Climate Changed

By The BTS CenterReligion & Spirituality Christianity

Climate Changed episodes

October 13 Podcast Swap: ecoChristian – Weathering Change with Courtney Ellis
In this special off-season episode of Climate Changed, we are thrilled to feature a podcast swap with ecoChristian, hosted by Rev. Caleb Cray Haynes. Caleb sits down with author, speaker, and Presbyterian pastor Courtney Ellis to discuss her newest book, Weathering Change, alongside his recent book, Earthbound Christian.
By observing how the more-than-human world adapts to transition—from the resilience of migrating birds to the mystery of deep-sea rays—Courtney and Caleb invite us to see our own human limits as a feature of God's design. It is a tender, honest conversation about curiosity, grief, and finding joy in our local biomes.
About the Guests: Courtney Ellis is a Presbyterian pastor, speaker, and host of The Thing with Feathers podcast. She wrote Weathering Change: Seeking Peace Amid Life’s Tough Transitions. Rev. Caleb Cray Haynes is the host of the ecoChristian podcast, co-founder of Nazarenes for Creation Care, and author of Earthbound Christian: Flourishing within limits in the age of infinite growth.
Key Topics Covered
The Power of Curiosity in Change: Approaching transitions with gentle curiosity instead of judgment.
Flourishing Within Limits: Embracing our finite nature in an age of infinite growth.
Descending Rather Than Climbing: Choosing humility, confession, and presence over the constant drive to produce and transcend.
Finding Joy in the Local Biome: Using wonder and delight as the primary motivations for creation care.
Resource Links & References
The ecoChristian Podcast and Substack
https://calebcrayhaynes.substack.com/
Courtney Ellis https://courtneybellis.com/
Caleb Cray Haynes https://calebcrayhaynes.com/
Explore More For full show notes, transcripts, discussion guides, and links to all the resources mentioned in this episode, please visit our website at https://climatechangedpodcast.org/.
36 min
September 15Podcast Swap: Refugia – Healing the Land with Debra Rienstra and Dr. Elaine Heath
In this special off-season episode of Climate Changed, we are thrilled to share a podcast swap with Refugia. The show is hosted by our good friend and colleague, Professor Debra Rienstra.
Debra explores the biological concept of "refugia"—habitats where life endures in times of crisis. She applies this as a profound metaphor for how people of faith can nurture life-giving spaces today.
In this episode, Debra visits Spring Forest, a new monastic community and regenerative farm in North Carolina. She sits down with its founder and abbess, Dr. Elaine Heath, for a beautiful conversation about holy experimentation outside the traditional walls of the church.
Episode Highlights:
The Metaphor of Refugia: Nurturing life-giving spaces in our earth and spiritual communities during times of severe disturbance.
The Church's "Dark Night": Understanding the current confusion in conventional churches as a Spirit-breathed "dark night of the soul".
Holy Experimentation: How Spring Forest functions as a dispersed network rooted in a simple rule of life: prayer, work, table, neighbor, and rest.
Neighboring Well: A practical starting point for change—forming authentic friendships and sharing meals with the people who live on your street.
About This Swap: Rev. Nicole Diroff, Associate Director at The BTS Center, introduces and wraps up this special shared episode.
If you are joining us from the Refugia feed, welcome to Climate Changed! If you haven't yet, we highly encourage you to go back and listen to our recently completed Season 4, where we challenge listeners to engage in world-building through spiritual imagination, grief work, and adaptation.
Learn more about Debra Rienstra and listen to more Refugia episodes: https://debrarienstra.com/podcast/
Explore More: For full show notes, transcripts, discussion guides, and links to all the resources mentioned in this episode, please visit our website at https://climatechangedpodcast.org/.
48 min
August 18Imagining Futures Beyond Collapse • Ophelia Hu Kinney + Nicole Diroff + Peterson Toscano
How do we turn spiritual imagination into practical action in a climate-changed world?
In Part Two of our Season 4 reflection, Rev. Nicole Diroff, Peterson Toscano, and Ophelia Hu Kinney dive into a flood of inspiring listener voicemails—including a reflection from Susan in Baton Rouge on how local churches coordinated disaster response during Hurricane Katrina—to explore what world-building looks like in real time.
From disaster response asset mapping after Hurricane Katrina to congregational solar panel votes, public repair, and indigenous wisdom on building a "bird with two strong wings," this episode offers a roadmap for living, loving, and leading today.
Key Takeaways in This Episode:
Asset Mapping in Crisis: How local communities and churches organize existing gifts to adapt before disaster strikes.
A Bird with Two Strong Wings: Dwayne Tomah's indigenous perspective on moving past political divides toward shared truth and collective action.
Dream Seeds & Practical Action: Translating spiritual hope into real commitments like community solar energy.
Becoming Good Ancestors: Stretching our moral imaginations to care for generations across time.
Opportunity Multipliers: Seeing climate challenges as a catalyst for deeper human connection.
Listen in and discover how we can keep building what love requires!
🌐 Learn more & access discussion guides: thebtscenter.org
📧 Email us: [email protected]
38 min
August 11Telling Better Stories About Climate + Collapse with Spiritual Imagination
In this season-reflection episode of Climate Changed, Rev. Nicole Diroff, producer Peterson Toscano, and Ophelia Hu Kinney look back on Season Four and the conversations that shaped it.
Together, they reflect on imagination, adaptation, grief, ancestors, speculative futures, ritual, and the sacred work of becoming people who can live faithfully in a climate-changed world.
Ophelia joins the podcast microphone family for the first time as The BTS Center’s Strategic Communications Director, former board member, and longtime listener.
This episode also features listener reflections from Fritz from Portland, Maine, and Grace Pugh Hubbard, along with clips from Season Four guests.
In this episode:
Spiritual imagination and climate change storytelling
Climate stories with culture, longing, and emotional depth
Naming our experiences and being witnessed
Becoming good ancestors
Friendship, grief, and spiritual leadership
Accountability, apology, and repair
Next Steps
Share this season.
Send an episode to someone who might need it.
Host a listening party.
Gather a few people and listen together.
Use the discussion guides.
Each episode includes questions and activities for groups.
Share the videos.
Find full episodes, short clips, and bonus material on The BTS Center’s YouTube page.
Tell people why.
When you share an episode, add a personal note about what moved you.
Resources
Climate Changed Podcast:
https://climatechangedpodcast.org/
The BTS Center:
https://thebtscenter.org/
The BTS Center YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBTSCenter
Contact: [email protected]
40 min
July 21What does it mean to cultivate freedom for future generations? • Autumn Brown + Nicole Diroff
Updated: October 16, 2026

