"The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world-we've actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other."
For peace, justice, and life on Earth, fresh ways of seeing arise, and ancient ways return. This web site opens doors to the new bodies of thought, time-tested spiritual practices, and pioneering group methods, that I find to be powerful inspirations to understanding and action. I share these resources in service to the revolution of our time: the "Great Turning" from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization.
In these pages you'll find key aspects of my work:
- its sources in Buddhist teachings, living systems theory, and deep ecology;
- its experiential methods for group learning, known as the Work that Reconnects, including despair work, deep ecology work, and deep time work;
- information about workshops and trainings;
- empowering ideas, such as Nuclear Guardianship;
- and practices for inspiration and renewal, such as the Council of All Beings and the Elm Dance.
Partake and use for the healing of our world!
A Year with Rilke
In 'A Year with Rilke', Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, the translators of Rilke’s 'The Book of Hours: Poems about God' team up again to offer daily readings from the beloved poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the newest addition to HarperOne’s “Year with” series. Including selections from Rilke’s luminous poetry, his piercing prose, and his intimate letters, 'A Year with Rilke' is the perfect introduction to the depth and breadth of Rilke’s work and will leave the reader inspired throughout the year. One of the most beloved poets of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke is widely celebrated for his depth of insight and timeless relevance. He has influenced generations of writers with his classic 'Letters to a Young Poet', and his reflections on the divine and our place in the world are disarmingly profound. 'A Year with Rilke' provides the first ever reading from Rilke for every day of the year, including selections from his luminous poetry, his piercing prose, and his intimate letters and journals.
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Joanna on Uncertainty at Bioneers Conference
Joanna speaks at the Bioneers Conference about uncertainty. 2009. (segment used with permission from Bioneers) Deep TimeThe healing of our world entails a wider perspective on time. To take part in the Great Turning, we liberate ourselves from the short-term thinking that drives the industrial growth society. Moving beyond anthropocentrism, we learn to "act our age," and experience the vitality of our interdependence with past and future generations.
Our Long Journey TogetherOUR LONG JOURNEY TOGETHER
An Interview with Joanna Macy Joanna Macy is a Buddhist teacher, writer, activist, and scholar. For three decades, she has been developing teaching tools to help us respond to the perils and suffering of our world. Her work combines imagination, courage and good strategy to bring us teachings about “the work that reconnects.” This work is described in one of her many books, Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World (with Molly Young Brown, New Society). Joanna has been a mentor, advisor, and supporter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship from the beginning. In May 2006, Martha Boesing and I interviewed Joanna in her home in Berkeley, California, as cherry trees bloomed outside the window. Martha is an activist, playwright, director, and former BPF board member. —SM Martha: This issue of Turning Wheel is a “call to action” in a time of urgency. What actions would you call people to?
August 24, 2009Dear People, This month, once again, our annual intensive in the Work That Reconnects took place at Land of Medicine Buddha . That Tibetan retreat center among California's coastal redwoods is both unassuming and magical: simple quarters, clean as a pin, and huge intricately-painted prayer wheels, long wooden porches and gilded Buddhas smiling into the oak trees. It held forty of us in its serene and generous arms as we looked at ourselves and our world, and what this planet-time is asking of us.
Fran Macy loved these intensives and this was the first without him. My family wondered how I would fare without him at my side. But he was not absent--I felt him in the forms and structures we'd created together, and in the parts of the land he loved, not to mention a special place by the creek he claimed on his last Medicine Walk. It was sort of like encountering him. "Oh there you are, hello again."
Shambala Center TalkTitled Waking up for the Sake of Life on Earth, this talk weaves ancient and modern stories together in a way that inspires and describes how we are called in this time to become the great hero's we can become. (MP3 Audio file of Joanna's talk in Boulder, CO on April 6, 2009, sponsored by the Shambhala Center and Transition Boulder) |
Joanna Macy & Jonathan GustinJoanna Macy & Jonathan Gustin; Finding Our Purpose at the Time of the Great Turning 
A silent revolution is under way. It is the transition from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining society. This ‘Great Turning’, as many are calling it, will touch every aspect of our lives. Each of us has a distinctive role to play in this essential adventure of our time. Our unique role or ‘purpose’ gives meaning to our choices, bringing forth our courage, our creativity, and our solidarity. Joanna Macy is one of this era’s most revered environmental and spiritual leaders. Jonathan Gustin is a purpose guide, psychotherapist and spiritual activist. Come join these teachers for an evening of stimulating conversation.
