The work that reconnects
Joanna Macy
b. 1929
A Buddhist scholar who taught a culture how to feel its grief for the world without drowning.
The Work That Reconnects moves in a spiral: coming from gratitude, honoring pain for the world, seeing with new eyes, going forth.
Active Hope is not a mood you wait to have.
It is a thing you do.
The Great Turning is the name she gave to the shift from an industrial-growth society toward a life-sustaining one.
For a regenerative homestead, for a community that refuses to look away, she is the elder who says: your despair is a form of love.
Let it work.
Then go.
On the shelf
In the library
Joanna Macy
Active hope is something we do
Active Hope is not a feeling you wait to have. It is something we do. It involves being clear what we hope for and then playing our role in the process of moving that way. It is how we face the mess we are in without going crazy — and without going numb, which is another kind of crazy. You do not need optimism. You need a direction and a next step that belongs to life.
Active Hope
Joanna Macy
The spiral
The spiral returns: Coming from Gratitude. Honoring Our Pain for the World. Seeing with New Eyes. Going Forth. When we come from gratitude, we become more present to the wonder of being alive in this amazing living world. Honoring pain is not collapse. It is refusing to exile the part of you that loves enough to hurt. Seeing with new eyes is remembering you are larger than the story of isolation. Going forth is the cell doing what the body already knows.
The Work That Reconnects
Joanna Macy
Pain for the world
Your despair is a form of love. The Work That Reconnects helps people discover their innate connections with each other and with the self-healing powers of the web of life, transforming despair and overwhelm into inspired, collaborative action. You are not broken for feeling the forest fall. You are intact. The numbness was the injury.
The Work That Reconnects
Joanna Macy
The Great Turning
The Great Turning is the name for the shift from an industrial-growth society toward a life-sustaining civilization. It is already underway, in more kitchens and watersheds than the news can count. A regenerative homestead, a food forest, a community that tells the truth about its grief — these are not accessories to a spiritual life. They are the spiritual life, remembering it has hands.
Active Hope