Joanna Macy

New Book Released!

Active Hope: How to Face the Mess we're in without Going Crazy, co-authored with my long-time colleague Chris Johnstone of Bristol, England, aims to bring basic assumptions and ingredients of the Work That Reconnects to a mainstream readership. In the process some valuable new perspectives on the Work have emerged. A look at the Table of Contents can give you an idea of some. It comes out in March, but you can get a discount on it now. The book has a website: http://www.activehope.info

Jennifer Berezan, Joanna Macy and Anne Symens-Bucher bear witness to Alberta's Oil Sands. In response to the experience, Jennifer, singer songwriter native to Alberta, wrote "My Memory Forever", expressing her deep concern regarding oil sands expansion across Canada's Boreal Forest.

Many thousands of people around the world have participated in Dr Joanna Macy's workshops and trainings. Now 83 she continues her work helping people transform despair and apathy, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world, as our larger living body, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth. (Watch on YouTube)
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Letter: February 2, 2012

Dear People,

Groundhog Day, St. Brigid’s Day, Candlemas. Well, in addition to bringing a favorite movie to mind, this day seems to be about wondering if more light is there, and if spring is really coming. Well, that fits.

Have you noticed, in this Now that we’re living, how both the dark and the light seem to be intensifying?--and the swings between them swifter? Both the Great Unraveling and the Great Turning are accelerating.

On the Great Turning side, there’s no doubt about it: the Occupy movement is waking us up to the core pathology of our nation and, indeed, of capitalism worldwide (even making it okay to say “capitalism”!). Respectable mainstream journals and media are all of a sudden describing Wall Street’s financial and moral failures, with juicy disclosures of high-level venality and appalling reports on the poverty swallowing more millions of our people. Knowing this is bitter but essential.

So the Great Unraveling is being illumined by the Great Turning. Some of its features that have gripped me of late concern lost civil rights. With the National Defense Authorization Act, Congress actually voted to  read more...

Dear friend in the Work That Reconnects,

With 2012 underway I am determined to make the Work That Reconnects more available to young activists. And I am writing you, who have experienced the power of this work, to help me do that. May I ask you to contribute to a scholarship fund?

In my workshops over the past three years the number of activists in their teens and twenties has been growing.  I am awed by their realism about what's at stake, and their readiness of mind and purpose.  The longer residential intensives clearly deepen their understanding and confidence; yet they are in most cases the least able to pay even the modest fees for room, board, and tuition.

In the next nine months, before the November presidential elections, I will lead a number of residential events where I want to see young activists from diverse socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds.  These events include three intensives of nine-and ten-day duration to take place in North Carolina in May, on Vancouver Island, B.C. in August, and read more...