Doing
the Work that Reconnects
Joanna Macy is an activist and a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology who has developed and conducted workshops around the globe to help people do "despair and empowerment work" or, as it is now called, "the work that reconnects." In the face of the crises facing our world, "we are tempted to shut down, narrowing our sights to our own and our
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a Spanish-language version. |
family's short-term survival," Macy writes in Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World (New Society Publishers, 1998). Yet, she insists that "a silent revolution" is occurring in our midst, radically altering our perceptions and actions and bringing about a "Great Turning" from an industrial-growth society to a life-sustaining society. Macy is the author of eight books, including Widening Circles: a Memoir, a spiritual autobiography published last year by New Society Publishers.
Marianne Arbogast: The issue of The Witness that we just finished working on [Jan./Feb. 2001] focuses on indigenous peoples in the Western hemisphere, and much of what's in it is very bleak. There's an account of the massacre in Acteal in Chiapas, and a story about the threat to the Gwich'in people and the caribou herd in the Arctic because of proposed oil drilling, and exploitation of people and the land in Central America. When I was talking yesterday with Julie Wortman, we both acknowledged the heaviness we were feeling working on this. When we're confronted with such tremendous evil, how can we keep from being overwhelmed, or overwhelming others, with the sheer immensity of it?
Joanna
Macy: That question has
motivated much of my life's work. And I have been helped immeasurably by seeing
that the pain that we feel for the world is the other face of love. We would
not feel the sorrow or the outrage if we were not profoundly connected with
our world. So we can understand those feelings as evidence of our mutual belonging.
It is important not to reduce those feelings to a private craziness or a personal pathology. They are natural and wholesome responses, and they are very widespread. My book with Molly Brown, Coming Back to Life, has a whole chapter on honoring our pain for the world. I share exercises we do that help people explore and express what they're feeling, and reframe it in the context of our connectedness. Our capacity to "suffer-with" is the literal meaning of compassion. When we don't resist or pathologize these feelings, they help us see more clearly and become more aware of the larger context.
In that larger, longer-term context an epochal shift is occurring -- from the Industrial Growth Society, which is self-destructive, to a Life-Sustaining Civilization. This "Great Turning" takes a while, because the present economic system is so entrenched. But the shift must happen and it is happening. Look at what's going on at the grassroots: not only direct action and resistance, but also the creation of new structures and new forms -- and along with all that there's a shift in consciousness, a spiritual revolution. Our sense of self-interest is rapidly expanding to include the planet; we are awakening to our embeddedness in the living body of Earth. So there's much to take hope in on the larger, long-term scale, and we can feel privileged to be alive now to take part in it.
Still, on a daily basis, we are seeing the tremendous costs in terms of oppression and destruction and wars and preparations for war. So we need to find ways to respect and not be stopped by the despair, which has a lot to teach us and which is inevitable, because we're intrinsic parts of a world where a lot is being lost.
M.A.: It's interesting to me that you see that as a widespread experience, because I've been struck recently by how many people I know -- and not people who are ecological activists -- who have experienced some kind of intense grief, coming from some non-conceptual level, for the natural world. I have a friend who found herself weeping for months over her sense that trees were dying -- she kept saying she thought people would think she was crazy. Another friend talked about feeling smothered when she saw housing or commercial developments paving over the earth. Do you think those experiences are common?
J.M.:
Absolutely. The life that is in us, the life that is breathing through us and
beating in our hearts, is very ancient. It didn't begin with our conception,
or even with our species, which has come on the scene pretty recently. Wild
nature and life's passion for itself is bred into us, in our bones, so when
we see how life is being smothered and poisoned, grief is a natural response.
And we can turn it into a greater sense of our connectedness and the power that
comes from our connectedness.
M.A.: I think we can sometimes feel that the problems facing the earth and human beings are so complex, and that we don't have the right kind of education -- or even the right kind of mind -- to comprehend them, or to be able to do anything useful.
