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Appalachian Elegy (excerpts)

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by bell hooks

Recorded by Karina Lutz

Note: Due to website limitations, poem line breaks will not be right on all screens, particularly narrow ones. To see the poet’s intended version, please click the Print Friendly button. Or try turning your phone or tablet to landscape orientation.

8.
snow-covered earth
such silence
still divine presence
echoes immortal migrants
all life sustained
darkness comes
suffering touches us
again and again
there is pain
there in the midst of
such harsh barrenness
a cardinal framed in the glass
red light
calling away despair
eternal promise
everything changes and ends

9.
autumn ending
leaves like
fallen soldiers
manmade hard hearts
fighting battles on this once sacred ground
all killing done now
dirt upon dirt
covers all signs of death
memory tamped down
ways to not remember
the disappeared
dying faces
longing to be seen
one lone warrior lives
comes home to the hills
seeking refuge
seeking a place to surrender
the ground where hope remains
and souls surrender

10.
here and there
across and down
treasure uncovered
remnants of ancient ways
not buried deep enough
excavated they surface
objects that say
some part of me
lived here before
reincarnated ancestors
give me breath
urge me—live again
return to familiar ground
hear our lost people speak

22.

sometimes falling rain
carries memories of betrayal
there in the woods
where she was not meant to be
too young she believes
in her right to be free
in her body
free from harm
believing nature
a wilderness she can enter
be solaced
believing the power
that there be sacred place
that there can be atonement now
she returns with no fear
facing the past
ready to risk
knowing these woods now
hold beauty and danger

© 2012 by Gloria Jean Watkins (bell hooks) Reprinted with permission from Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place, University Press of Kentucky

 

bell hooks (1952-2021) was the author of more than thirty books, including Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism, named by Publishers Weekly as one of the twenty most influential women’s books of the last twenty years.

Cultural Emergence

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by Looby Macnamara

Recorded by author

Note: Due to website limitations, poem line breaks will not be right on all screens, particularly narrow ones. To see the poet’s intended version, please click the Print Friendly button. Or try turning your phone or tablet to landscape orientation.

This cultural emergency calls for cultural emergence,
A breaking through, a breaking free,
Of cultures of isms and schisms,
Of gun culture, war culture, rape culture, fear culture,
Greed culture, waste culture, chemical culture,
Of corporations controlling our culture,
Polluting our culture.
Peeling back the layers of oil smothering our culture,
Can we connect our roots into the Earth
And reach out to fellow beings and show our care?
Can we cultivate a
Responsibility culture,
Friendship culture,
Kindness culture,
Justice culture,
Safety culture,
Peace culture,
A culture of innovation, resilience and hope?/
Can we name and create the culture we want?
A visionary, regenerative culture?
Can we shift our priorities, phobias, patterns,
Parameters, opinions, assumptions?
Can we bend or bury our beliefs?
Will we?

Will we reflect, connect,
Respect the collective.
Direct our objections
To the system
That promotes disconnection.
Challenge not blame,
Name and reframe,
Shift our perspective to gain a directive
That allows us to be receptive
To the interconnected web
Vibrating with every step.

Disrupt the pattern
To awaken and challenge
And begin to unravel cords of conditioning
To release the story
And create space for visioning,
Allowing the possibility of the seemingly impossible
To motivate and invigorate
The genius inside of us.
Activate and initiate,
Appreciate and celebrate,
Collaborate and participate
To co-create and facilitate
The desire to germinate
And take control of our fate,
Moving away from this state

Of emergency
Into a state of cultural emergence
Where we use emergence to support emergence,
With the divergence and convergence of minds
Creating designs
With the intelligence of co-operating hearts
To give us a start
On this path
Of empowerment.

To bring fulfillment
And deep nourishment
It takes commitment
To trusting the process
And opening to osmosis
Of the mystical and magical
To be alchemical
With the mathematical
For practical and logical
Action and reaction,
To bring connection
And emerge the solutions
For manifestation
Of personal and global transformation.

Note: Cultural Emergence is a project to develop a toolkit, community and movement for positive cultural evolution. The framing of Cultural Emergence was birthed through a collaboration between Looby Macnamara and Jon Young. This poem started the journey. The Cultural Emergence toolkit weaves together cultural awareness, systems thinking, permaculture design and deep nature connection. Looby is a trained Work That Reconnects facilitator and  this work has been woven into the toolkit. In 2020 Looby released her book Cultural Emergence – a toolkit for transforming ourselves and the world. This poem is published here and originally in 2016 in her book Strands of Infinity: Poetry to Reconnect.

Looby Macnamara‘s latest book, Cultural Emergence shares a pioneering toolkit for regeneration and transformation. Looby has been teaching permaculture for nearly 20 years. During this time she has been a pioneer of personal and social permaculture, authoring the first book globally to focus on the peoplecare ethic People & Permaculture. Looby is also author of 7 Ways to Think Differently and Strands of Infinity.  She runs Applewood Permaculture Centre in the UK with her partner Chris Evans. She is also one of the partners of the European Mother Nature project, empowering mothers. Looby has been an active member of the permaculture community, and was a chairperson of the Permaculture Association and is a senior diploma tutor.

