This is where I am collecting the “seeds” of my work on: Collapsing with Care: A Field Guide to Meaning-Making as the World Unravels.
You’ll find links here that let you follow my work as it unfolds.
Briefly: it’s time to map out the long arc of my work. In August 2023, I introduced my current theme of “Writing into the Whirlwind.” I made clear my conviction that we are now irrevocably headed toward Collapse—the entangled unravelling of the ecological, social, and political foundations of our shared life. Although we cannot avert Collapse, we can still choose how we meet it. Being active, thoughtful, and in partnership with others will make all the difference in whether Collapse tests our humanity or altogether undoes it. I’m committed to offering something of a “Field Guide to Meaning-Making as the World Unravels.”
Collapsing with Care — the introductory blog post from February 15, 2024. This piece lays out my initial rationale and vision for the project.
ABOUT: Conversations at the Edge of Hope: On Climate, Collapse, and Care — September 24, 2024. This piece introduces the series of monthly conversations I’m holding at Merging Waters Unitarian Universalist Congregation in New Brighton, MN (in the second Tuesday of each month) as a way for me to hone my thinking in conversation with others.
An Incomplete Introduction — October 10, 2024. This is a first draft of an opening chapter to Collapsing with Care. In it I offer an autobiographical introduction to me, my education, and my prior work around climate and faith, as well as describing my goals in this project. (This is a “working document”; it needs some further editing and polishing, but it’s here so you can see my work “in real time.”)
A Provisional Table of Contents — November 12, 2024. This pdf shows a provisional table of contents. It will undoubtedly evolve as I write, but it lets you glimpse the arc I imagine.
Chapter One — Prelude: On Collapse, Hope, and Joy — December 3, 2024. This is a draft of chapter one, partway: I only tackle “Collapse” here; I’ll take up Hope & Joy next month.
Chapter Two — The “Hard” Drivers of Collapse (PDF) — May 13, 2025. A still preliminary introduction to the bio-physical forces forces (much larger than simply a warming climate) that are now conspiring to make Collapse inevitable. Our work “at the edge of hope” goes far beyond this, but it begins from this place.
Chapters Three/Four — The “Soft” Drivers
LOOKING AHEAD …
I’m hesitant to offer too much of my “earlier work” here, as I will be updating and revising some of that work as well as producing new writing for this project. But if you want a glimpse of where this is all headed, my 23-page multi-essay Dark Hope Set, dating from 2021 is probably the best “semi-complete” statement of my views. Except that I’m no longer using Christian imagery and this is a much shorter set of essays and (of course) my thinking has continued to evolved in nuance since then. But there is much in that set of essays that I’ll be updating and pulling forward into this project.
The other thing I’ll put here is a Selected Bibliography of my Climate-Collapse writings. I review these briefly in the “Incomplete Introduction” linked above. The first of these essays go back almost thirty years; only the essays from 2016 forward begin to contemplate our current predicament, and only those from 2020 forward begin to wrestle openly and honestly with Collapse.
David Weiss is a theologian, writer, poet and hymnist, “writing into the whirlwind” of contemporary challenges, joys, and sorrows around climate crisis, sexuality, justice, peace, and family. Reach him at drw59mn@gmail.com. Read more at www.davidrweiss.com where he blogs under the theme, “Full Frontal Faith: Erring on the Edge of Honest.” Support him in Writing into the Whirlwind at www.patreon.com/fullfrontalfaith.