Norma Wong in Conversation with Autumn Brown

In this special interim episode of Quakers Today, host Peterson Toscano explores what happens when our spiritual leadings move us from merely surviving the present moment to practicing the world that comes next.

Before launching Season Seven, Quakers Today is taking two months to dwell in the space between. In this episode, we step slightly outside our usual circle to share an excerpt from Climate Changed, a podcast produced by The BTS Center in Portland, Maine, which explores spiritual leadership in a climate-changed world.

In this excerpt, guest co-host Autumn Brown (co-host of How to Survive the End of the World) sits down with Norma Wong—Zen Master, Native Hawaiian teacher, and community organizer. Together, they examine the limits of hyper-individualism, the discipline of collective accompaniment, the Hawaiian concept of kākou (the collective “us”), and the practical, daily labor of building an alternative world now rather than waiting for systems to collapse.

Featured Segments & Themes

• Moving from Individualism to Kākou: Norma Wong reflects on the universe as an interconnected organism and introduces the Hawaiian concept of kākou—an experiential, communal endeavor of accompaniment that steps far beyond individual leadership.
• Practicing Beyond Collapse: Shifting our efforts from theoretical critiques of capitalism to the tangible, practical work of the commons—saving seeds, creating localized trade, and building community capacity before the floodwaters rise.

Echoes from Quakers Today: Host Peterson Toscano connects Norma’s and Autumn’s insights to three past Quakers Today conversations:

• Jiwasa: The Communal We with Aymara Quaker linguist Rubén Hilari Quispe.
• Prefigurative Practice with Germantown Friends School teacher Sam Thacker and student Zoe Levenstein.
• Quakers and Capitalism, exploring how Friends live with spiritual integrity inside extractive systems.

Quotes from the Episode

“There’s nothing about the universe that’s singular. It is totally in relationship with all beings; it is a complex organism that finds its path even in the chaos that it is right now.”— Norma Wong

“What can I do in my life to be a good ancestor? What can I do in my life that would be beneficial to the time beyond the collapse?”— Norma Wong

“Less time discussing the theory of capitalism. More time building the actuality of what all of that would look like and have to be and be at scale… That work is not separated from today’s work. The imagining work is not separated. It’s the story that you tell, that you immediately begin implementing into.”— Norma Wong

Featured Guest-Host & Author: Autumn Brown

Autumn Brown is a queer Black mother, organizer, facilitator, and the co-host of the podcast How to Survive the End of the World with her sister, adrienne maree brown.

Autumn is also the author of the forthcoming book Temper: In Temper, Brown illustrates that freedom is not a distant political destination, but a resilient practice in the present. Drawing on the ancestral wisdom of Harriet Tubman, the lineage of Black Feminism, and martial arts, she guides readers to:

• Shift from a trauma-induced fugue state into a fugitive state of alertness and agency.
• Move away from trying to control your surroundings and begin conditioning for the unknown.
• Connect deep sources of pain with ancestral insight.
• Experience how falling apart together fosters life-saving connection.

Announcing What’s Ahead

• December Interim Episode: Join us next month for our second pre-season reflection featuring children’s librarian, eco-activist, and poet Emma Must, discussing non-violent direct action, the Twyford Down motorway resistance, and ecological defense.
• Season Seven Premiere: Quakers Today returns with the official Season Seven premiere in January 2027!

Connect & Share Your Voice

How are you and your community moving from the individual “I” to the communal “We”? What prefigurative practices are helping you condition for the unknown?

• Voicemail (US): Call or text 317-QUAKERS (317-782-5377)
• Email: [email protected]
• Web: QuakersToday.org and FriendsJournal.org/podcast

Production & Sponsorship Credits

• Produced and Hosted by: Peterson Toscano
• Season Sponsorship: Season Six of Quakers Today has been generously sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and Friends Fiduciary.
• Publisher: Quakers Today is a project of Friends Publishing Corporation.
• Music: Epidemic Sound

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Transcript

Peterson Toscano: In this special interim episode of Quakers Today, we ask: What happens when our spiritual leadings move us from merely surviving the present moment to actually practicing the world that comes next?

I’m Peterson Toscano.

Before we launch Season Seven, we’re taking two months to dwell in the space between. I will bring you conversations that speak directly to the spiritual conditions of our time.

Quakers Today is a project of Friends Publishing Corporation. Season Six of Quakers Today podcast has been sponsored by Friends Fiduciary and the American Friends Service Committee.