In Season 4, one of our guests was psychotherapist Francis Weller. He’s a renowned and once-trusted practitioner who deepened our understanding of grief and collective healing. Our podcast team is now aware that Francis also abused his power and position to take advantage of students and clients.

Becoming more human in a more-than-human world includes acting with integrity and honoring each others’ wholeness. We lament Francis’ pattern of abusive behavior, and we recommit to examining our own power and privilege as providers of spiritual care. On October 15, 2026, we shared a piece on our Substack with reflection questions that invite spiritual leaders to examine their own relationship to accountability and power. You can find that atsubstack.com/@thebtscenter.
What does it mean to cultivate freedom for future generations? • Autumn Brown + Nicole Diroff
In this episode of Climate Changed, Autumn Brown and Rev. Nicole Diroff continue reflecting on Autumn’s conversation with Francis Weller about grief, ritual, imagination, and “the long dark.”
Nicole shares stories from a recent BTS Center retreat, Climate Advocacy and the Sacred Wild, where faith and climate leaders were invited to slow down, step away from project-making, and deepen their relationship with the natural world and one another.
Autumn reflects on her work around fugitive practice, drawing from Black liberation and Black feminist thought. She explores freedom not only as something we do, but as something we are — even inside systems that deny freedom.
Together, Autumn and Nicole ask what it means to work for a freedom we may not live to see. Autumn reminds us that we are part of a much bigger story of freedom, one that includes future generations whose lives we may never directly know.
In this episode:
Francis Weller on “the long dark”
Seeing differently in a climate-changed world
Friendship and spiritual leadership
Margaret Wheatley’s question: “Who do we choose to be?”
Receiving wisdom with humility and care
Autumn Brown on fugitive practice
Freedom as a way of being
Ritual, conflict, community, and imagination
Next Steps
Name the hazards and gifts in your place.
What are the real hazards where you live? What gifts do you, your neighbors, or your community already carry that could help when crisis comes?
Ask who your friends are.
Who can help you slow down, tell the truth, and remember that you are not alone?
Practice imagination.
Make space for dreams, images, and the imaginal. Lie down, cover your eyes, begin with a simple image, and let it unfold.
Rest.
Francis Weller names rest as a rebellious practice in a culture of productivity.
Gather a listening circle.
Invite three to five people to sit together for an hour. Turn off your phones. Take turns naming one thing that is weighing on your heart. Do not solve. Just listen.
Use shared quiet.
At the beginning or end of a meeting, try two or three minutes of silence. Notice what changes when the room slows down together.
Resources
Francis Weller:
https://www.francisweller.net/
Lament with Earth:
https://thebtscenter.org/lamentwithearth
Climate Changed Podcast:
https://climatechangedpodcast.org/
The BTS Center:
https://thebtscenter.org/
Contact:
[email protected]
44 min
July 14 What if it doesn’t get better anytime soon? • Francis Weller + Autumn Brown
Updated: October 16, 2026

