Listening, Loving, Responding

Eco-Chaplaincy as Compassion in Action

Environmental educator, wilderness guide, and meditation teacher Kirsten Rudestam led this EcoDharma Exploration on June 25, 2023. A recording is available below. We welcome your support for this program.

Chaplaincy is the crucial work of providing spiritual care, frequently in moments of transition or crisis. In times like these, people often need forms of support that the larger culture doesn’t readily provide. A chaplain can serve as a trusted confidant, someone who will listen deeply to us and advise us, but not necessarily tell us what we want to hear.

What is it to chaplain one another, human and non-human, through the eco-social crises of our time? Kirsten Rudestam, a core faculty member of the Sati Center Buddhist Eco-Chaplaincy training program, led this EcoDharma Exploration into how we might relate to one another and with Earth itself, as givers and receivers of spiritual nourishment.

Kirsten Rudestam is an environmental educator, wilderness guide, and meditation teacher. She has a PhD in Environmental Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz where she studied environmental justice and Indigenous water practices. She has fifteen years of experience teaching field-based and classroom-based college courses in environmental studies and sociology, is trained as a vision fast guide through the School of Lost Borders and is a facilitator for Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects. Kirsten has been practicing vipassana meditation since 2001. She, Gil Fronsdal, and Susie Harrington are the co-founders and core faculty for the Sati Center Buddhist Eco-Chaplaincy training program. Those interested in joining the program in the future are invited to contact them at . The second training will begin in July 2021, with applications opening winter of 2020-21.

     Pieces on One Earth Sangha

Support this Offering

One Earth Sangha and our featured speakers offer these explorations on a donation basis, with no required registration fee. We invite you to participate in the tradition of offering dana, or generosity. Your support makes these gatherings possible, and any amount offered is greatly appreciated.

Another way to support us is to share what this exploration has meant to you in a way that we can use in our materials. We invite you to share a “testimonial” here! (select “EcoDharma Exploration Participant” from the dropdown menu.)

Recording

Additional Resources

An Invitation and an Inquiry

We invite you to incorporate a short break during this session, and during this time, see if you are able to spend time with a potted plant, with a tree outside, or with a cloud outside the window – simply tune into the earth quality of your body. Explore this question – What is it to listen, in your own way, to the more-than-human? And what might emerge as a response?

Additional Resources

More EcoDharma Explorations

Upcoming

Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse

As we face the poly-crisis, how do we escalate our actions without escalating a worldview that keeps us from interdependence? How can we view injustice as a manifestation of collective trauma? How can the Dharma support us in a skillful response?

Upcoming

A Work that Reconnects Spiral Gathering

What might the Earth desire from us this Earth Day? Alex Julie guides a Work That Reconnects spiral practice to ground in gratitude, lean into grief, and clear our heart-minds enough to listen for the Earth.

Past

Standing in Fierce Compassion in this Age of Reckoning

As extractive systems collapse and uncertainty rises, how do we stay present and act with wisdom? This session explores Dharma teachings and meditative grounding for meeting grief and the call to disrupt and reimagine with courage.