
activist organization, and she found
herself taking some of the
skills that she had developed in her vocation
(23:48):
as a chaplain and applying them
to that context of the
activist organization, particularly
when the activist organization didn't have a win,
when something that they had planned and hoped for
didn't come out the way that they had hoped, and they had
grief. They had a sense of, how
(24:09):
do I go on? What do we do now, collectively
and individually? So she
really understood that, that the
ways in which we look at our life and the way
our life evolves also happen within the
organizational context. Right. And in
our activist work, we have to continue
(24:30):
to dig deep into the
ways in which we've evolved and apply
that wherever we are. And, in fact, she
went on to talk about the fact that her
community was deeply and profoundly,
um, impacted by a, uh,
wildfire. And she needed
(24:51):
to figure out, well, how do I show up as
chaplain and as resident and as
neighbor and as colleague and as friend
in this space, and led us
through the way in which she discerned
that, you know, not necessarily
being a first responder, but being sort of a mental
health first responder and a spiritual health
(25:13):
first responder. And how did. How do you show up in
those spaces? So that's just one example
of how one person
carrying a calling as a chaplain
had to and is adapting to each of
the contexts that she's showing up in.
And I'm just thinking of another example that I just
(25:34):
learned about yesterday, uh, from one of our
participants in our conversation circles for
chaplains and the climate. She is
wondering, how do I bring
the earth and contact with the earth into
the very, very sterile settings that I serve
in the hospital? Other people have wondered the same thing about
prisons. How do I work on the
(25:56):
reconnection to the, you know,
the source of all, for all of us, the
elements and the actual Earth? How do
I bring that into context that are
intentionally, in many ways, blocking
that out? And that, again, is a
sense of. This person had never thought about
(26:17):
that when they went into hospital chaplaincy. Just. The
hospital is my environment. That's where I go to work.
But now, as more Earth
consciousness is arising, these questions are
arising.
>> Alan Ewing Merrill (26:30):
I really appreciate those stories, Allison,
and, um, yeah, I wholeheartedly agree that
callings do change over time. Absolutely. In fact,
in my experience, the call is
always evolving. It's never static. Uh, that's been
true in my own life, and it's led me to pursue
lots of different pathways. It's certainly been true of
(26:51):
the congregations I've served and accompanied over the years as
well. And when you think about it, it only makes sense that
callings will change over time because the world's hungers
change over time. And what brings us
joy can change over time as well.
I wonder if that might even be one way
to know that it's really a calling, that it. That
it evolves, that we're continually listening, we're paying
(27:14):
attention, continually responding, never being
content with status quo, but always
aiming to take the next faithful step.
>> Jessica David (27:23):
Very helpful and reassuring. I have to say
something. I take away from this conversation that hadn't been in my head
before is how interactive it is. My
conception has always been it's something I have to
it comes from within me as opposed to
being in conversation with the world or
with the spirits or with other
(27:43):
people and with my own experiences.
So that's definitely one of my takeaways from this
conversation.
I, um, really want to thank you Alan and Alex
for this beautiful and important and
really helpful conversation. It's
(28:04):
been just a pleasure to have you both
here to talk about this and to bring your
experiences and work to the conversation. So thank
you
listeners.
Now it is your turn. What is
calling you and how do you know? Please
(28:25):
contact me about this episode or uh, with any
questions you want to ask. You can call,
text or email. Leave a voice Message
at AH,
207-200-6986
that's
207-200-69861.
Of course, if you are calling from outside the U.S.
(28:47):
you can also text that number,
207-200-6986
or if you prefer, you can email me. The
email address is
podcasthebtscenter.org
that's
podcasthebtscenter.org
(29:11):
thank you for listening to the Climate Changed
Podcast behind the Scenes Edition with me,
Jessica David. Do you consider yourself
a curious person? Coming up in our next
episode, we are going to have great fun talking about
curiosity. Visit
climatechangedpodcast.uhorg
for show notes, a, uh, transcript and
(29:32):
more. That website again is climate
changedpodcast.org
Many thanks to my guests Alan Ewing Merrill
and Alison Cornish for today's conversation
and special thanks to producer Peterson Toscano
for producing this episode and to Nicole
Daroff for your assistance and support in the
(29:53):
series. Climate Changed Podcast
is a project of the BTS center in
beautiful Portland, Maine. Learn more
about the many resources we offer along with our
in person and online programs by
visiting our website, the BTC
btscenter.org that's
the btscenter.org
(30:15):
Goodbye for now.
Mhm it
(31:00):
Sam.
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