On 19th July a remarkable woman died. Her name was Joanna Macy and she was 96 years old. There have been many tributes to her and her work. The one from the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology described her as “an extraordinary teacher, writer, and activist whose work will influence many people and projects for years to come. She was a luminous being with an extraordinarily generous spirit. Her Buddhist-inspired wisdom and compassion gave her the energy to work in the areas of ecology, justice, and peace throughout her life”. I have a sense of sadness at her death and feel that the world is the poorer for her passing, but her influence will carry on. I didn’t know her personally, but she was influential in my life through her writing, workshops and lectures, many of which can be found on YouTube.
I first came to know her work when I bought a book of hers thirty years ago on Iona. It was called ‘World as Lover, World as Self’. It focussed on our interrelatedness and interdependency with nature, something which we must embrace if we are to have a sustainable future for humanity and our world. What I remember most about the book is a meditation which I have often used with groups. It guides us to connect with our parents, grandparents, our ancestors, travelling in our imagination through all the stages of history to that point when homo sapiens sets forth in its journey into the world. Then we imagine the call to life coming in reverse from that first moment of the human journey through all the stages of history, through the generations of our grandparents and parents to be given life and form at this point in history. For me this was mind blowing and changed my whole sense of self. I am not an individual who is separate from all those who in my past have passed on the gift of life, generation after generation. They live in me. My life force, DNA goes back to the moment when it first began. I am mistaken if I think I live a life separate from them. As Thich Nhat Hanh has said “I have arrived, I am home in the here and the now”.
My next encounter with Joanna was many years later through her book, ‘Active Hope’ written in partnership with Chris Johnstone. It was the subtitle that attracted me - ‘How to Face the Mess We Are in Without Going Crazy’ though this was changed in later editions of the book to ‘How to Face the Mess We Are in With Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power’. This book sets out Joanna’s philosophy and draws on her work of leading empowering workshops and setting up the Work that Reconnects Network. For Joanna there are three possible stories, true of society at the moment, that we can choose to live by - Business as Usual which suggests there is very little that needs to change in the way we live; the Great Unravelling which draws attention to and indeed contributes to the disasters and crises caused by a Business as Usual approach such as economic, social and environmental collapse; the Great Turning which is for those who don’t want the Great Unraveling to have the last word and so seek new ways of relating and acting to move from an Industrial Growth Society to a Life Sustaining one. The last is the one to which Joanna Macy dedicated her life and the focus of the Work that Reconnects. The process and sequence of the experiential side of the work is a spiral in which one begins with gratitude, moves through honouring our pain for the world, seeing with new eyes and then going forth to contribute to the transformation of our planet in whatever way is ours to do.
I have been fortunate enough to have read and worked through the exercises in Active Hope with a group in my community, to have taken part in a retreat which worked through the spiral, using Joanna’s exercises and to have been at the launch of the Scottish Network of ‘The Work that Reconnects’ as well as several of their training days. So, I feel that the spiral and the approach of the Work that Reconnects has became a part of my life and I am grateful for it. This year the Work that Reconnects is celebrating its 10th anniversary which means it was set up when Joanna was 86 years old, no doubt not single handedly, but still a challenging thought for someone of my age. Joanna was a great storyteller and one story she loved to tell and one which I have used is about the Shambhala Warrior.
It actually comes from the Tibetan tradition and was written in the 12th cy. It goes like this.
“There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger…. It is now, when the future of all beings hangs by the frailest of threads, that the kingdom of Shambhala emerges.
"You cannot go there, for it is not a place. It exists in the hearts and minds of the Shambhala warriors. But you cannot recognize a Shambhala warrior by sight, for there is no uniform or insignia, there are no banners……. great courage is required of the Shambhala warriors, moral and physical courage. And for this they must go into training - and how do they train?
"They train in the use of two weapons, the weapons of insight and compassion, insight to recognise everyone as their brothers and sisters, compassion to feel the pain of the world and respond with love.”
I am one of the many who will mourn Joanna Macy but above all I will be grateful for the legacy she has left and the knowledge that all who are seeking to participate in the Great Turning, and there are myriad ways of doing this, are part of a great movement for the transformation of our world and the establishment of the Kingdom of Shambhala which for Christians is the Kingdom of God.
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