 

For more about Cultural Emergence, Looby’s books, videos, podcasts and courses see www.cultural-emergence.com

Disrupting Patriarchal Legacies of Dealing with Trauma and Pain

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by Juliana Mota Diniz

 

The global scenario of the collapse of the socio-ecological health of places and the breakdown of complex social systems is, in some ways, a projection of the devastation of our internal landscapes mirroring what we, as a western society, must urgently look at within and among ourselves.

Without recognizing personal and collective pain and overcoming the association between success and invulnerability, we will be little able to make significant internal and systemic transformations. They are interdependent and begin to take root in reality when they overcome the barrier of superficiality.

We need to admit that we are hurt and find braver ways to deal with our wounds.

Going beyond compliance

In the West, our parents and grandparents generations were encouraged to hide their problems from friends and family. Almost no one talked about abuse of power, neglect and abandonment, emotional dependence, psychological disorders, etc., although these occurred in many homes and communities.

Forced to fester under the guise of social status, these problems have morphed into intergenerational wounds and constrained enormous potential for creativity and innovation. But now many young people are taking on the task of dealing with the hidden traumas handed down through countless generations. We are no longer willing to sacrifice our lives and ideals as many of our parents and grandparents did for living in a context where conformity was desirable.

The change in posture from indifference and control to care is the bridge we must cross towards overcoming patriarchy.

  The reason for so much avoidance of the realization that some scenarios of personal and social life were emotional conflict zones is that it requires emotional resilience, openness to pain, empathy and care. Moving through pain is possible when we stand as an empathic witness beside it. The change in posture from indifference and control to care is the bridge we must cross towards overcoming patriarchy.

It represents the reinsertion of feeling as part of the human condition and the possibility of reaching the core of the converging crises that threaten the planet and humanity. Touching pain, being with it and moving through it is the turning point that will make it possible to elevate humanity from the condition of enemies of oneself, of others and of nature to healthy participants in the web of life.

The effect of patriarchy

For Gabor Maté (2008), a physician specializing in childhood development and trauma, the attempt to escape pain is what creates the most pain. Due to our inability to bear pain and, at the same time, remain open to the experience, we build protective mechanisms, shelve emotions and condemn vulnerability. We start to defend ourselves from the circumstances that weaken us because we want to avoid the memory of impotence from the shocks of pain. But with compulsory avoidance we begin to replicate, collectively and at all times, our personal wound.

The automatism in avoiding pain and difficult emotions is due to the validity of patriarchy as the modus operandi of the society of industrial growth.

The automatism in avoiding pain and difficult emotions is due to the validity of patriarchy as the modus operandi of the society of industrial growth. There is a mindset, which is cause and effect of the survival of patriarchy, that overemphasizes self-improvement, competition, domination, and the “go ahead at all costs” philosophy. Since we were born, this worldview has been present in our neural circuits, restricting our responses to challenges.

In the face of any sign of pain, the nervous system leads the body and mind to the defense response. So, when not worked through, our wounds keep us stuck in self-preservation mode—the emotional fight-or-flight state. Thus we spend our days busy defending ourselves against life. The energy spent on pain relief or on the automatic defense response compromises the development of inherent potentials.

As we dissociate ourselves from the world around us or try to control everything and everyone through rationality, reactivity and aggressiveness, we become a traumatized species that specializes in creating trauma around us. Wounds left unanswered dampen the inner impulses that guide us toward the expression of the authentic vision we would like to share with the world and toward gentle, collaborative participation in our collectivities.

But the point is that everyday big and small problems open up symptoms of deep wounds that are potential gateways to perception and transformation. Admitting this is the height of personal responsibility, a mark of emotional maturity and the possible way to promote human evolution. When enough of us do this, humanity will be transformed.

The critical mass quest

Rupert Sheldrake (1996), biochemist and doctor of biology, postulated in the 1980s a hypothesis about how living beings learn and acquire new behaviors. He found that when a behavior is repeated enough times, it forms a morphic field with a cumulative memory based on what happened in the past. Morphic fields are structures that span space-time and shape physical forms and behaviors.

Everything, living and non-living beings, is associated with a specific morphic field that makes a system function as such, that is, as an integrated whole rather than a jumble of parts. Unlike gravitational and electromagnetic fields that transmit energy, morphic fields transmit information so that the knowledge acquired and aggregated by an individual becomes a collective asset that is shared by all individuals in that system.

Morphic resonance, the name of Sheldrake’s theory, demonstrates that a change in a species behavior occurs when a critical mass is reached. Critical mass is the required number of individuals that need to adhere to a particular habit in order for the behavior of the entire species to change. Thus, he explains how new patterns of behavior can emerge and, with that, how the nature of species, including humans, can change.

This means that the culture of a collective of people changes when enough people change their behavior. This process begins with the unimaginable being done by some and repeated by others until a critical number of people make the change and this new behavior becomes the pattern of how we act and, consequently, of who we are. This is how human behavior change happens: we repeat behavior motivated by a principle or value enough times until, suddenly, we become what we do.

Any legitimate form of activism must go hand in hand with the understanding that our personal pain and the Earth’s pain are closely related and play a decisive role in the way things turn out

.That is why we need more and more people who are experts in their own trauma in order to prevent them from gaining collective proportions and resulting in the limitations and misfortunes we witness on a daily basis. Any legitimate form of activism must go hand in hand with the understanding that our personal pain and the Earth’s pain are closely related and play a decisive role in the way things turn out. Without this recognition, our personal and professional initiatives, although well intentioned, will continue to be fragmented, superficial, unsustainable and, at times, unethical.

