Podcast Summary: How to Survive the End of the World

Episode: The Long Dark with Francis Weller
Date: November 14, 2025
Hosts: Autumn Brown (B) & adrienne maree brown (C)
Guest: Francis Weller (A)

Main Theme & Purpose

In this episode, hosts Autumn and adrienne maree brown welcome renowned grief teacher and elder Francis Weller to explore the “long dark” – a metaphor for our current era of collective uncertainty, ecological grief, and existential loss. The trio delves deeply into the necessity of grief, ritual, and soul work as crucial tools for survival, healing, maturation, and transformation during times of profound change. The conversation weaves together personal stories, cultural observations, and invitations to community-rooted practices, speaking directly to the urgency of reanimating lost arts of communal grieving and ritual.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: The Need for Descent & Grief Work

• Kartsoluni: Francis introduces the Inuit term kartsoluni—"sitting quietly together in the darkness, waiting expectantly for something creative to burst forth"—as a frame for where we are collectively. (A) [00:04, 28:24]

• “We don't know. And we can't use the same models of...control and forcing things to happen. We're really being asked to approach it very, very differently.” – Francis [00:08, 28:30]

• Both hosts and guest check in with honest shares:

  • Autumn is working on her book by the ocean, feeling both solitude and support from family. [05:07]
  • Adrienne is mourning recent high-profile and personal losses, asking “Am I clear enough on what I’m leaving behind me?” [07:32–10:47]
  • Francis is “stretched tender” by recent deaths in his large family and in the collective. [04:06]

2. From Individual to Communal Healing

• Francis traces his conscription into grief work to his family's age gaps and early confrontations with loss (his father’s stroke at 16). [13:47]
• Major insight: Modern psychology missed the communal and ritual dimensions of healing—influenced by his work with Indigenous teacher Malidoma Somé. [16:42, 19:08]
• “The psyche anticipates community—repair, recalibration, trauma, giving thanks—it was never private.” – Francis [19:54]
• Story of a young woman burned by her mother whose village restored her dignity—her wound remained “skin deep, it did not penetrate to her soul.” In contrast, Western traumas fester in isolation. [21:11–22:26]

3. Soul, Psyche, and White Emptiness

• Francis distinguishes soul (the dimension of depth, descent, and feeling) from spirit (uplift, ascension, clarity). [23:10]
• Western culture (especially white, settler masculinity) is ascension/heroism-centric and thus “avoids what needs to be addressed—emptiness, loss, and grief.” [25:15, 26:47]
• “Almost every thread we’re suffering from emerges out of our avoidance of acknowledging this emptiness...lineage, ritual, myth—all of that got silenced.” – Francis [24:15]
• Describes his recent talk: “At the Heart of All Our Sorrows: An Excursion into Emptiness” – the hardest writing he’s ever done. [25:59]

4. Soul Activism and the Subversiveness of Grief

• Soul Activism: Offers an alternative to heroism-focused political activism—prioritizing ritual, imagination, creativity, poetics, beauty, elderhood, and community. [28:24]
• Grief work is subversive in a culture seeking to “kill everything while denying responsibility for the death of it all.” [28:24]
• Kartsoluni requires “restraint, reverence, and patience”—values at odds with individualism and capitalism. [31:19]

5. The Creative Balance: Shine or Be Still?

• Both hosts wrestle with their roles as public teachers: When is it time to shine, and when to “sit quietly together in the darkness”? [32:41]
• Francis: “The soul has a simultaneous need for intimacy and freedom...our job is to listen: Is this a time for in-breath or exhale?” [33:45]
• “Listen to that rhythm...What is soul asking from you right now?” [34:50]

6. The Core Elements of Ritual

• Rituals arise from the earth (“the dreaming earth”) and are not manufactured. Deep listening is key, and rituals must be local and responsive to place. [37:21–38:28]
• Story: 80-man grief ritual in Minnesota (“Renewing the World”) involved a funeral pyre for personal and collective losses, followed by gratitude rituals, culminating in renewal and “watering the seeds of the New World.” [40:08–44:38]

7. Art, Beauty & Ritual

• Ritual is the original art form, blending dance, singing, poetry, altar-building—beauty evokes the open heart. [46:37]
• “Beauty is the means by which the gods touch the senses, reach the heart, and attract us into life.” – Francis [47:28]

8. Personal Story: Grief, Ritual, and Guidance by the Earth

• Autumn shares the story of ritualizing a miscarriage—wailing by a fire, sifting the ashes for her baby's bones, guided wholly by the earth and grief itself. [48:32–53:30]
• “In my grief, I was actually available for something that was right there...” – Autumn [53:18]
• Purpose of ritual: “to derange us,” shake out the “arrangement” that’s not working, and help us remember who we are. [54:11]