In Season 4, one of our guests was psychotherapist Francis Weller. He’s a renowned and once-trusted practitioner who deepened our understanding of grief and collective healing. Our podcast team is now aware that Francis also abused his power and position to take advantage of students and clients.

Becoming more human in a more-than-human world includes acting with integrity and honoring each others’ wholeness. We lament Francis’ pattern of abusive behavior, and we recommit to examining our own power and privilege as providers of spiritual care. On October 15, 2026, we shared a piece on our Substack with reflection questions that invite spiritual leaders to examine their own relationship to accountability and power. You can find that atsubstack.com/@thebtscenter.

What if it doesn’t get better anytime soon? • Francis Weller + Autumn Brown
In this episode of Climate Changed, Autumn Brown speaks with psychotherapist, writer, and soul activist Francis Weller about grief, ritual, imagination, and what he calls “the long dark.”
Francis invites us to consider that the climate-changed world is not a short crisis with a quick resolution. It is a generational passage that asks for patience, restraint, communal care, ritual imagination, and the courage to see with “a dark-adapted eye.”
Before the conversation, Autumn shares a short speculative story called “Island,” opening a doorway into questions of land, belonging, migration, silence, and longing.
Together, Autumn and Francis explore why grief and imagination belong together, why sorrow was never meant to be carried alone, and why communities need ritual ground where anguish, rage, shame, and heartbreak can be held. Francis also speaks to spiritual leaders about slowing down, warming the ritual field, and creating spaces where people can be changed rather than merely comforted.
The conversation turns toward friendship as essential medicine. In a time marked by overwhelm and uncertainty, Francis reminds us that we do not mature alone. We need friends, elders, ritual, ancestors, community, and the living earth.
Guest: Francis Weller
https://www.francisweller.net/
Climate Changed Podcast:
https://climatechangedpodcast.org/
The BTS Center:
https://thebtscenter.org/
Contact: [email protected]
49 min
June 16 How do we cultivate agency in the face of climate change? • Autumn Brown + Nicole Diroff
In this episode of Climate Changed, Autumn Brown and Rev. Nicole Diroff continue the conversation sparked by Autumn’s interview with disaster-response specialist Katie Mears.
Together, they explore what disaster can reveal about human beings and the communities we create. They discuss the limitations of the term “climate refugee,” the difference between charity and solidarity, and the importance of preserving agency when people are displaced or forced to adapt.
Drawing on the work of Rebecca Solnit, Amitav Ghosh, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, and Colette Pichon Battle, Autumn and Nicole consider how faith communities can become places where people practice democracy, collective care, moral imagination, and self-determination. They also imagine public rituals for a climate-changed world, including the practice of witnessing high tides.
Key Themes and Conversations
Disaster as an Opportunity Multiplier: Climate change magnifies existing threats, but Autumn and Nicole ask whether it can also multiply opportunities to rethink how we live in community.
The Language of Climate Displacement: Terms such as “climate refugee” may make sense to scholars and policymakers but may not reflect how displaced people understand their own experiences.
From Extraction to Collective Care: Nicole draws on Amitav Ghosh’s work to suggest that displacement is often rooted in longer histories of exploitation, conflict, and violence—not simply a single climate event.
Safe, Sanitary, Secure, and Chosen: Disaster recovery must include more than technically adequate shelter. People and communities need agency in determining where and how they live.
Practicing Democracy: Faith communities and other “third spaces” can help people develop the skills required to listen, disagree, make decisions, and shape a shared future.
Charity and Solidarity: Charity asks what we can give. Solidarity asks how we can come alongside others, accompany them, and recognize that their well-being is connected to our own.
Witnessing High Tides: Nicole considers public ritual as a way of noticing climate change, accompanying the more-than-human world, making space for grief, and cultivating hope.
Next Steps
Autumn and Nicole remind listeners that imagination becomes meaningful when it enters our shared lives through practical action.
Explore your community’s disaster preparedness.