Within trauma are competencies that we need to recover in order to respond to present challenges. Through the elaboration of trauma, personal and collective intelligence and power cease to be at the service of self-preservation and are directed towards self-fulfillment. Taking care of our personal miseries is a condition for acting responsibly in the world. In doing so, we act out of authentic participation and committed service to the most beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

Welcoming the pain

Going through trauma and embracing pain makes us more able to see reality for what it is and to be more honest with ourselves. This makes it possible for the individual to anchor his view of the world without excuses and defenses. Thus, existential anxiety is replaced by a sense of trust in ourselves and in life.

It takes willingness to be present with your pain without judging yourself for feeling fear, anger, sadness, guilt, shame and all the emotions that the mind translates as negative experiences. The moralizing judgment that emerges along with these emotions has to do with mistaken beliefs related to feeling like “if I didn’t feel this, I wouldn’t suffer” and “my dark aspect is shameful”. From them derive a herculean effort to avoid emotion and isolate oneself from experience. The result is a dulling of the ability to feel.

We nurture these beliefs because we, human beings, had to dampen emotional pain to bear it when we didn’t have enough resources to face it. At times, the expression of our emotions may have resulted in unwanted results and loss of affection. Emotions have become undesirable because, in these cases, they have kept us from fulfilling our needs and desires. But fear of emotions is unwarranted because it is beliefs and attitudes related to them that make them unpalatable. No matter how destructive they look, they can be metabolized and composted.

Replacing protection patterns with connection patterns

Trauma compromises our ability to engage with one another, replacing patterns of connection with patterns of protection.

By rebuking emotions they remain inappropriate and destructive in the subconscious causing us to run away from experiences. According to behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges (2017), trauma compromises our ability to engage with one another, replacing patterns of connection with patterns of protection.  It is a paradoxical isolation. Inhibition and isolation as a protective measure against exposure does not prevent what we fear and makes us lose the potential of life that we could access if we did not refuse involvement and flee the experience.

We realize that true security comes from living from the raw, open, real core of presence within us.

The price to pay for emotional overprotection is too much. Blocking the ability to feel pain also blocks access to pleasure. Though it may not seem like it, pain is a life-giving experience. It releases pent-up energy and dulled creativity. Without attachment or aversion to emotions, feeling them is life-giving and liberating. Listening to emotional pain gives birth to the understanding that we are beyond any disconcerting emotion and, no matter what, we are alive and, in the end, that’s what matters most. We realize that true security comes from living from the raw, open, real core of presence within us.

This radical integrity is the necessary foundation for building a life in the service of a society that celebrates life. Metabolizing the pain itself makes us anchor a more potent level of truth. In doing so, we put our originality and eccentricity at the service of the world. The clogged channels and wounds related to broken bonds become the portals to realizing a deeper, indestructible bond that connects us to everything and everyone.

It is a paradox that by coming into contact with the pain of separation we have the chance to experience our inseparability from the world. Facing pain doesn’t annihilate us as the ego supposed. On the contrary, it creates a new relationship with life. From separate and disconnected we have come to feel deeply interrelated. With the relinquishment of masks, defenses and justifications, we enjoy the incredible pleasure of being intimate, open and vulnerable to life.

Collective healing is in supporting each other on this path. It’s worth it because we stop seeing life as an overlay of traumas and realize its exuberance and preciousness. We see connections more than oppositions and adversity begins to look like adventures. Each challenge can present itself as an opportunity to make different choices from those made so far. By learning to take care of ourselves, we become more available to others, expanding our sense of empathy and our circles of affection.

Some guidelines to make friendship with pain

There are many scientific approaches and ancient wisdom traditions that offer ways to embrace pain. As facilitators of Work That Reconnects, it is important to know and experience some of them in order to discover how they can support our work with facilitation of groups and difficult emotions. From my experience with phenomenologically based psychological approaches and trauma studies, I have come to realize that an interesting path of coping with emotional pain involves:

  • Curiosity to investigate the hidden meanings of events
  • Reverence for the truth of phenomena (internal and external world)
  • Admit whatever happened without resizing or fantasizing
  • Perceiving adaptive defenses and cognitive biases
  • Stop the dramatic telling of outdated stories
  • Embrace shame and practice self-compassion
  • Remain open and choose to be real and authentic

These simple guidelines can be found in many of these ways and perhaps, I hope, inspire us to search for effective practices and perspectives to do our work of compassionately witnessing personal pain and the pain of the world.

References

Maté, G. (2008). In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction. Knopf Canada.

Porges, S. W. (2017). The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe. W. W. Norton & Company.

Sheldrake, R. (1996). The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance. Piaget Institute.

 

Juliana Mota Diniz

Juliana Mota Diniz is Brazilian and has translated her essay from its original Portuguese.  She is a social scientist with emphasis on anthropology, co-founder of the Institute for Regenerative Development (IDR), and a facilitator of Gaia Education and Work That Reconnects. She has academic and practical experience related to traditional knowledge systems, socio-biodiversity, ethnodevelopment and decolonization.  Based on phenomenology, ecophilosophy, and regeneration,  she combines her anthropological and holistic experience to facilitate personal and collective learning and transformation that promotes planetary health and protects the Earth’s biocultural memory.  

Juliana  participated in the first WTR training in Brazil, in 2019 under the guidance of Ádrian Vilaseñor Galarza. WTR is one of the foundations of her  personal and professional practice.  She considers it an honor to offer this essay as a contribution to WTR. 

