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: podcast@thebtscenter.org

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: podcast@thebtscenter.org

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: podcast@thebtscenter.org