Ask what plans your congregation, neighborhood, or community organization already has in place. Is there a communication plan, phone tree, emergency contact list, or strategy for checking on vulnerable people? Look for preparedness resources offered by your denomination or local emergency-management organizations.
Resource: United Church of Christ Disaster Preparedness Resources
https://www.ucc.org/disaster_index/disaster_resources/
Listen to a story of displacement.
Speak with someone who has experienced uprooting because of weather, housing costs, evacuation, or housing loss. Listen without trying to fix the story. The practice of witnessing and accompaniment can itself become part of rebuilding community.
Notice what water is doing where you live.
Find a local tide, river, rainfall, drought, or watershed resource. Spend time observing how water is changing in your region. Consider how witnessing these changes might become a personal or public ritual.
Move from charity toward solidarity.
After offering money, supplies, or practical assistance, ask what relationship might come next. How can your community accompany people rather than simply deliver resources?
Share what you discover.
Email: [email protected]
Voice Message: 207-200-6986
People and Resources Mentioned
Katie Mears
Senior Technical Specialist for U.S. Disaster and Climate Risk at Episcopal Relief & Development
https://www.episcopalrelief.org/?s=katie+mears
Episcopal Relief & Development
https://www.episcopalrelief.org/
Adaptation Through Shock — Katie Mears and Sarah Labowitz
https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/10/adaptation-through-shock
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster — Rebecca Solnit
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-built-in-hell-by-rebecca-solnit/
The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis — Amitav Ghosh
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo125517349.html
What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures — Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
https://www.getitright.earth/
Colette Pichon Battle and Taproot Earth
https://www.taproot.earth/
Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean — Jonathan White
https://www.trinity.edu/directory/jwhite1/tides-science-and-spirit-ocean
United Church of Christ Disaster Ministries
https://www.ucc.org/disaster_index/disaster_resources/
NOAA Tide Predictions
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tide_predictions.html
About the Hosts
Autumn Brown is a mother, artist, facilitator, and freedom worker who supports communities in cultivating resilience, imagination, and collective liberation.
Rev. Nicole Diroff is Associate Director of The BTS Center. Her work explores spiritual leadership, ecological imagination, and the role of faith communities in a climate-changed world.
Connect With Us
Climate Changed Podcast:
https://climatechangedpodcast.org/
The BTS Center:
https://thebtscenter.org/
Email: [email protected]
Voice Message: 207-200-6986
Find full-length video episodes, excerpts, and bonus materials on The BTS Center’s YouTube channel.
Episode Blessing
May you feel the wind at your back,
the ocean at your feet,
as the hands of your ancestors—
sometimes gently, sometimes firmly—
guide you into the future.
41 min
June 09 What do disasters reveal about human nature? Katie Mears + Autumn Brown
Autumn Brown speaks with Katie Mears, Senior Technical Specialist for U.S. Disaster and Climate Risk at Episcopal Relief & Development. Katie has spent nearly 20 years working with communities as they prepare for, respond to, recover from, and adapt to disasters.
Together, Autumn and Katie explore what faithful disaster response looks like in a climate-changed world. They discuss climate mobility, housing justice, land grief, queer and immigrant vulnerability, and the need for faith communities to move beyond climate mitigation alone. Katie invites us to see disaster work not only as logistics, but as a spiritual practice rooted in dignity, welcome, agency, and love.
Grounding Practice
This episode begins with a reading from Rebecca Solnit’s book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. Solnit writes about the courage, mutual aid, generosity, and imagination that often emerge in the aftermath of catastrophe.
The Practice: As you listen, notice what rises in you when you hear the idea that “the possibility of paradise is already within us as a default setting.” Where have you seen people become more open-hearted, resourceful, or generous in a time of crisis?
Key Themes and Conversations
Climate Mobility and the Language of Displacement: Katie explains why people who move after climate-related disasters may not call themselves “climate refugees,” even when they understand that climate change shaped the conditions that forced them to move.