9. Maturation, Eldership & the Apprenticeship with Sorrow

• The repeated discipline of ritual and listening to the earth is a sign of spiritual adulthood, not adolescence. [56:36]
• Story: the importance of holding space for others’ grief (John at a student’s memorial—knows his “post” is to wait and hold space for the grieving teens). [56:49–58:53]
• “What I call the apprenticeship with sorrow—the long fidelity ripens us, deepens us.” [60:29]

10. The Five Gates of Grief [62:27–71:43]

Francis shares his framework for the “gates of grief”:

1. Everything We Love, We Will Lose

   • “Everything we love will disappear on us, either through our disappearance or through theirs...Grief is part of my loving them.” [62:27]

2. The Parts of Ourselves That Have Not Known Love

   • Social systems train us to cleave off aspects of ourselves; wholeness is lost and contempt blocks grief.
   • “Most of therapy is a second gate ritual: How do I make amends to the parts of me I’ve banished?” [64:57]

3. The Sorrows of the World

   • Ecological grief, extinction, disappearance of songbirds, climate despair.
   • “Earth grief...will continue to bite us and haunt us...grief will be the keynote for the foreseeable future...the long dark…two generations.” [65:46]

4. What We Expected and Did Not Receive

   • The ache of the missing village, rituals, ancestral connection.
   • “That’s a hole we have to weep in for generations.” [69:43]

5. Ancestral Grief

   • “Almost all grief is ancestral grief...I’m the current curator of this shame...we are the inheritors.”
   • Many in the circle add a sixth gate: “the harms we have caused.” [70:46]

• Adrienne names: “I do this grief work so I can clear my side of every channel...to experience love in this lifetime, even if I won’t necessarily experience peace or justice or the other things I long for.” [73:10]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Soul work can't begin until the nigredo happens. We're really in a time of soulmaking.” – Francis [28:24]
• “Kartsoluni: sitting quietly together in the darkness, waiting expectantly for something creative to burst forth.” – Francis [00:04, 28:24]
• “You are beautiful, you are loved, you are ours. You belong here, you know?...her wound was skin deep. It did not penetrate to her soul.” – Francis [21:11]
• “Beauty is the means by which the gods touch the senses, reach the heart, and attract us into life.” – James Hillman (quoted by Francis) [47:28]
• “Ritual helps us to get deranged...that’s the purpose of ritual.” – Francis [54:11]
• “The long apprenticeship with sorrow leads to elderhood. We're no longer having a fight with life. We accept life on life's terms.” – Francis [60:29]
• “Grief will be the keynote for the foreseeable future...the long dark—at least two generations.” – Francis [66:34]

Timestamped Highlights

• 00:04 – Francis introduces kartsoluni
• 04:06 – Francis shares personal grief; all hosts check in with how they are
• 16:42 – Francis discusses lack of grief in Western psychology
• 19:54 – The necessity of communal/ritual healing
• 25:15 – White emptiness, rupture, and its consequences
• 28:24 – On soul activism, ritual, and subversive grief work
• 33:45 – The oscillation between intimacy and solitude; listening to the soul
• 37:21 – How ritual arises from the earth; example of crafting ritual to fit place
• 40:08 – Story of the “Renewing the World” men’s grief ritual
• 46:37 – Why beauty and art are intrinsic to ritual and grief
• 48:32 – Autumn’s story of ritual/grief with a lost child
• 54:11 – “To get deranged” – ritual as dissolution and remembering
• 56:49 – Eldership and holding space for others’ sorrow
• 62:27–71:43 – The Five Gates of Grief explained
• 73:10 (approx) – Adrienne on grief work, love, and clearing the channel

Tone & Language

This episode is heartfelt, poetic, intimate, and spacious. The hosts and guest speak directly from personal and cultural wounds in a spirit of honesty, encouragement, and reverence—for their ancestors, for ritual, and for each other. The language is rich and often metaphorical, giving the listener permission to slow down, grieve, and seek connection to both earth and community.

Takeaways for Listeners

• Grief is not a sign of weakness but is essential to wholeness and cultural renewal.
• Rituals arise from the earth and should be rooted in local landscape, community, and need—not imposed as formula.
• The journey through grief, supported by ritual, awakens us to beauty, gratitude, and eldership.
• Soul activism is urgently needed during this long dark; it’s about deep listening, beauty-making, and mutual witnessing.
• Community is the natural milieu for repair and healing—it is not meant to be endured alone.

Further Resources

• Francis Weller’s books: The Wild Edge of Sorrow, The Threshold Between Loss and Revelation, In the Absence of the Ordinary
• More on rituals and workshops at Wisdom Bridge

Closing Words

“Grieve what you need to grieve. Stay connected.” – adrienne maree brown [77:25]

(Note: Timestamps are approximate and highlight major content sections as per full transcript.)