{"id":12239,"date":"2026-01-13T20:23:52","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T00:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/trauma-therapist-frances-weller-on-the-relationship-between-uncertainty-and-renewal-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T20:23:52","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T00:23:52","slug":"trauma-therapist-frances-weller-on-the-relationship-between-uncertainty-and-renewal-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/trauma-therapist-frances-weller-on-the-relationship-between-uncertainty-and-renewal-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Trauma Therapist Frances Weller on the Relationship Between Uncertainty and Renewal \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
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\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

There are times in life when the continent of certainty parts underfoot and, as the ash cloud of the old world rains darkness upon us, we are asked to swim in the rivers of lava that will make the new. \u201cAlmost it would appear that it is useless in such confusion to ask,\u201d wrote Virginia Woolf of such times<\/a>, \u201cthose questions as to what, and why, and wherefore.\u201d Unlike her staunchly secularized contemporaries, who shuddered to speak of the soul for fear of being seen as anti-intellectual, Woolf devoted her life to communicating from and with \u201call these wayward parts that constitute the human soul,\u201d which she knew lives on a level deeper than the self to make us who we are<\/a>. It is what is left to us and of us in those volcanic times of darkness and uncertainty. It is what rebuilds the world, within and without, and what always has. It is<\/em> the world. We still use Kepler\u2019s laws of planetary motion to land rovers on Mars, but we are yet to catch up to his model of the world as an ensouled body<\/a> \u2014 a notion dating back to Plato, whose political precepts we still use and whose concept of anima mundi<\/em>, or \u201cworld soul,\u201d we are yet to heed. <\/p>\n

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One of Hildegard of Bingen\u2019s enchanted ecologies<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Epochs after Plato and Kepler and Woolf, trauma therapist Francis Weller offers a field guide to fortifying the soul in his essay collection In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>). Two centuries after Alexander von Humboldt invented modern nature<\/a> with his recognition that \u201cin this great chain of causes and effects, no single fact can be considered in isolation,\u201d Weller insists that a correct view of human nature must be rooted in a recognition of \u201cour ongoing relationship with the anima mundi<\/em>,\u201d of \u201chow fully our lives are entangled with one another, with the stand of oaks, the night herons, the marginalized, the brokenhearted.\u201d <\/p>\n

Observing that \u201csoul navigates the twining trail between sovereignty and intimacy,\u201d he writes:<\/p>\n

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We have clearly entered the Long Dark\u2026 It is the realm of soul \u2014 of whispers and dreams, mystery and imagination, death and ancestors. It is an essential territory, both inevitable and required, offering a form of soul gestation that may gradually give shape to our deeper lives, personally and communally. Certain things can happen only in this grotto of darkness. Think of the wild network of roots and microbes, mycelia, and minerals, making possible all that we see in the day world, or the extensive networks within our own bodies, bringing blood, nutrients, oxygen, and thought to our corporeal lives. All of it happening in the darkness. We must become fluent in the manners and ways of soul.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

We are tumbling through a rough initiation. Radical alterations are occurring in our inner and outer landscapes. It is simultaneously deeply personal and wildly collective, binding us to one another.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
Art from An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days<\/a><\/em>. (Available as a print<\/a> and stationery cards<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A century after Bertrand Russell called for \u201ca largeness of contemplation\u201d in his wonderful calibration of perspective<\/a> amid the darkness of the world\u2019s first global war, Weller writes:<\/p>\n

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It is a time to become immense. <\/p>\n

To become immense means to recall how embedded we are in an animate world \u2014 a world that dreams and enchants, a world that excites our imaginations and conjures our affections through its stunning beauty. Everything we need is here. We only need to remember the wider embrace of our belonging to woodlands and prairies, marshlands, and neighborhoods, to the old stories and the tender gestures of a friend. To become immense also includes the radical act of welcoming all of who we are into the story. Nothing excluded. We become large through accepting all aspects of our being \u2014 weakness and need, loneliness and sorrow, shame and fear \u2014 everything seen as essential to our wholeness, our immensity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This immensity, Weller insists, is singularly called forth by precisely those periods of darkness and uncertainty we feel too small to fathom, to fight, to break through \u2014 the times when the order of the world as we know it has turned to chaos, out of which a new world can\u2019t but be born. He writes:<\/p>\n

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When the ordinary fades, when the familiar rhythms and patterns of shared living erode, something is activated within the soul. Hidden invitations and initiations arise in a time of uncertainty. The soul recognizes the markers of descent \u2014 darkness, sorrow, anxiety \u2014 as requiring radical change. The conditions of trouble and uncertainty activate some profound movement toward alterations in the psychic landscape. These are the precise times when the possibility for shifts in the collective field occurs.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Couple In the Absence of the Ordinary<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, in the remainder of which Weller goes on to offer \u201cways to foster an intimacy with the world of soul and the soul of the world.\u201d with this lighthouse for dark times<\/a>, then revisit Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Ch\u00f6dr\u00f6n on transformation through difficult times<\/a> and Swiss poet, philosopher, and linguist Jean Gebser\u2019s vision for the evolution of our civilizational consciousness<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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