Our Aching Conscience: Moral Injury and the Work That Reconnects

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Audio recording by author

by Molly Brown

Honoring our pain for the world in an interconnected world includes honoring the pain of moral injury that we all share, consciously or not.  Here’s how the Moral Injury Project at Syracuse University defines and describes moral injury: 

Moral injury is the damage done to our conscience or moral compass when we perpetrate, witness, or fail to prevent acts that violate our moral beliefs, values, or ethical codes of conduct. 

Moral Injury breaks the spirit. It makes people question their ability to do the right thing and leaves them contaminated with the feeling that they’re “bad,” “disgusting,” or “beyond redemption.” They may feel that they have an evil twin lurking inside. Moral Injury often leads to self-harm. People turn to alcohol, drugs, and self-isolation to avoid the pain of their feelings. (1)

Military service people have suffered moral injury in wars and military actions for centuries, but only recently has this wounding been recognized as distinct from PTSD (although it can accompany PTSD) and as needing spiritual healing.  This is an issue so close to my heart–the harm we do collectively sending soldiers off to war, into situations where they have to violate their moral values to follow orders or survive.  Are we not then complicit in the moral injury they suffer?

Many indigenous cultures recognize moral injury, calling it by other names.  They recognize when a member has fallen out of harmony and needs to be restored through ceremony, chanting, drumming, and community support.  

The Moral Injury Group at the Philadelphia Veterans Administration Medical Center offers a 12-week program that works with veterans, both individually and in group sessions, to help them explore the moral and spiritual dimension of their military experience, and appropriately address moral and spiritual pain and struggle. (2)

Many of us, both soldiers and civilians, are suffering moral injury by witnessing—and in some cases participating in—acts of violence and oppression.

In today’s world, we all live within systems of oppression, racism, exploitation, extraction, and consumption that likely violate our deepest moral values if we allow ourselves to take it in.  Understanding the concept of moral injury can reveal how many of us, both soldiers and civilians, are suffering moral injury by witnessing—and in some cases participating in—acts of violence and oppression.  When we learn about the many environmental assaults going on today, do we not suffer moral injury?  

The Water Protectors engaged in civil disobedience at the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota have been subjected to “harm compliance” by police, who inflict extreme pain and injury on peaceful protestors to force them to give up.  I believe all parties involved—Water Protectors, police, journalists, and other observers—are likely suffering moral injury as a result. 

In the Work That Reconnects, as we honor our pain for the world, let’s explore ways we can bring moral injury into awareness and into practices like the Truth Mandala.  Simply explaining the concept may be liberating for people, giving them a name for an inchoate feeling they’ve carried within them. Offering community support for talking about the moral injury they’ve suffered can be a first step to healing.  We can also design community healing rituals to help everyone feel at home once again in the family of all beings.

References

  1. The Moral Injury Project, Syracuse University. https://moralinjuryproject.syr.edu/about-moral-injury
  2. The Moral Injury Group: https://blogs.va.gov/VAntage/92169/moral-injury-group-place-of-healing-place-of-peace/

Molly Brown co-authored Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects with Joanna Macy and edits Deep Times journal. Molly brings ecopsychology, the Work That Reconnects, and psychosynthesis to her work writing books and essays, teaching on-line courses, phone coaching, talks and workshops. Her six books include Growing Whole: Self-realization for the Great Turning and Lighting a Candle: Collected Reflections on a Spiritual Life. With Mutima Imani and Constance Washburn, Molly co-directs Spiral Journey, a Facilitator Development Program for the Work That Reconnects   MollyYoungBrown.com.

Recorded by Rebecca Selove

 

Held in Love: Life Stories to Inspire Us through Times of Change

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Audio recording by Molly Brown

Edited by Molly Young Brown and Carolyn Wilbur Treadway
Psychosynthesis Press, 2009

Twelve years ago Deep Times editors Molly and Carolyn edited and published Held in Love. We bring it to your attention now because it is especially relevant to the “Sacred Wisdom, Sacred Earth” theme of this issue of Deep Times and to connection with the sacred that is so much needed in these troubled times.

Held in Love is a moving collection of stories, poems, and artwork from 72 writers and artists who share experiences of connection with a loving Source within and beyond themselves—in times of hardship or unexpected grace, alone, in nature, or with others. These writings and images offer examples of ways love can guide and sustain us through the challenges of the Great Unraveling and the Great Turning.

Endorsements for the book: 

Joanna Macy: “Here in many voices, forms, and stories we encounter afresh the mystery at the core of our existence—the mystery we belong to and essentially are. This beautiful, humble, and amazing book sings my heart and mind awake.”

Bill Plotkin: “We are each uniquely who we are by virtue of our relationships to everything else, including the mysterious totality that holds everything. Not only are we not alone, we are in an intimate dance with all things, a dance that defines us and supports us. In this wonderful collection, Molly and Carolyn have gathered from a host of colleagues poignant stories and poems describing how people discover, often unexpectedly and astonishingly, their full belonging to Earth, Universe, Mystery, Community, or Self.”

Bill McKibben: “Thank you for doing this book. It is a goodhearted, wholehearted one.”

Order Held in Love online or through local brick-and-mortar bookstores everywhere. For more information about the book, visit PsychosynthesisPress.com.