Safe, Sanitary, Secure — and Chosen: Disaster recovery often focuses on stable housing, but Katie adds an essential fourth word: chosen. True recovery must include agency and the ability to make meaningful decisions about one’s future.
Adaptation as Faithful Practice: Katie notes that many faith communities focus on mitigation — solar panels, electric vehicle chargers, insulation — but fewer talk about adaptation. Even if emissions stopped tomorrow, the world has already changed, and communities need to adjust to that reality.
Housing as Climate Ministry: Katie argues that affordable housing is one of the most important climate actions faith communities can take. As people move away from higher-risk areas, housing pressure can increase in the places receiving them, creating cycles of climate gentrification and displacement.
Welcome Without Control: Katie invites faith communities to offer real welcome while respecting the choices displaced people make. The goal is not to persuade someone to stay, return, or move on, but to expand the menu of choices available to them.
Queer, Immigrant, and Othered Communities in Disaster Response: Katie and Autumn discuss how official disaster systems often assume a straight, married, property-owning household model. Disasters can “turn up the volume” on existing exclusion, but they can also create openings for new forms of solidarity.
Next Steps
Autumn and Nicole remind listeners that the next steps help us bring imagination into practical reality. The change we need cannot happen alone. It has to grow in the community.
Notice the actual hazards in your place.
Katie Mears invites listeners to begin close to home. What are the things that cause harm to people’s living and working conditions where you are? They may not be the dramatic disasters that make national news. They might be flooding, extreme heat, apartment fires, unsafe housing, power outages, food insecurity, wildfire smoke, or rising housing costs.
Then ask: What gifts do you, and the communities you are part of, already have that could be brought to bear in that situation? Disaster response is not only about who has a generator or who fits an official emergency checklist. It can include people who cook, organize, drive, translate, make phone calls, offer space, know the neighbors, care for children, repair things, pray, listen, or help people feel less alone.
Explore your community’s disaster preparedness.
If you belong to a faith community, ask what disaster preparedness efforts are already in place. Does your congregation have a plan? A phone tree? A communication strategy? A way to check on vulnerable members? Nicole points listeners toward the United Church of Christ’s Disaster Preparedness Guide for Local Churches: A Workbook, and encourages people to look for similar resources from their own denomination or tradition.
Resource: United Church of Christ Preparedness Resources
https://www.ucc.org/disaster_index/disaster_resources/
Listen to stories of displacement.
Autumn invites listeners, especially those who offer spiritual care, to speak with someone who has experienced uprooting. This might be someone displaced by weather, housing costs, evacuation, or the loss of stable housing. Listen without trying to fix the story or the conditions. The act of witnessing can be the beginning of rebuilding community.
Invite stories in your wider network.
If you are active on social media, consider asking people to share stories of displacement or uprooting. Invite face-to-face conversation when possible. Practice accompaniment: receive the story, honor the person, and resist the urge to rush toward solutions.
Share what you discover.
Autumn and Nicole would love to hear what you are practicing, noticing, or learning.
Email: [email protected]
Voice Message: 207-200-6986
People and Resources Mentioned
Katie Mears, Senior Technical Specialist for U.S. Disaster and Climate Risk at Episcopal Relief & Development
Katie’s articles at Episcopal Relief & Development:
https://www.episcopalrelief.org/?s=katie+mears
Episcopal Relief & Development
Website:
https://www.episcopalrelief.org/
Episcopal Relief & Development U.S. Disaster Program
Resource:
https://www.episcopalrelief.org/our-work/us-disaster-program/
Imagining a More Just World – Disaster Response in an Age of Climate Change by Katie Mears
Article:
https://www.episcopalrelief.org/stories/disaster-response-in-an-age-of-climate-change/
Adaptation Through Shock by Katie Mears and Sarah Labowitz, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Article:
https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/10/adaptation-through-shock
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit
Book:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-built-in-hell-by-rebecca-solnit/
United Church of Christ Preparedness Resources
Includes Disaster Preparedness Guide for Local Churches: A Workbook
https://www.ucc.org/disaster_index/disaster_resources/
Climate Changed Podcast
Podcast site:
https://climatechangedpodcast.org/
The BTS Center
Website:
https://thebtscenter.org/
The BTS Center YouTube Channel
Video episodes and bonus material:
https://www.youtube.com/@TheBTSCenter
Guest Bio
Katie Mears is the Senior Technical Specialist for U.S. Disaster and Climate Risk at Episcopal Relief & Development. They have worked in faith-based disaster response since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, supporting communities through disaster preparation, response, recovery, and adaptation.
Katie’s current work focuses on people-prioritized, climate-adaptive disaster response. They help faith communities and local partners address housing, displacement, climate risk, and the complex choices facing people whose lives and homes are disrupted by disaster.
Connect With Us
We would love to hear what reflections are surfacing for you.
Email: [email protected]
Voice Message: 207-200-6986
Podcast Website: https://climatechangedpodcast.org/
Video: Find full-length video episodes and bonus clips on The BTS Center’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBTSCenter
Learn more about The BTS Center: https://thebtscenter.org/
Blessing
May you feel the wind at your back, the ocean at your feet, as the hands of your ancestors — sometimes gently, sometimes firmly — guide you into the future.
45 min
May 19How do we find our way back to "Source"? A conversation with Autumn Brown and Nicole Diroff on the wisdom of Zen Master Norma Wong
In this companion episode, hosts Autumn Brown and Nicole Diroff sit down to reflect on the deep, ancestral wisdom shared by Zen Master Norma Wong in our previous episode. How do we move from the "terrifying" experience of systemic collapse into a place of collective resilience? Autumn and Nicole dive into the somatic and spiritual shifts required to live and lead in this time-place of collapse.
Notable Quote:
"If we are tapped into source and source reveals this great grand interconnectedness, there starts to surface these things that compel us... my experience says open yourself to it." — Nicole Diroff
Episode Summary: Following Autumn's conversation with Norma Wong, Nicole and Autumn process the heavy yet hopeful themes of "source ways," the breakdown of Western "individualism," and the necessity of accompaniment. Nicole shares a vulnerable story of navigating a moment of crisis, illustrating how our nervous systems respond to collapse and how we can find our way back to resonance through collective "beingness" rather than just "doingness."
Key Themes and Conversations:
Processing the "Slipstream": Nicole and Autumn discuss the somatic experience of living through the "polycrisis" and the importance of recognizing our own nervous system's response to systemic duress.
Breaking the Construct of Individualism: A reflection on how Western "hyper-individualism" creates a sense of isolation during crisis and the invitation to return to a more foundational "source way" of being.
Accompaniment in Action: Nicole shares a powerful personal narrative about witnessing a high-stress incident and how it served as a microcosm for the larger systemic "breakdowns" we are all witnessing.
Source vs. Strategy: Discussing why spiritual leadership requires being "tapped into source" before jumping into strategy, allowing our actions to be guided by a deep sense of interconnectedness.
Next Steps & Practice:
Somatic Check-In: When you feel the "panic" of collapse—whether in a personal crisis or global news—take a moment to notice where that feeling lives in your body. Practice the "Breath of Resonance" discussed in Episode 5.
Identify Your "Source Way": Reflect on the practices that help you feel connected to the whole of life. Is it singing? Storytelling? Silence? Find one way to prioritize that "beingness" this week.
Practice Radical Presence: Look for a moment this week where you can offer presence rather than a solution. How does it change the energy of the interaction when the relationship is the first response?
People and Resources Mentioned:
Norma Wong, Zen Master and teacher.
Who We Are Becoming Matters by Norma Wong (North Atlantic Books).
The BTS Center
Connect With Us: What stirred for you in this conversation? We love to hear your voices and reflections.
Email: [email protected]
Voice Message: 207-200-6986
Video: Watch full-length video episodes and find bonus material on The BTS Center’s YouTube channel.
Website: Visit www.climatechangedpodcast.org for transcripts and discussion guides.
Blessing: May you be fed, may you be watered. May you grow towards the sun. Feel held in love, worthy of love.