Today, we step slightly outside our usual circle. I’m sharing with you an excerpt from Climate Changed—a podcast produced by The BTS Center in Portland, Maine. The organization and its podcast explore spiritual leadership in a climate-changed world.

In this conversation, you will hear Autumn Brown sit down with Norma Wong. Now, many of you may know Autumn from her podcast, How to Survive the End of the World, which she hosts with her sister, adrienne maree brown.

Norma Wong is a Zen Master, a Native Hawaiian teacher, and a lifelong community organizer. Norma doesn’t speak from a Quaker tradition, but Friends will definitely recognize an unmistakable shared resonance in her practice. You will hear her inward discipline of discernment and a commitment to collective accompaniment over rugged individualism.

Listening to Autumn and Norma brought back memories of three distinct conversations we’ve shared over the years right here on Quakers Today:

First, it was our exploration of jiwasa, the communal “we.” We spoke with Aymara Quaker linguist Rubén Hilari Quispe. Rubén challenged us to move away from the isolated “I” and step into a sacred relational “we,” one that includes each other, our neighbors, the living earth, and even inanimate objects.

The second was a conversation on prefigurative practice. This was with Germantown Friends School teacher Sam Thacker and one of his students, Zoe Levenstein. Sam reminded us that we don’t have to wait for broken institutions to transform; we can start living the alternative right now, modeling the love and justice we want to see inside our classrooms, meetinghouses, and communities.

And the third conversation? Well, it was our season-long inquiry into Quakers and money. I’m thinking particularly of the episode about capitalism. Diana Yáñez and I wrestled with the hard daily work of maintaining spiritual integrity inside extractive systems.

As you listen to Norma and Autumn talk about navigating polycrisis without losing our spiritual center, hear how their insights speak to those very same threads.

Here is Autumn Brown in conversation with Norma Wong.

Part 2: Introduction to the Clip (Climate Changed)

Narrator: Norma Wong, also known as Norma Ryuko Kawelokū Wong Roshi, is a Native Hawaiian and Hakka Zen teacher. She is a lifelong resident of Hawaiʻi and the Abbot of Anko-in, an independent branch temple of Daihonzan Chozen-ji. Norma is also an 86th-generation Zen Master who has spent over 40 years applying Zen and Indigenous values to transformational change.

Before we begin, a few reflections: As you listen, you’ll hear Norma describe what it means to live with collapse as a teacher. She speaks about grieving as a practice of community, about accompaniment as our natural state, and about how Indigenous and Zen traditions offer ways of seeing that re-weave what has been torn.

Part 3: Excerpt: Autumn Brown & Norma Wong

Norma Wong: There’s nothing about the universe that’s singular. It is totally in relationship with all beings; it is a complex organism that finds its path even in the chaos that it is right now. It is attempting to move towards the balance of a new norm. The universe is trying to do that.

Autumn Brown: Hmm.

Norma Wong: It’s gotten to a state where it is trying to find its way, as it has through many, many millennia in which humans were not a part of it.

Autumn Brown: Mmm.

Norma Wong: So it’s trying to do that. And when it’s doing that, it’s doing it in relationship with all the beings, the humans being among the least of it. Right? So the great oceans, the land masses, the billions of non-human beings that are breathing its air and exhaling into its universe, all of the trees, pollen, plankton in the ocean—and all of this is in relationship to each other.

And then we as humans think, “Okay, what’s called upon us is to act in our individual leadership.”

Autumn Brown: (Laughs) When you put it like that, Norma!

Norma Wong: I think that’s a limited aspiration. (Chuckles) Okay? I think we can believe and cultivate and grow and work into a much larger aspiration where we are in companionship with all the beings.

Autumn Brown: Hmm.

Norma Wong: In the native language, we have a word called kākou—that’s K-A-K-O-U, there’s a macron over the two syllables, so it’s kākou. This word kākou means “us,” and it’s us more than two. Okay? And so that notion of spiritual leadership being a kākou thing, an accumulated endeavor. Not a co-leadership, you know, where we’re trying to negotiate between two or more leaders how we will exercise our leadership, but an accumulated, experiential way in which we are in tangible cohesion—moving with.

Autumn Brown: Hmm.

Norma Wong: And the “with” and “for” are the same. It’s not a binary. A long, long kind of un-knotting. I’m just giving you a window of what it is that I’m hearing and feeling internally whenever anyone says the word leadership.

