Spiritual Resilience and the Art of Reweaving
Life Hacks from the World's Wisdom Traditions
Greetings, Soul Siblings!
We hope you're hanging in there because, let’s face it, during this election season it's been easy to feel like the world's closing in and we’re all starring in a never-ending episode of Survivor (minus the tropical beach and million-dollar prize).
Given the climate today (politically and ecologically) it’s no surprise that our friend Dr. Suzanne Crawford O’Brien (a professor of religion and culture) has been thinking a lot about something we can all use right now: spiritual resilience… The devastation of Hurricane Helene in the Southeast U.S. this week only further drove the point home. So, when Suzanne sent this essay, we knew it was time to hit pause on the doom-scrolling and dig in.
Suzanne illuminates how different spiritual traditions—Indigenous, Abrahamic, Buddhist, you name it—can teach us to bounce back when everything feels like it’s going sideways. Her insights are as grounding as they are uplifting. She reminds us that getting through it isn’t about toughing it out, but about leaning into community. After all, each one of us is a part of this messy, beautiful, interconnected story.
So, pull up a chair, make a cup of tea (or something stronger—we’re not judging), and join Suzanne on an illuminating journey from anxiety to transcendence.
Peace, love, and resilience,
The Soul Boom Team
Spiritual Resilience and the Art of Reweaving
By Dr. Suzanne Crawford O’Brien
It’s 2 am, I’m looking out over a Puget Sound mired in wildfire smoke, and the walls are closing in.
The pandemic has kept us locked up in our homes for weeks on end, and now this smoke has arrived, bringing with it an acrid burn in the throat, murky-gray skies, a blood-red sun.
Fear makes itself at home in my chest: is this what summer will be like from now on?
Shame elbows her way through the door, accusing finger pointed straight at me: You’re not doing enough to combat climate change!
Then both step aside as Guilt stares me down: Who are you to wallow in this sorrow? Middle-class-white-lady, safe in her own home, husband and child sleeping just down the hall. How dare you be so self-indulgent!
My heart aches for people forced to sleep outside, breathing this toxic air. And my stomach clenches when I remember that the worst of climate change will be borne by those who did the least to cause it: the poor and the vulnerable.
Curled up on the couch, homemade air purifiers whirring away, at a loss for what to do, I let myself cry. After a while, those tears turn into prayer.
I’m a religious studies and Indigenous studies professor, teaching and writing about environmental justice. And while I spend a lot of time (maybe too much time) thinking about different spiritual traditions, I don’t spend a lot of time practicing any one of them. But tonight, I know one thing for sure: I can’t do this alone.
Feel Alone? You’re Not.
It’s been over a year since I spent that smoky night in tearful contemplation. And since that time, I’ve been profoundly comforted to learn that I am not, in fact, alone.
Climate anxiety and eco-grief can trigger feelings of isolation in a big way, particularly when the rest of the world seems to be carrying on with business as usual. So it may be surprising to learn that 72% of Americans worry about climate change’s impact on the planet and future generations. Outside of the US this number is even higher.
But here’s the thing: that concern rarely translates into action.
While there are a lot of reasons for our inaction, I’d argue this paralysis lies in sheer emotional overwhelm: an existential threat to our very existence is simply too much for most of us to wrap our heads or hearts around. So we push it aside, sometimes even when the waters are rising around our feet.
A wealth of resources explore the psychology of climate anxiety and eco-grief, responding to a real and growing need. And indeed, Britt Wray, expert on climate change and mental health, argues that finding the strength to face climate change is in fact essential climate work. It is, she says, a form of “internal activism.”
And, as a religious studies and Native American studies professor, I’d argue that we need to go even further. Because beyond personal, emotional resilience, we’re going to need collective, spiritual resilience to tackle the problems that lie ahead. And if we’re willing to listen, there is so much to be learned from the world’s wisdom traditions.
Because here’s the painful truth: this is not the first time the world has ended.
When disease and other forms of colonial genocide devastated millennia-old Indigenous communities, the world came to an end.
When West African communities were enslaved, their families torn apart, and children sold into brutal bondage, the world came to an end.
As Mary Anaϊse Heglar reminds us, “History is littered with targeted—but no less deadly—existential threats for specific populations. For 400 years and counting, the United States itself has been an existential threat for Black people.”
So it makes sense to ask: how have people found spiritual resilience in the past?
To survive the horrors of enslavement, Black communities drew on a rich spiritual heritage that combined Indigenous African traditions of ancestral veneration, close engagement with a sentient natural world, and a Christian faith in liberation and the inherent worth of every child of God.
Albert Raboteau’s seminal book Slave Religion describes the Hush Arbor, where enslaved communities gathered in secret to tell a different story from the one they heard in white churches. This was the place of the ring shout–a circle dance where songs and visions honored the presence of ancestors, and ensured them that despite present suffering, a different future awaited.