Molly Brown, editor of Deep Times, co-authored Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects with Joanna Macy. Molly brings ecopsychology, the Work That Reconnects, and psychosynthesis to her work writing books and essays, teaching on-line courses, phone coaching, talks and workshops. Her six books include Growing Whole: Self-realization for the Great Turning and Lighting a Candle: Collected Reflections on a Spiritual Life. With Mutima Imani and Constance Washburn, Molly directs and teaches Spiral Journey, a Facilitator Development Program for the Work That Reconnects   MollyYoungBrown.com.

Carolyn Treadway is a therapist, pastoral counselor, social worker, and life coach, now retired after more than 60 years of facilitating change and growth in people’s lives.  She “speaks for Earth” as a climate leader and mentor (trained by Al Gore and the Climate Reality Project), anti-nuclear activist, conference planner, workshop facilitator, writer, editor and photographer.  She has been part of the Work That Reconnects since the early 1980’s. With her husband Roy, she lives in Lacey, Washington. Their three children and four young grandchildren constantly fuel her motivation to preserve our precious Earth. Contact her at Carolyn@PlanetCare.us.

Recorded by Rebecca Selove

Love for the Sake of Life; Live for the Sake of Love

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Book review by Martha O’Hehir

Becoming Gaia: On the Threshold of Planetary Initiation, by Sean Kelly. Integral Imprint Publishing.

Sean Kelly’s new book, Becoming Gaia: On the Threshold of Planetary Initiation, is not an easy read, but it is an important one, because “it takes enormous courage to face our fear.” He helps me find the moral and physical courage Joanna Macy calls forth in the story of “The Shambala Warriors.” https://vimeo.com/191169785

Sean Kelly is steeped in the Work That Reconnects and understands Joanna Macy’s call to a new lifeway for western industrial citizens. He also understands history and post- and meta-modern philosophies and theologies. His grasp of the science of climate change and the current Great Dying is evident. He joins others who see these as the End Times. 

I struggle to read his book because the words and ideas are big and they are true, and they are sometimes scary. I have to read slowly and ponder deeply, especially the beginning chapters of the book. It may not be good news, but at least, I am facing reality. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I am afraid. I am always given food for thought for where we are and how we got here.

I find in Kelly’s book… a way to face and embrace this “planetary initiation.”

At the same time, for practical reasons, like trying to live in the face of global extinctions, injustices, pandemics, genocides, and economic inequities, I have to find a way to get up in the morning. For this, I find in Kelly’s book, especially the last chapter, where he makes distinctions and connections from the perspective of the Work That Reconnects, a way to face and embrace this “planetary initiation.” He brings Joanna’s life message to light in a way that helps me live in the moment while accepting all the pain and joy, the beauty and the moral injury, with integrity, face on, no denial. 

I immediately recognized the last chapter, “Living in End Times: Beyond Hope and Despair,” as the long essay that was initially published online as a response to Jem Bendell’s rather earth-shaking essay/blog of the summer of 2018: “Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy.”(1)   In that essay, Bendell outlined that our planetary jig was up, by our own doing. Kelly’s response did not negate Bendell’s “terminal diagnosis,” but it brought forward important messaging about how to live and face death in the end times. In other words, how do we prepare for “a good death”? 

I recommend reading this last chapter first because, as a WTR facilitator, these words are immediately accessible: easy to understand and useful for workshops. Then, begin at the beginning of the book, and take as much time as you need to ponder and absorb Kelly’s foundational ideas. 

Sean invites us to think of “going forth” more as “planetary hospice workers.”

As facilitators of the Work That Reconnects, we are already hearing less and less about successfully bringing about a Great Turning before the Great Unraveling is complete. There is little time for correcting what is mayo mana, for rethinking our bad ideas that brought us to this moment. Sean invites us to think of “going forth” more as “planetary hospice workers.” Reading this book can prepare us to speak to this new consciousness of a destiny that defies hope and calls for courage as we go forth “to love for the sake of life, and live for the sake of love.”

(1) Bendell, Jem. (2018). Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy. https://jembendell.com/2019/05/15/deep-adaptation-versions/.

_____________________________________________________________

Martha O’Hehir is an interfaith eco-chaplain and a facilitator for Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects. Her primary gifts are her voice, writing, and analytical skills. She has employed these as a musician, liturgist, educator, curriculum writer, retreat facilitator and editor. As an eco-chaplain, Martha joins fellow seekers attracted to Spirit through the Integral Christian Network and Wild Church. As an editor and writer, she serves the American Orff Schulwerk Association and the Work That Reconnects as a member of the editorial boards of their respective journals, The Orff Echo and The Deep Times Journal. In recent years, she has been exploring the kin-dom of plants and their medicine as a way of growing into a more grateful and earth-loving lifeway. Her greatest joys are receiving inspirations from Spirit, journaling, and knowing that her children and former students are blessing the world.

Recorded by Martha M. O’Hehir

Approaching with Reverence

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Audio recording by author

by Petra Bongartz

What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach… When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.     –John O’Donohue

A couple of years ago, I found myself in a most beautiful encounter with wild baboons in the Cape Point Nature Reserve in South Africa where I live. As my friends and I sat quietly, the baboons chose to approach us with both curiosity and gentleness. It felt like they were approaching us in the way we would approach them. Respectfully, careful not to spook us. What ensued were incredible moments of what I can only describe as intimacy with the wild that touched me deeply–hard to put into words. It brought to mind John O’Donohue’s words above.

