The New Mexico Interfaith Dialogue will be having an in-person dialogue on Thursday September 18th, 7:00 to 8:30 pm, Raindrop Foundation Turkish Cultural Center, located at Mountain and Pennsylvania (7901 Mountain Rd NE, Albuquerque, NM 87110). Our speakers will be Rev. Clara Sims and Desiree Bernard.  We look forward to an engaging dialogue about “Climate Change: The Spiritual Crisis of Our Times.”

Rev. Clara Sims

Rev. Clara Sims grew up with climate change in the forefront of her consciousness and felt a strong sense of calling from a young age to engage in justice and healing on behalf of the earth. Clara is a minister in the United Church of Christ, serving part-time as Assistant Executive Director of New Mexico & El Paso Interfaith Power and Light. She holds a Master’s of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School where her studies focused on theology, climate change, and legacies of colonialism. Clara is from and currently lives in Los Lunas, New Mexico and she is especially passionate about working in and to protect her beloved home state. She also serves part-time as Associate Minister at First Congregational United Church of Christ Albuquerque where she focuses on social justice ministry.

Desiree Bernard

Desirée Bernard began her undergraduate education as an Environmental Studies student and considers her early learnings and explorations in the fields of environmental science, ecofeminism, ecopsychology, wilderness, and the deep practices of earth-based spiritual/religious traditions as forming her foundations and worldview. Grappling with the climate crisis, then and now, changed and changes everything. She graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a BA in Psych and Religion and went on to earn a MDiv from Harvard Divinity School. She worked for many years in the fields of housing/homelessness and behavioral health, before circling back to integrate understandings of climate change into the call to respond to the world’s need for changes that center radical love, awakening, and new visions for humanity. She has a personal obsession with liberating herself and others from dependency on fossil fuels, and so spends a lot of time thinking about and working on decarbonization with a vision toward community empowerment and justice.