Coming Up Next: Join us next week for a conversation with Katie Mears as we explore how we communicate risk and build collective solutions in a changing world.
35 min
May 12What constitutes "human beingness" during ecological crisis? • Zen Master & Teacher Norma Wong + Autumn Brown
In a time of "polycrisis" and systemic collapse, it is easy to feel unmoored by the intensity of the "slipstream". In this episode, Autumn Brown sits down with Zen Master and Native Hawaiian teacher Norma Wong to explore a different way of being. Together, they discuss the move from individual leadership to collective accompaniment, the importance of reconnecting to our "source ways," and how imagining a future is not a theoretical exercise but the necessary work of the present moment.
Grounding Practice
To help us settle into the space of this conversation, we begin with a musical grounding from Pax Ressler, a queer, non-binary artist, composer, and friend of The BTS Center. Their song, "Woven Together," is a sonic invitation to feel into the very interconnectedness—the kakou—that Norma Wong describes.
The Practice: As you listen, allow the music to help you transition from the frantic "doingness" of your day into a state of presence. Let the lyrics remind you that we are part of a larger fabric of life, heart, and mind, woven into the future we are currently creating.
Key Themes and Conversations:
Beyond Individual Leadership: Moving from the Western construct of the singular leader to kakou—an accumulated, experiential way of being in tangible cohesion with all beings.
Accompaniment as a Natural State: Recognizing that our time is brief and shifting our daily behavior toward being a good guest and steward of the universe.
The Slipstream and Systems Collapse: Understanding that in a "polycrisis," systems can only react rather than respond, necessitating a shift toward reconstituting human beingness at the community level.
The "Source Way" vs. The "Cultural Way": Distinguishing between the cultural practices we can relearn and the deeper "source way" of being that ties us to all of indigeneity and to the earth itself.
Imagination as Practical Work: Using storytelling and visioning to immediately implement the systems we will need, such as native plant nurseries for rebuilding after a disaster.
Breathing as Community Practice: A grounding exercise in resonance and nervous system regulation.
Next Steps & Practice:
The 80-10-10 Rule: Inspired by Sherri Mitchell's work, consider how you distribute your energy. Invest 10% in looking at what needs to change, 10% in holding back the tide of harm, and the final 80% in creating a reality that offers compassion, safety, equality, and sustainability for all.
Practice Accompaniment: Identify a person or group in your community who needs presence rather than advice. Whether it is a family facing economic hardship or someone navigating a recent loss, let the relationship be the first response and let that connection guide what you do next.
Ancestral Legacy: Reflect on what you are doing today that serves the "time beyond the collapse." How are you practicing being a good ancestor right now?
People and Resources Mentioned:
Norma Wong, Zen Master, teacher, and author.
Who We Are Becoming Matters by Norma Wong (North Atlantic Books, released Feb 2026).
Pax Ressler, musician and composer of the song "Woven Together" featured in this episode.
Sherri Mitchell, indigenous leader and attorney (referenced in the song and next steps).
Guest Bio: Norma Ryuko Kaweloku Wong Roshi is a Native Hawaiian and Haka Zen teacher. She serves as the Abbot of Enko Inn, an independent branch temple of Daihonzen Chozenji. An 86th-generation Zen Master, she has spent over 40 years applying Zen and indigenous values to transformational change. Her career has spanned community work, the Hawaii state legislature, and policy strategy, including leading negotiations over Native Hawaiian land and water rights . Today, she brings grounded wisdom to global ecological and spiritual crises.
Connect With Us:
We would love to hear what reflections are surfacing for you.
Email: [email protected]
Voice Message: 207-200-6986
Video: Find full-length video episodes and bonus clips on The BTS Center’s YouTube channel.
Blessing: May you be fed, may you be watered. May you grow towards the sun. Feel held in love, worthy of love.
50 min

About Climate Changed

From the publisher's feed

Climate Changed explores spiritual leadership and imagination in a climate-changed world. Join hosts Rev. Nicole Diroff and Autumn Brown (from the hit podcast How to Survive the End of the World)…

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Climate Changed

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