The experience made me ponder the notion of reverence and what is needed to cultivate this kind of approach to the world, to myself, to others. How would it be to approach the shy, wild, or wounded parts of ourselves with reverence rather than judgment? What would happen if we looked at each other more often from the place of openness, curiosity, and awe that reverence seems to hint at? And whilst being aware that this will be an ongoing dance between forgetting and remembering, how can I embody more often my reverence for life in what or who I encounter? I only need to spend a few hours with family to realize that this is anything but easy. 

Like many other important things in life, for me, increasing the possibility of experiencing this reverent approach requires a slowing down and quietening so that I have space to notice what is in front of me and space for choice to see it afresh. Without that space, I see and react to things from a place of habit and jump into the all too familiar, comfortable and well worn groove of the stories I have about myself, others and the world. Comfortable because I know them so well and thus feel in control. As O’Donohue says, the mind can be ‘arrogant’ in assuming it knows everything there is to know about what’s in front of us! This is hard-wired into our neurobiology for survival and it takes a lot to continuously challenge our own perception and to realize that things are not as they are but as we are. All that we have experienced, and, as epigenetics show us, all that our ancestors experienced, shapes the lens through which we perceive the world around us. 

Reverence requires some ‘unknowing’, a widening of our perception, an allowing of the mystery of the present moment

So reverence requires some ‘unknowing’, a widening of our perception, an allowing of the mystery of the present moment. I am reminded of moments when I am dancing when I have caught a glimpse of my own sacredness or beauty and the miracle of being alive in a body, when I’ve looked at my moving hand in awe and seen it for the miracle of life it is, when I have seen the billions of years of evolution that went into its making, when I felt the connection to all the ancestors who are part of this hand, when I realized anew that this hand will one day no longer exist..  

And then there are the moments of grace when I catch sight of others and see them as more than the person I know, more than a mix of appealing and annoying traits, more than the particular behaviour they engage in. Of course, all too often, I am swept up by the busyness of my thoughts and the perfectly and strategically arranged pathways to the known they lead me on. No space for reverence or unexpected beauty there. 
 
It’s no accident that these moments of opening to reverence happen most often when I am dancing, moving mindfully, or in nature. There, my mind is quieter, I am more connected to my other ways of knowing, my senses, my imagination. And the more I learn about how the brain works, the more I recognise how much practice, commitment, and dedication it takes to continuously see beyond our own biases, stories, and assumptions. It’s for good reason that John O’Donohue mentions the ‘careful rituals of approach’.  

What’s your experience of approaching–life, the world around you, other beings, yourself–with reverence? In what situations, with whom, have you practiced this or where might you want to bring this way of being into play?

Petra Bongartz is a passionate curator of spaces that invite us to be human together. Through movement, creative, relational, and embodied enquiry, she facilitates reconnection with our own wild intelligence. She is a practitioner and facilitator of the Work that Reconnects. Alongside her studies in Movement Medicine, Processwork, and other modalities, she draws on many years of experience of facilitating diverse groups in Africa, Europe, and Asia, whilst working in international development. Originally from Europe, she now lives in South Africa and is most at home in the forest, connecting with all creatures great and small. 

Recorded by Rebecca Selove

A Prayer to the Sacred Infra-natural

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by Michelle Y. Merrill

Recording by author

As a Work That Reconnects facilitator and a biological anthropologist, I love to add some science into my offerings, especially for the Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes and Deep Time phases of the work.

Pablo Carlos Budassi, CC BY-SA 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This prayer, recitation or meditation honors the sacred power that resides within Nature. The practice is an exploration of our own human location in deep time and deep space, our intimacy and dependence on the microcosmic and macrocosmic turnings of our universe. It encourages the practitioner to follow a journey of deep centeredness and vast expansion of their conscious connection to everything. 

The specifics of the recitation, and how you envision each step you take, should be informed by the best scientific consensus available, and may therefore change as scientific understandings change. If some aspects of this recitation are unfamiliar to you, think of it as an opportunity to explore and learn more about your self, your world, and your home in the universe. Once you know about each step and what it means, you may choose to ‘skip over’ or consolidate steps that feel less vital to you, as long as you remember they are there.

Choose a beneficent wish or blessing, to hold respect and gratitude and wonder in your heart and mind as you move through your recitation.

  Choose a beneficent wish or blessing, to hold respect and gratitude and wonder in your heart and mind as you move through your recitation.  In Novasutras circles, we use “May __________ abide in agaya and ubuntu.” (Agaya references the joy, creativity and wonder of the living world; ubuntu is a word from southern Africa that emphasizes interdependence, community and care.)  In more general settings, I often work with “May _______ be suffused with compassion and loving kindness,” for each of the sub-categories. “May _________ receive my respect and gratitude,” is another way to work.  

Feel free to vary the blessing, day by day, in ways that feel most appropriate to you and your experience.  Other options (to be used alone or in combination, perhaps just with All My Relations) include:

  • May ________ be well. May we be free from physical and mental suffering.
  • May ________ know joy. May we be free from useless fear.
  • For human levels, you might include: May we have the devotion, strength and energy to be agents of positive change.

Below you will find an outline of the journey, down into the microcosm, then back up through all our relations that make up the living Earth, then out to the macrocosm. Each of the descriptions offered is a useful example, based on current scientific understanding of the wondrous and beautiful origins and evolution of life and the universe. You may choose to rephrase these based on your understanding (or to be understood by a group sharing the practice).  

