Dear friends,

Warm greetings to you. I hope this finds you all rooted in community and the rich loam of soul. We need the steadying qualities that come from these two vital aspects of our lives in this challenging time. So much is unsettled and in free fall. We are being taken through a rough initiation that will ask much of us. As is true of all initiations, both traditional and rough, we are required to cultivate a much more expansive sense of identity, one that senses our wild entanglement with all things, from star clusters to mycelia. We must remember our co-extensive identity and lean into this truth to help fortify us for the coming times when the winds of change will be fierce. We can find each other in the dark and craft spaces of healing and repair. We are not without medicine for the seasons ahead.

We have entered a liminal terrain where everything is changing. We don’t know what will happen. We do know there’s medicine available to respond to the challenges we will be facing. We are being ripened to become a place of shining darkness, a point of combustion, of incandescence. The world will need our affection and warmth, our outrage and kindness. Let us generate living culture once again. Let us dream of a wild earth, teeming with life and richness. We are not bereft. We are not alone. We are part of this dreaming earth. There are many forms of sweet, soul medicine available to us like friendship, imagination, beauty, ritual, and many others. There will be much to metabolize over the coming years and decades. Knowing that we have access to multiple forms and styles of medicine is reassuring. I look forward to continuing our conversation. In the meantime, I wish you well.

Green blessings,

Francis

Russian River Watershed

Upcoming Events

Join us for a Book Launch event hosted by the Centre for Climate Psychology

Join us for an intimate conversation with Francis Weller, best selling author of “the Wild Edge of Sorrow’, as we explore the themes of his latest book In the Absence of the Ordinary - Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty.

Francis Weller describes our era as a “rough initiation” — a threshold moment asking us to find new forms of belonging. In this intimate online gathering, we will discuss his new book and explore how to follow a soulful path and uncover sources of resilience in the face of what feels overwhelming.

Weller has a rare gift for naming the thresholds we live in but rarely speak of. Together, we will explore how tending to sorrow, beauty, and ritual can help us navigate disorientation, and uncover sources of resilience.

With his signature poetic depth and fierce tenderness, Francis will invite us to slow down, to feel into the grief and beauty of this time, and to listen for what might be emerging through the cracks when so much of the familiar is falling away.

For more information and to register, click here.

Interviews, Podcasts and More...

Tending the Soul in Uncertain Times

A conversation with Francis Weller and Anderson Cooper

On September 27th, author and soul activist Francis Weller, and host of the All There Is podcast and CNN anchor Anderson Cooper met for an afternoon of conversation on the beautiful and sacred grounds of Commonweal in Bolinas, California. What transpired was an intimate and rich dialogue rooted in soul and community.

The recording of the event includes a conversation between Francis and Anderson, a montage of images representing the ritual that took place that day, and closing thoughts. The conversation explores the central work of grief, loss, and community in tenuous times.

To view the recording from this gathering, click here.

Book News

New publication now available

From North Atlantic Books: We are at a threshold. As we face uncertain futures, the familiar is falling away. This book invites us to embody new ways of being and connecting so we can navigate troubled times together

From the bestselling author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow, a beautifully packaged collection of 17 essays on meeting this moment with clarity, care, and skill

In his singular and inimitable voice, psychotherapist and author, Francis Weller offers 17 soulful essays to help us move together through the anxieties, difficulties, and sacred transitions of 21st-century life.

In the Absence of the Ordinary frames our current era as a rough initiation—an upending experience of profound trauma and transformation that demands we reorient our ways of thinking, being, and relating. Through essays like “Some People Wake Up…,” “The Gift of Restraint,” and “Gratitude for All That Is,” Weller offers clarity and wisdom on how to face the sobering stakes of our time—while offering the nourishment and support we need to embody the new roles this initiation requires.

Weller guides us in naming our collective traumas and peeling back the false armor of modernity. Here, we’re called to the depths—to understand the power of descent, cultivate the necessary skills of initiation, and distinguish between the self and the soul. This book invites us back into collective alignment with the wider world of belonging: It gives shape to the emptiness we carry, teaches us to welcome our experiences with reverence, and calls upon us to face the myriad ways that modern life severs us from our inherent interdependence with

the living earth.

In each essay, Weller fortifies us to become immense—to meet these unpredictable times with presence and faith, to restore our souls’ place in the soul of the world, and to hold steady, amid and for it all.

“ With poetic and penetrating insight, Francis Weller invites us on a journey

of the soul, one that reveals —in the dark passages of loss and grief—

our collective immensity, belonging and luminosity.”

—Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance and Radical Compassion

New workbook for The Wild Edge of Sorrow coming in February!

Francis Weller | WisdomBridge | wisdombridge@sonic.net | www.francisweller.net