Autumn Brown: I appreciate that. I’m reflecting on the way that when we imagine spiritual leaders in action—even when we’re talking about spiritual support through the lens of accompaniment—there’s still maybe an imagery associated with that activity that is one person coming alongside another person, you know? That it is a one-to-one relationship, or it’s about the individual orienting to another individual, or the individuals orienting to a group.

Which is different from, say, a metta compassion practice of imagining that my practice is actually happening in concert with everything that is alive, regardless of whether I’m actively in space or in touch with or in relationship with others. Even the ways that we imagine or conceive of support and accompaniment tend to be one individual’s actions in relationship to another’s.

Norma Wong: Yes, I do believe that that’s a construct that we have. It’s a construct because of the ways in which we are, especially within certain countries. So I think that in a country called America, that we have a hyper-individualism.

Autumn Brown: Mmm.

Norma Wong: This is part of how we’ve separated ourselves from the environment. We think of our successes and our freedoms and our rights, even—our rights arise to us as individuals.

Autumn Brown: Mhm.

Norma Wong: And this brings us into a way of being in which we have to consciously work at being in accompaniment, rather than that being a natural state of being. If we are to rise in our spiritual leadership, it would be a natural state of being to be in accompaniment with all beings, including the humans. And that it would be in relationship to the universe in a way that we would understand that our time here is brief in relationship to the universe.

And so, therefore, how can we in this moment be as good a guest and a steward as we can? And then what does that mean on a daily basis? What does that mean on a daily basis? And for this to be more of a natural state of being so that our minute decisions would be naturally managed.

You know, when you go into the grocery store, what are your behaviors as you just walk down the aisle? What do you choose? How are you in relationship to the people who are also choosing? And are you aware that Auntie looks like she is making hard choices about what it is that she can and cannot buy? How can you be in accompaniment of that? Then what do you do about that? What do you do about that?

Autumn Brown: I’m really appreciating that you brought in the challenge of the worldview of individualism, the hyper-individualism.

Norma Wong: What can I do in my life to be a good ancestor? What can I do in my life that would be beneficial to the time beyond the collapse?

Autumn Brown: Hmm.

Norma Wong: How much of my effort is in that end will mark how good of an ancestor I am.

Autumn Brown: There’s a lot of different ways to refer to, you know, what is producing the current—the most current—wave inside of the polycrisis. It’s interesting to think about the role of spiritual practice or the role of faith communities particularly inside of that. They’re often like a third space, not connected to governmental systems and institutions. It’s not that they don’t struggle with individualism, but they are often trying to hold out a different way of being inside of an otherwise capitalist, individualistic structure.

Norma Wong: You know, the opportunity is to expand the possibility of that third space without it needing to be associated with theocracy.

Autumn Brown: Mmm.

Norma Wong: It’s the spirituality that I hold. So I practice Zen Buddhism. Zen practitioners are kind of known as the Jesuits of the Buddhist community, right? (Laughter) You know, we’re kind of hardcore and when we do our meditation, we don’t move.

What spiritual leadership looks like to me is that people recognize the source of the spirit within themselves and in others who hold that spirit in relationship to each other—they hold more than themselves, right?

Autumn Brown: Mmm.

Norma Wong: There would be a recognition of that humanity and what’s required to stay in one’s humanity. And that humanity not being separate from beings who are not humans—that kind of humanity.

Autumn Brown: Humanity that is not separate from non-humanity.

Norma Wong: That’s right. It’s not separate from non-humans, which is different than not having one’s humanity. That core notion of our existence playing itself out, not only in our spiritual practice, but in how we hold governance in the commons.

Which is to say that, in this polycrisis, the opportunity we need to meet is to actually create the ways in which that expands, irrespective of what may be happening to systems, to governments, to countries, to the earth itself. How do we expand that whole way of being that would be with each other? So that we would move the people before the rising tide, not rescue them after they have been swept away, and that communities would arise to do those things.

And I would say that’s actually what’s happening in many, many ways, in many, many places. But we think of that in an unhelpful way as being, “Oh, the things that people are having to do because everything has fallen apart.” And that I would see as just part of what I would do, and it would be part of my contribution.

Storytelling is a powerful, powerful practice. Storytelling can happen by literally telling stories, but it can also happen by any of the arts. Within every story, within every imagining, there’s all kind of stuff that has to be done. I would use a different word, but maybe on the radio you wouldn’t be allowed to use that word—it begins with S and has less letters than stuff. (Laughter) Right?