It is important to acknowledge that “Western” science is only one way of knowing, and that indigeneous and other faith perspectives also hold great value and insights. You might invite a conversation about these alternative ways of understanding our relationships to Nature, or invite participants to relate their specific cultural stories about how life came to be.

As you go through the Recitation/Meditation below, do your best to envision as many of the things within each categorical blessing as you can, while moving through them with a gentle rhythm. Do not forget to always include yourself, and think of “we” when moving through the organism-macrocosm levels.

One could go into more detail with each on organism-macrocosm section, referencing example organisms, if you wish a longer meditation session. For instance, at the first mammals and all their descendants, you could pause to offer specific blessings to the humpback whales, the coyotes, the pikas, the aardvarks, the koalas, and so forth. You could also only do a sub-section, or choose a few favorite milestones, when a shorter meditation time is available.

The Recitation/Meditation/Prayer to the Sacred Infra-Natural

Start with self

The complex being that is me.

Descend to the Microcosm

  • My many interacting organ systems
  • Each of my organs
  • All of my tissues
  • All of the cells that make up my body, both those with my own genes, and those symbionts that reside on and within me (I also sometimes say “those microbes who dwell with me and do me no harm”)
  • All of the networked organelles and processes within my cells
  • Each of the molecules that is currently a part of me
  • The atoms within me
  • The particles within my atoms – the familiar neutrons, protons, electrons [along with all those leptons and bosons that we’re beginning to detect and understand]
  • The quarks and quanta that make matter and energy possible

Return to Self

You might choose an alternative blessing or offering of gratitude as you step back up the scale to the self.

  • The particles within my atoms
  • The atoms within me
  • Each of the molecules that is currently a part of me…

On up through organelles, cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, to

  • The complex being that is me.

All My Relations: Ancestors and Descendants  (1)

  • My parents and all their descendants (siblings)
  • My grandparents and all their descendants (aunts, uncles, first cousins)
  • All my great-grandparents and all their descendants (second cousins)
  • All my great-great-great-great-great grandparents and all their descendants (seven generations) (2)
  • The first humans and all their descendants (all humans) (3)
  • The first apes and all their descendants (all apes, Hominoidea) 
  • The first monkeys (anthropoid primates) and all their descendants
  • The first primates and all their descendants (all Primates)
  • The first Archonta and all their descendants (primates + tree shrews + colugos + bats)
  • The first placental mammals and all their descendants
  • The first mammals and all their descendants (all mammals)
  • The first amniotes and all their descendants (mammals + reptiles + birds)
  • The first tetrapods and all their descendants (amniotes + amphibians)
  • The first bony fishes and all their descendants (Osteichthyes)
  • The first vertebrates and all their descendants (all vertebrates)
  • The first Bilateria and all their descendants (vertebrates + insects + spiders + tardigrades + worms + molluscs + bryozoans and other bilateral animals)
  • The first animals and all their descendants (all animals)
  • The first Opisthokonts and all their descendants (animals + fungi and some other small groups)
  • The first Eukaryotes and all their descendants (Opisthokonts+plants: things with nucleated cells)
  • The first Life on Earth and all their descendants (all living things on Earth: Eukaryotes, Bacteria, Archaea, and perhaps Viruses)

Expand from biosphere to macrocosm

  • Our shared biosphere (4)
  • The Earth and her entire atmosphere
  • The Earth-Moon system (in its dance)
  • The inner Solar system, from its bright center, through the rocky planets, to the asteroid belt
  • The greater Solar system, out through the gas giants, the Kuiper belt and out to the heliopause
  • The sphere of our radio transmissions, nearly 115 light-years out (in September 2021) and growing each second at the speed of light (5)
  • Our stellar neighborhood, of all the easily visible individual stars
  • Our arm of the great Milky Way galaxy
  • The whole spiraling system of the Milky Way galaxy, from its massive core to its associated “clouds” of stars
  • The dancing gravitational partnership of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies
  • Our local neighborhood of galaxies
  • The great Virgo supercluster of galaxies
  • The visible universe

Return to Biosphere

Walk back through the Virgo supercluster, local galactic neighborhood, Milky Way, spiral arm, stellar neighborhood, radio bubble, heliopause, inner Solar system, Earth-Moon system, Earth and biosphere. Again, you might choose an alternative blessing or offering of gratitude as you work your way back.

Return through Relations to Self

Walk back through all Life on Earth, all Eukaryotes, Opisthokonts, animals, Bilateria, vertebrates, Osteichthyes, tetrapods, amniotes, mammals, placental mammals, Archonta, Primates, anthropoids, apes, humans, seven generations, great grandparents, grandparents, parents. Come back to your self.

Close with gratitude

Expand with gratitude to all that is around and within you: the co-creators that have supported you and made your life possible. Rest in knowing that you are part of the unfolding co-creation of the universe.

————————-

NOTES:

See https://www.exopermaculture.com/2016/05/10/joanna-macy-we-are-expanding-our-identity-from-ego-self-to-eco-self/ for further inspiration. Other inspirations for this work include the 1977 film Powers of Ten – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 and the recent interactive update to that concept, Scale of the Universe – https://htwins.net/scale2/ .