- 1187 Franklin Street, San Francisco When: Saturday April 24th, 2010: 7pm – 9pm
Cost: $15 (If purchased before 3/5/10) - $20 (If purchased after 3/5/10) - Sorry no tickets at the door, advance purchase only. Registration: www.integralawakeningcenter.com
How Life OrganizesDrawn from Coming Back to Life Instead of looking for basic building blocks, these life scientists took a new tack: they began to look at wholes instead of parts, at processes instead of substances. They discovered that these wholes--be they cells, bodies, ecosystems, or even the planet itself--are not just a heap of disjunct parts, but are dynamically organized and intricately balanced "systems," interdependent in every movement, every function, every exchange of energy and information. They saw that each element is part of a vaster pattern, a pattern that connects and evolves by discernible principles. The discernment of these principles gave rise to general living systems theory.By shifting their focus to relationships instead of separate entities, scien-tists made an amazing discovery--amazing at least to the mainstream western mind. They discovered that nature is self-organizing. Or rather, assuming that to be the case, they set about discerning the principles by which this self-organizing occurs. They found these principles or system properties to be awesomely elegant in their simplicity and constancy throughout the observable universe, from sub organic to biological and ecological systems, and mental and social systems, as well. The proper-ties of open systems which permit the variety and intelligence of life-forms to arise from interactive currents of matter and energy are four in number.
The Story of the Elm DanceThere is a circle dance we do in every workshop and class I teach, whether it's on systems theory, Buddhism, or deep ecology. We do it to open our minds to the wider world we live in and strengthen our intention to take part in its healing. Each time we put on the music and link hands, I think of Novozybkov in the fall of 1992. Our team of four, Fran and I and two Russians, had been traveling from one town to another in Byelorussia and Ukraine, offering workshops to people living in areas contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster. Now we had come to this final town in Novozybkov, an agricultural and light industrial city of 50,000 a hundred miles east of Chernobyl, in the Bryansk region of Russia. Drawing on what we learned from years of leading despair work, we came to offer, as we put it to the authorities, "psychological tools for coping with the effects of massive, collective trauma." We had entitled the workshops Building a Strong Post-Chernobyl Culture. The name had a nice Soviet ring to it, but I soon realized that the word "post" was in error. "It suggests that the disaster is over," I said to Fran, "but it has become obvious to us that it isn't over. It compounds itself through time in vicious circles, in positive feedback loops." The radioactivity was still spreading silently through wind, water, food, creating new toxins as it mixed with industrial pollution, and sickening bodies already weakened from previous exposures. Our workshops, we soon realized, were meant not to help people recover from a catastrophe, so much as to live with an ongoing one.
Invocation (John Seed)We ask for the presence of the spirit of Gaia and pray that the breath of life continues to caress this planet home. May we grow into true understanding — a deep understanding that inspires us to protect the tree on which we bloom, and the water, soil and atmosphere without which we have no existence.
The Bowl of TearsThis is fine for any size group. Just pour water into a clear glass bowl. Let it represent for you and for the others our tears for the world and all beings. And invite each person, as they pass the bowl to each other, or as they come and sit or kneel before it, to scoop up some water and let it trickle through their fingers. As they do, they can say: "My tears are for…." Here's a description of this process with a large assembly: With 250 people participating, we were challenged to invent new forms, especially for the part that's most intense: Honoring Our Pain for theWorld. That session began with poetry and spoken reflections on the power, liberation, and solidarity that comes with owning our collective grief. Then people clustered in foursomes to tell of their experience of the "great unraveling." After that they sang together, over and over like a chant, words of Adrienne Rich put to music by Carolyn McDade. My heart is moved by all I cannot save. So much has been destroyed. I have to cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.
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Where: - First Unitarian Universalist Church