J.M.: It's very good, then, to look at the countless examples right now of citizens stepping beyond their own personal life to work together, to walk in fresh paths, and to create cohousing, or new ways of holding the land, or new ways of growing food, or new kinds of schools and new forms of currency. These manifestations can look marginal if you only consult the corporate-controlled media, where they're hardly reflected in the headlines and on the evening news. But when you train your eyes to look for it, you see on every hand people quietly taking action on behalf of other humans, other species, the soil, the forests, in a way that, when I was a young woman, wasn't even dreamt of. Oh, there were always the peace and justice activists, but this upwelling of identification with the larger web of life is actually quite recent and happening very fast. And when you direct your attention to pertinent sources of information both in print, like Yes! magazine, or on the web, like Rachel's Weekly, you can see the tremendous vitality, and feel proud to be alive at a time when our species is showing so much learning and ingenuity. That's important for me because I get angry and cynical when I look at the corporate-controlled media.
The spiritual practices of our traditions are enormously helpful to us in dealing with despair. From my root tradition in Christianity, there is the whole tradition of Passion Week and Good Friday, and in the Jewish tradition, the High Holy Days around atonement, the Kaddish and Yom Kippur. Being able to grieve together is profoundly bonding and sane-making. When we borrow from these traditions in our workshops, people find a container to speak the sadness and the dread they feel. Then a tremendous upwelling of energy, even hilarity, occurs because the life-force rushes in so fast when we stop denying our pain for the world.
M.A.: Last year, you had an article in Timeline in which you said that "not being certain of the success of our work can liberate us from having to be braced all the time against bad news, and feeling we have to work up a sense of hope." Could you say more about that?
| Open Sentences Purpose This exercise provides a swift and easy way for people to voice their inner responses to the condition of our world. Its structure helps people both to listen with total receptivity and to express thoughts and feelings that are usually censored for fear of comment or adverse reaction. The sequence of the sentences generally moves from thoughts and views to feelings.
Description People sit in pairs, face-to-face and close enough to attend to each other fully. They refrain from speaking until the exercise begins. When the guide speaks each unfinished sentence, Partner A repeats it, completes it in his own words, addressing Partner B, and keeps on talking spontaneously for the time allotted. The partners then switch roles. Depending on the material, they switch after each open sentence or, more usually, at the end of the series. The listening partner -- this is to be emphasized -- keeps silent, saying absolutely nothing and hearkening as attentively and supportively as possible. If the partners switch roles once, after a series of sentences, invite A to convey without speaking his appreciation to B for B's supportive listening, and invite B to express -- again nonverbally -- her respect for A's concerns and his courage in sharing them. For the completion of each open sentence allow a minute or two -- or longer, if the momentum is strong. Give a brief warning each time before it is time to move on, saying, "Take a minute to finish up," or "Thank you." A clap or small bell can then bring people to silence, where they rest a few seconds before the next open sentence. Here is a sample series of open sentences that we have used a great deal. Feel free to make up your own to address the particular interests of the group, remembering to keep them as unbiased and nonleading as possible.
Reprinted with permission from Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World, by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown, New Society Publishers, 1998. |
J.M.: The Great Turning, from an Industrial Growth Society to a Life-Sustaining Society, is happening, we know that; but what we don't know is whether we'll pull it off in time to save life on earth. And that very uncertainty can bring out the best in us, the true courage and creativity. We mustn't get caught in the polarity of optimism and pessimism. Those are passing feelings. Don't limit yourself with a label. Even if you brim with hope that we'll pull through, there are still huge losses to grieve, whole cultures and species disappearing.
So let's make friends with the sadness, see it as the dark sister, that part of you that knows we're losing much that can never be recalled. That keeps us honest. It also helps us be less attached to the visible results of our own efforts. Then we can give ourselves more freely, just glad to have a chance to participate in the Great Turning.
It's important to acknowledge that the problems we're dealing with have roots in the past, before our birth, and also that most of those for whom we work are not born yet. We need to see our lives and actions within larger expanses of time. That is why I offer "Deep Time" workshops where we experience our bonds with the ancestors and our allegiance to the future generations. That brings a sense of calm determination, and helps us rise above our habitual, carping self-judgments for not doing enough or not doing it better. Then we can rejoice in the sheer opportunity to act.
M.A.: Part of the impetus for this issue of The Witness was Scott Russell Sanders, an activist who wrote of an experience with his teenage son, who got very angry with him one day and said, you're not giving me any hope. How can we be honest with our children about how the world is and at the same time offer them real grounds for hope?
J.M.: This is a time of tremendous opportunity when people are doing beautiful things, and you can see real heroes; each young person can be one of them. It's very helpful to give examples. When I talk about the Great Turning, I point to the many ways youth are involved.
In my most recent 12-day training, many participants got involved in the support of a forest action nearby, where a steep slope of redwoods was being illegally clearcut. Young people with Earth First! were tree-sitting on platforms a hundred feet in the air, and they were managing to save 80 trees by interlinking them with their high rope bridges. My trainees went into service to these young people -- and a fresh clarity came into all our work together. Seems we learn best when we're acting on behalf of Earth.
Young people are active in so many ways -- working in after-school programs in the inner city, and creating organic gardens in schoolyards and vacant lots. Examples abound, when you look.
M.A.: So hope can come in finding a way to respond or being part of that kind of action?
J.M.: That's absolutely right. I don't know how else to maintain high spirits. When you get involved in a team action, even with all the hard work and risk, it's fun. There's so much at stake, and the people around you are so great, that you feel glad to be alive.
M.A.: Probably many of us have had those kinds of experiences -- but we've also had negative experiences connected with activism. I wanted to ask you what you would see as healthy activism, because sometimes activists can seem to be hitting each other over the head, or hitting others over the head, because people aren't doing enough, or they're not getting involved with a certain issue or in a certain way.
J.M.: That kind of activism is outdated and counterproductive. Watch out for self-righteousness. Watch out for the trap of thinking you know, or need to know, the only right answer. Be truthful to your vision, but don't feel you need to develop a strategic plan for the human race. It doesn't work that way. We only know what works as we act; each step reveals what the next step should be. So we've got to watch out for dogmatism, and thinking that the struggle is between good guys and bad guys. We're all in this together. We're going to pull through this dark passage together or not at all. So don't fall prey to self-importance, and imagining that it all depends on you personally. The responsibility we must own is a collective one, and we shoulder it together to correct and heal the harm that is done in our name.
Once you get involved, you see that everybody can participate but nobody can take the full credit. And that means that nobody can take the full blame, either.
M.A.: Today it seems that corporations are identified as the "bad guys" -- and often rightfully so. Yet all of us know good people who work for these companies, and may even be doing very good things in their particular jobs. How do you deal with these kinds of ambiguities?
J.M.: We must remember that the real "enemy" is the institutionalized forms of greed, hatred, and ignorance -- not the flesh-and-blood people who are in bondage to those structures. As they awaken to their interconnectedness with all life, these very people become our allies, helping to change the system from the inside.
M.A.: There is also sometimes a tendency to try to establish a sort of hierarchy of activism -- thinking a certain cause is the cause and everybody should be working on it.
J.M.: You're right, that does happen, but it's not useful. It's wrongheaded to imagine that my cause is more important than your cause. The teachings of interconnectedness help us to see that whatever issue we're working on -- whether it's saving the whales or feeding the homeless in a soup kitchen -- has the same root cause: the human mistake of seeking to exploit and dominate. So I don't think the particular issue or campaign is as important as getting involved; then you begin to see how interwoven all these issues are. Just pick one thing. It doesn't matter if you think it's the most important or not. Pick whatever you feel drawn to. Join in with others -- and roll up your sleeves. l
Coming Back to Life, Joanna Macy's book with Molly Young Brown, and her memoir, Widening Circles, can be ordered from New Society Publishers (800-567-6772 and www.newsociety.com). For information on her workshops and trainings contact dmosel@igc.org. or fax 510-649-9605. Her web site (www.joannamacy.net) will soon be online.