(1) Tree of Life (http://tolweb.org/) is a good place to get the background on this section.  Remember that “all their descendants” may extend even farther into the future than it does into the past. This entire walk goes back about 4 billion years.

(2) Assuming no interbreeding, you would have had 128 such ancestors. If they had an average of over 2.3 offspring who also survived to reproduce, this would be a set of at least 350 distant cousins alive today.

(3) Fossil and genetic evidence suggest the first members of our biological species, Homo sapiens, lived in Africa about 300 thousand years ago (https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-sapiens). The first members of our genus Homo, probably Homo habilis, lived as long as 2.4 million years ago. Our ancestors and the ancestors of what became modern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus) parted ways somewhere around 6 to 8 million years ago.

(4) Considered to include not only all living and previously living matter, but also those components of the lithosphere (minerals), atmosphere (gases) and hydrosphere (water) that are actively influenced and regulated as part of the metabolic cycles of the sum of all organisms on earth.  It’s quite a lovely and complex place.

(5) I based this on the December 24th,1906 broadcast by Reginald Fesseden, as perhaps strong enough to be potentially detectable (see https://www.thoughtco.com/reginald-fessenden-first-radio-broadcast-1991646 , https://www.planetary.org/articles/3390 ). By definition, the radius of this “radio bubble” grows by one light year every year.

Michelle Y. Merrill, Ph.D., is the founder of Novasutras, an ecospiritual organization helping people through the Great Turning. Her background in anthropology, evolutionary science and sustainability education led her to conclude that there is an unmet need for an egalitarian spiritual movement with scientific sensibilities to support change agents. Michelle studied the social behavior of wild bonobos in the rainforests of Congo and orangutans in Indonesia in the late 1990s, gaining a recognition of the importance of social affiliation and cultural learning in all of us apes, while witnessing the loss of rainforests, their inhabitants and indigenous cultures.

Biography recorded by Rebecca Selove

 

Mission, Vision, and Values of the Work That Reconnects Network

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Networks are the only form of organization used by living systems on this planet. These networks result from self-organization, where individuals or species recognize their interdependence and organize in ways that support the diversity and viability of all. Networks create the conditions for emergence, which is how Life changes. – Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze, “Lifecycle of Emergence: Using Emergence to Take Social Innovation to Scale,” BerkanaInstitute.org

MISSION 

  • To design and build an international self-organizing non-hierarchical network of facilitators and community members in the Work That Reconnects for optimal communication, collaboration, inspiration, and mutual support.
  • To promote the Work That Reconnects by building relationships in person and through social media, an interactive website, a periodic journal, and other means.
  • To develop a support system with funding and staff to enable the Work That Reconnects Network to fulfill its vision.

VISION

  • The Work That Reconnects Network provides support, guidance, and inspiration to people all over the world in their work for the Great Turning, specifically by making Work That Reconnects available in diverse communities, schools, universities, businesses, government agencies, and NGOs.
  • The Network actively seeks to incorporate anti-oppression values and learnings in all of its communications, and to support the ongoing development of Work That Reconnects workshop practices along these lines.
  • The Network functions as a vibrant living system, providing communication, education, mutual support, and collaboration in creating and disseminating curricula, practices, books and articles, music, poetry, and art.

VALUES 

  • The Work That Reconnects Network seeks to embody these values: Openness, transparency, connectivity, collaboration, inclusivity, diversity, and kindness, all in service to the health and vibrancy of human communities and all the living systems of planet earth.
  • The Network recognizes the current state of crisis and unraveling of local communities and worldwide living systems and particularly supports activism with eyes wide open to our situation.
  • We believe that contemplating and experiencing, with others, the Spiral of the Work has profound contributions to make.

Meet the WTR Network’s New Weavers

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Helen Sui & Hank Obermayer
Hello everyone this is Helen Sui from China. I’m a full time coach, trainer and facilitator. Before then I was working in an English language training organization for over 19 years. I enjoy teaching, coaching and leading training and workshops. I do training on the topics of management, leadership and self exploring, discovering and development. The day I got to know Active Hope, The Work That Reconnects, I fell in love with it. Covid-19 brought the online opportunity to bring the work to China in a much broader way and it supported thousands of people through the mess, which strengthens my determination to bring this work further and deeper in China. It’s not widely and well known in China yet meanwhile it’s moving forward gradually but non-stop. It feels like the heartbeat, which is not always noticeable but always there. I believe the web is vibrating and the ripples are passing on and on and on… I look forward to getting deeply immersed and involved in the work. I look forward to getting to know and meeting more Shambhala Warriors.
Hank Obermayer
Working primarily in the East Bay and Sonoma County in California, I work as a group process facilitator as well as a one-on-one spiritual and somatic counselor, focusing on the relationships with self, with community, and with the planet. I have deep roots in intentional communities and group decision making as well as in using theater and ritual to support social change, embodied mindfulness and personal growth. I’ve taught, trained and facilitated most of these practices since the early 90s. In groups my primary paradigm is the Work That Reconnects, mixing in my theater, group process, nature awareness and counseling backgrounds. Much of my work involves helping people harvest from expanded consciousness work, whether individual or group experiences, in order to make lasting change. As part of this I use the Work That Reconnects to support groups in the integration process. I appreciate that the Work helps people find their way through their pain to finding a path toward engaging in our world. I facilitate in order to help people do that, using community as a core piece of the work.

Meet the Weaver’s team here.