There’s work that would have to be done now in order for that future world to be what we want it to be. There are seeds that would have to be kept. There’s plant stock that would have to be grown. There is technology that has to be redesigned to meet that future need, let alone the current need—not just be a go-to that would lazily remove thinking from our minds.

There’s actual work that has to be figured out. If you say it’s going to be a world in which less than 25% of what any household might need you would purchase, that is a large and complex trading operation that has to get figured out. You would have to begin the experimentation of that at a pretty hefty scale to do that. And you’d have to go and do it now in order for all of that system to be in place, right?

Autumn Brown: Mhm.

Norma Wong: Less time discussing the theory of capitalism. More time building the actuality of what all of that would look like and have to be at scale. The re-education efforts that would need huge distribution, that would be at a commons level rather than a third-party level. An Amazon without an Amazon.

Autumn Brown: Mhm.

Norma Wong: So that work is not separated from today’s work. The imagining work is not separated. It’s the story that you tell that you immediately begin implementing into. And if you do that, it may indeed take many years to get there, but along the way, you will lessen the suffering.

Autumn Brown: Hmm. Yes, yes.

Part 4: Outro (Tail)

Peterson Toscano: That was Zen Master Norma Wong in conversation with Autumn Brown on the Climate Changed podcast. It’s from The BTS Center. To hear their full conversation, visit climatechangedpodcast.org or you can find Climate Changed wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you heard those echoes that I mentioned from past Quakers Today podcast episodes, you can revisit each of those stories in our archives:

• Rubén Hilari Quispe’s reflection on jiwasa,
• Sam Thacker and Zoe Levenstein’s dialogue on prefigurative practice,
• And our recent series on Quakers navigating money, finance, and value.

Acknowledgements: Support for Quakers Today and American Friends Service Committee’s Indigenous Work

Peterson Toscano: Thank you for listening to this interim episode of Quakers Today podcast, a project of Friends Publishing Corporation. This episode was produced by me, Peterson Toscano.

Peterson Toscano: Support for Quakers Today comes from the American Friends Service Committee.

Worldwide, AFSC works alongside communities to challenge injustice, meet urgent local needs, and build the conditions for lasting peace. Across the United States, that commitment includes a long history of standing with Indigenous people. Back in the 1960s and ’70s, AFSC helped organize the historic fish-ins with tribes in the Pacific Northwest. They then published landmark research on Native environmental stewardship.

Today, that work continues across generations and geographies: In the Northeast, AFSC’s Waponahki program nurtures the revival of ancestral language, strengthens traditional decision-making, and helps rebuild Indigenous knowledge systems. And in New Mexico, AFSC partners with Indigenous farmers and historic land-based communities to protect vital access to water and food.

To learn more about their work and witness, visit afsc.org. That’s a-f-s-c dot org.

Sponsorship: Friends Fiduciary – Ethical Investment for Quaker Organizations and Faith-Based Groups

Peterson Toscano: Support for Quakers Today comes from Friends Fiduciary.

Are you a clerk or treasurer looking to invest your Quaker organization’s funds in accordance with your values? Did you know that Friends Fiduciary is a trusted investment management of choice for yearly, quarterly, and monthly meetings of Friends? They serve more than 460 organizations with ethical portfolios, shareholder advocacy, and a deep commitment to justice and sustainability.

Friends Fiduciary unites Quaker values with smart, mission-driven investing. With a 100% Quaker board, they help hundreds of faith-based groups invest ethically and affordably.

Learn more at friendsfiduciary.org. That’s friendsfiduciary.org.

Preview of Next Episode: Children’s Librarian and Activist Emma Must on Ecological Defense

Peterson Toscano: Join us next month for our second interim episode before our January premiere. I will feature a children’s librarian, activist, and poet named Emma Must. She will reflect on ecological defense and nonviolent direct action. Her story is gripping.

Emma Must: It became necessary to physically stop the road going ahead whilst all these bigger processes were going on. We were pinning our hopes on the European Commission. It was touch-and-go always whether that would work. We had politicians of all flavors and types coming giving speeches in the cutting. We organized mass demonstrations—everything we could to try to, try to stop the road. We needed to keep holding up the work, so a great deal of direct action was taken.

Closing Remarks: Staying Grounded and Walking Gently

Peterson Toscano: Until then, Friends, stay grounded in the quiet, and walk gently and with purpose.