Or we could consider the 1880s, when the Ghost Dance swept across Indigenous communities in the American west. Native people had been devastated by genocidal violence and disease, confined to reservations, and forced to watch the decimation of the plant and animal people upon whom they had depended for millennia. Amidst grief and starvation, the Ghost Dance united disparate tribes and cultures in a common ceremony. They formed a circle and danced, falling into visions, where they spoke with ancestors, Jesus, the Creator, and received songs, ceremonies, spiritual power, and the promise of a future, renewed.
I am not suggesting that we need to hold a circle dance, or that doing so would solve our problems. Nor am I suggesting that those of us in more privileged positions should co-opt the spiritual traditions of the oppressed. (Please, just don’t.)
I am suggesting that we would all benefit from quieting down and listening to what wisdom traditions have to say. Because they call us to consider our complicity in oppressive systems. Because they remind us of the terrible reality of a world ending. And because they teach us that resilience in the face of horror lies in coming together–in new and creative ways–and in remembering that we are not alone: that each of us is a thread in a larger tapestry, interwoven with Creator, Earth, ancestors, and generations not yet born.
Spiritual Resilience And Radical Relationality
What do I mean by “spiritual resilience”? In my writing and in my classes I define spiritual resilience as the experience of being connected to and sustained by relationships that take us beyond the individual, beyond the material, and beyond the human.
The practice of spiritual resilience is profoundly relational, shifting our orientation beyond the fixed, finite, physical, human-centered self. It is a reweaving of those relationships that define, sustain, and empower us within the broader web of life.
While modern western culture tends to idealize the independent individual, most wisdom traditions will tell you that real resilience is based on radical relationality. Indeed, most traditional and Indigenous cultures are far more likely to see individualism as pathology! Real resilience lies in getting beyond the notion of the isolated individual, and reclaiming the truth of our profound interdependence with our human and our more-than-human kin. And that awareness in turn inspires compassionate, sustaining care.
Radical relationality offers a fundamental challenge to the (pretty toxic) competitive individualism upon which most of our modern western society is based.
Now, here’s where things get interesting, because “relatedness” is a big idea that's understood in different ways. (And I’d argue that assuming sacred traditions are all the same does them a disservice, while also causing us to miss out on deeper, more nuanced understandings of the world and our place in it.)
For instance, Indigenous teachers describe that relatedness as kinship. Here, creation is a family tree composed of fellow persons, relatives, within which no one species is more important than another. (In fact, human beings are often described as little siblings, dependent for their survival on the generosity of their older relations.) Living in a world of relatives requires that one be guided by ethics of respect, reciprocity, and responsibility when dealing both with human and more-than-human beings.
Other traditions, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Hinduism emphasize the interconnected and continually co-arising nature of the cosmos. Here, one’s task is to live mindfully and find balance and harmony within that whole. This recognition of interbeing in turn inspires both responsibility and compassionate care for others.
Monotheistic traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Bahá'í Faith ground their understanding of relationality in the existence of a common Creator. Because all of creation is created and sustained by the same God, all living things are animated by the same Spirit. In these traditions, human beings play a special role, called to steward creation and commanded to treat their human (and other-than-human) neighbors with loving kindness.
Each tradition offers a different pathway toward understanding and reweaving these relationships, but they all agree that those relationships are essential to who we are and to how we should live, particularly when facing difficulty.
If spiritual resilience is the experience of being connected to and sustained by relationships that take us beyond the individual, beyond the material, and beyond the human, reclaiming radical relationality is one way to get there—by remembering those relationships that sustain and empower us.
It is about reweaving the threads that beautifully bind us within a web of creation. The notion of reciprocity is key here. Because this is a web of relational responsibility, but also one in which we are supported, nurtured, and loved by that world and the Spirit (or spirits) that animate it.
Even as we mourn and rage against wildfires, hurricanes, drought, or rising seas, these wisdom traditions teach us that we are not alone. Sustained by our ancestors, our more-than-human relatives, and our Creator, we just might find the vision we need to build a more just and sustainable world.
Dr. Suzanne Crawford O'Brien is professor of religion and culture at Pacific Lutheran University. She's written Religion and Culture in Native America, Coming Full Circle: Spirituality and Wellness Among Native Communities in the Pacific Northwest, and Native American Religious Traditions and edited Religion and Healing in Native America: Pathways for Renewal. Suzanne is passionate about tackling climate anxiety and helping others build spiritual resilience.
Want to Learn More?
Suzanne is teaching a course on Climate Anxiety and Spiritual Resilience at Pacific Lutheran University this fall, and she has opened the class to her Substack readers. For twelve weeks, subscribers will join the conversation with free weekly course highlights, reading recommendations, and opportunities for discussion. Lessons in Climate Resilience: Week One was just released, and you can check it out here!
P.S., If you find yourself yearning for ways to awaken your brain but would like to deploy some easy-to-use and scientifically backed up approaches, you may want to try out the Waking Up app from the renowned neuroscientist Sam Harris. As one of our sponsors, you might have heard Rainn talking about it on the Soul Boom Podcast. This app offers a nuts-and-bolts approach to cultivating the skills of mindfulness and peacefulness. Friends of Soul Boom using this link get their first month free and save $30 on the in-app price.
Watch this week’s episode of Soul Boom: