Full Body Listening: Reflections on Life, Healing and the Ecozoic
The Work That Heals
Friday September 30, 2011
Meeting Joanna Macy, author, activist and teacher, has been on my bucket list for the last twenty years, ever since I read her collaboratively authored book, Thinking Like A Mountain. I was not disappointed when she recently spent a weekend in Chapel Hill.
Not since last hearing Thomas Berry speak, have I experienced feeling simultaneously inspired, grounded and centered by one person’s vision. Vast reservoirs of her own experience are a legacy she imparts from her trip riding with lamas returning to devastated monasteries in Tibet, learning the Shambhala Prophecy for healing our world, and developing community work for healing the suffering of people in environmentally damaged areas, such as those surrounding Chernobyl.
Joanna, in sharing her passion for “The Great Turning: The Work that Reconnects”, led over a hundred participants in group activities and sharing of personal reflections, based on our experiences of four basic activities that she considers essential in moving forward a thriving, cooperative Earth community.
Coming from Gratitude, “It’s a Grand Time to Be Alive”
Owning and Honoring our Pain and Despair for the World, “Open Hearts Heal”
Deep Time: Reconnecting with Past and Future Generations, “Awakening to the Big Picture”
Going Forth: Commitment and Action, “Choosing Love, Acting in Love, Caring for What You Love”
Her prophetic vision for reconnecting strikes me as a means to approach the fulfillment of Thomas Berry’s call for healing in the 21st Century. His sage observation was that the 20th century had been a time of mass destruction for Earth processes, and that the upcoming century would need to be one whose focus was on healing.
As you can tell, by now, I’m happy to have met Joanna Macy and I will do a few posts in the coming weeks to share more thoughts.
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