Grounding: “Island”

Autumn begins the episode with a speculative story set in a future world where the earth sings to children, but only some of them. The story follows a narrator marked by difference, silence, land, migration, and the ache of not quite belonging.

Nicole invites listeners to receive the story as a doorway: a moment to wander, wonder, and stretch the mind in the direction of hope.

Autumn reflects that the world of the story is not so far from our own. We are living through a time when the ground is shifting beneath our feet and many of us are asking how to stay present to grief without losing our capacity to imagine.

Key Themes and Conversations:

The Long Dark
Francis describes this time as a long, generational passage. The phrase invites imagination rather than analysis alone. The “long” reminds us that repair and restoration may take generations. The “dark” invites us to reclaim darkness as a holy, gestational space where roots, microbes, minerals, dreams, and underground forms of mutual support do their work.

Seeing With a Dark-Adapted Eye
Instead of trying to force bright certainty into uncertain times, Francis invites us to develop the capacity to see in the dark. The long dark asks for stillness, quiet, patience, restraint, and a deeper quality of listening.

Grief and Imagination as Twins
Autumn and Francis explore the relationship between grief and imagination. Francis suggests that we do not simply “imagine”; we are imagined. Imagination is something we attune ourselves to through image, dream, story, myth, ritual, and relationship with the living earth.

The Earth as the Dreaming Body
Francis describes the earth as the body that gives us the songs, rituals, and images we need. In a climate-changed world, this means deepening intimacy with place: noticing when birds return, berries ripen, crickets begin singing, or the land changes its rhythm.

The Primal Matrix of Communal Care
Francis names the communal ground human beings have long expected in times of grief, death, initiation, gratitude, and transition. He contrasts this with the modern “life sentence” of individualism, where people are expected to carry grief privately and return quickly to productivity.

Containment and Release
In grief work, Francis says there are two roles: containment and release. We cannot do both alone. Without communal containment, sorrow circulates endlessly inside us. Ritual ground offers a place where grief can finally be set down.

Ritual as Derangement and Realignment
Francis tells spiritual leaders that ritual is not meant to leave us unchanged. Ritual can knock us out of the arrangement that tells us to stay in control, behave, look good, and not fall apart. Authentic ritual makes space for realignment between soul and spirit.

Heat, Intensity, and Community
For grief ritual to open, Francis says communities need heat, intensity, and community. That takes time. Singing, movement, dancing, writing, sharing, and slowing down all help warm the ritual ground.

The Times Are Urgent; We Must Slow Down
Autumn names the intense feeling that climate change is moving too fast. Francis responds that the soul cannot meet speed with more speed. Connection, friendship, intimacy, and imagination require slowness.

Adult Presence in a Time of Trauma
Francis describes the climate crisis as carrying the energies of trauma. Dissociation, numbness, hypervigilance, and survival strategies are understandable, but they narrow our available skills. What we need now are the amplified capacities of adulthood: community, reconciliation, repair, imagination, ritual, and eldership.

Friendship as Medicine
When Autumn asks how spiritual leaders cultivate the maturity needed to hold others, Francis names friendship as essential. We do not mature outside of friendship. Friends help us notice when we are in survival mode and remind us of who we are.

People and resources mentioned:

Francis Weller
Psychotherapist, writer, teacher, and soul activist whose work centers grief, ritual, soul work, and community.
https://www.francisweller.net/

Books by Francis Weller
https://www.francisweller.net/books.html

• The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
  https://www.francisweller.net/the-wild-edge-of-sorrow-the-sacred-work-of-grief.html
• In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty
  https://www.francisweller.net/books.html
• The Threshold Between Loss and Revelation
  https://www.francisweller.net/books.html

Wisdom Bridge / Soul Work with Francis Weller
https://www.francisweller.net/

Malidoma Patrice Somé
Teacher and author whose work centered ritual, community, healing, and Indigenous wisdom.
https://malidoma.com/about/

Bayo Akomolafe — “The times are urgent; let us slow down.”
https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/the-times-are-urgent-lets-slow-down

Wendell Berry — “It All Turns on Affection”
https://www.neh.gov/news/2012-jefferson-lecture-wendell-berry

Climate Changed Podcast
https://climatechangedpodcast.org/

The BTS Center
https://thebtscenter.org/

Connect with us

• Climate Changed Podcast:
  https://climatechangedpodcast.org/
• The BTS Center:
  https://thebtscenter.org/
• Email: podcast@thebtscenter.org
• Find transcripts, discussion guides, full-length video episodes, and bonus materials on The BTS Center’s YouTube channel.

Blessing:

May you lean into the long dark
knowing that you are not alone.

You, Climate Changed listener,
are part of a community of friends who care.

Together, let us grieve.
Together, let us imagine.

For it is indeed a blessing
to be alive right now.

Meet Our Guest

Francis Weller is a psychotherapist, writer, teacher, and soul activist. For decades, he has guided individuals and communities through grief ritual, soul-centered psychotherapy, and practices of communal healing. His work weaves together psychology, mythology, ritual, poetry, Indigenous wisdom, and deep attention to the living world.

He is the author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief, The Threshold Between Loss and Revelation, and In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty.

Meet Our Host

Autumn Brown (she/her) is an artist, facilitator, mother, and theologian. The front woman of the eponymously named soul-pop band, AUTUMN, she is a queer, mixed-race Black woman, a gifted facilitator and orator, and a freedom worker who grounds her approach to building movements for liberation in her belief in the innate capacity for healing that emanates from the human heart.

Meet Our Co-Host

Rev. Nicole Diroff (she/her) is ordained in the United Church of Christ. She holds expertise in facilitation, data management, and strategic planning. Nicole is a certified Maine Master Naturalist, serves as Chair of the Spiritual Formation Committee at Williston-Immanuel United Church and is Co-Chair of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Committee for the Scarborough Public School District.

Meet Our Producer

After spending 17 years and over $30,000 on three continents attempting to “de-gay” himself through conversion therapy, Peterson Toscano came out a quirky queer Quaker concerned with human rights. He also produces other podcasts including Citizens Climate Radio, Bubble & Squeak, and the Bible Bash Podcast. Peterson has been featured in People Magazine, The Times of London, the Trya Banks Show, and NPR Morning Edition. He lives in Pretoria, South Africa with his husband, Glen Retief.