The truth of our inter-existence, made real to us by our pain for the world, helps us see with new eyes. It brings fresh understandings of who we are and how we are related to each other and the universe. We begin to comprehend our own power to change
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| By Dori Midnight |
and heal. We strengthen by growing living connections with past and future generations, and our brother and sister species.
Then, ever again, we go forth into the action that calls us. With others whenever and wherever possible, we set a target, lay a plan, step out. We don’t wait for a blueprint or fail-proof scheme; for each step will be our teacher, bringing new perspectives and opportunities. Even when we don’t succeed in a given venture, we can be grateful for the chance we took and the lessons we learned. And the spiral begins again.
There are hard things to face in our world today, if we want to be of use. Gratitude, when it’s real, offers no blinders. On the contrary, in the face of devastation and tragedy it can ground us, especially when we’re scared. It can hold us steady for the work to be done.
The activist’s inner journey appears to me like a spiral, interconnecting four successive stages or movements that feed into each other. These four are:
- opening to gratitude,
- owning our pain for the world,
- seeing with new eyes,
- going forth.
The sequence repeats itself, as the spiral circles round, but ever in new ways. The spiral is fractal in nature: it can characterize a lifetime or a project, and it can also happen in a day or several times a day. The spiral begins with gratitude, because that quiets the frantic mind and brings us back to source. It reconnects us with our empathy and personal power. It helps us to be more fully present to our world. Grounded presence provides the psychic space for acknowledging the pain we carry for our world.
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| By Angella Gibbons |
In owning this pain, and daring to experience it, we learn that our capacity to “suffer with” is the true meaning of compassion. We begin to know the immensity of our heart-mind, and how it helps us to move beyond fear. What had isolated us in private anguish now opens outward and delivers us into wider reaches of our world as lover, world as self.
The Spiral of the Work That Reconnects
Coming Back to Life (NSP 1998) provides both theory and step by step methods in the Work That Reconnects. Here is an overview.
Chapter 1. To Choose Life
This is the aim of the Work That Reconnects: help us take part in the epochal shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization. This Great Turning is happening now on many fronts. Its three main dimensions--(1) holding actions, to save lives and species; (2) alternative structures for a livable future; and (3) shift in consciousness, cognitive, perceptual, and spiritual--are all essential and mutually reinforcing.
Chapter 2. The Greatest Danger: Apatheia, the Deadening of Mind and Heart
Given the widespread suffering of our time, as well as the dangers confronting us, sorrow arises, and fear and anger. "Pain for our world" is a normal, healthy response; but cultural, political, and psychological factors lead us to repress this pain--at enormous cost. This repression, or psychic numbing, is dispelled through the Work That Reconnects.
Chapter 3. The Basic Miracle: Our True Nature and Power
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WTR and Youth
The Work That Reconnects has been used with children and young people from the beginning. They have benefited greatly from the approach and practices. It is high time that we devote a page to the specific methods best suited to youth, and to people's experiences guiding the work. When we look at the goals of the work and the theoretical foundations as laid out on pages 58 and 59 of Coming Back to Life, we see that these are appropriate and easily accessible to children.
We will use this page in several ways:
- share specific exercises designed/adapted for youth that serve to "reconnect" with all life and that can fit into the spiral of the WTR;
- share ideas, questions and advice related to working with youth and
- share contact information for the people who are offering these programs/ experiences.
We Want to Hear From You! If you have exercises or adaptions for youth that you’d like to share for posting on the webpage, please send a detailed description to:
kathleenrude [at] mac.com
Please include: a step-by-step description of the exercise; age of children; number of participants; venue; time allotted; feedback on experience.
An Exercise You Can Use When Giving A Talk
Chris Johnstone, Great Turning Times, December '08
The central plot-line of this work follows a spiral of four elements: gratitude, honouring pain for the world, seeing with new eyes, and going forth. I've found the combination, and sequence, of these elements allows the emergence of something much more than the sum of the parts.
At a talk I gave recently, I asked people to divide in pairs and listen to each other completing the following sentences.
"Things I love about our world include..."
"Concerns I have about our world include..."
"A perspective I find inspiring or refreshing is..."
"Steps I can take to participate in the Great Turning include..."
This was a short and simple way of moving through these four elements. With two minutes for each sentence, it took about ten minutes each way, yet the process deeply touched many of those present. I've also used these four starts to sentences in my personal journaling, starting a fresh page with each one. Whenever I'm not sure what to write, I just start the sentence again and see what naturally follows. It has been liberating, a time of kindling the spark.
Read more...
"The Great Turning Times" For a gold mine of information about the Work That Reconnects in the UK and beyond, subscribe to Chris Johnstone's quarterly email newsletter, "The Great Turning Times." Write to him at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
, with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line or visit his website, www.greatturningtimes.org.
Holon Training by Gesellschaft für angewandte Tiefenökologie e.V.
(Society for Applied Deep Ecology, Germany)
Climate change, extinction of species, natural disaster, the foreseeable ending of cheap oil, poverty, loss of jobs, social injustice – the signs of crisis are manifold. They are related to many different areas and occur more and more frequently. All dangers and damage to the foundations of life, that we see happening, are consequences of human action. This crisis in all its different implications affects us all.
The Chinese character for ›crisis‹ connotes ›danger and opportunity‹. We got used to the idea that the existing institutions of economy, politics, religion and science come up with solutions. In this crisis they prove to be more or less
inefficient, while at the same time on a grass root level a new mindset towards life, values and the position of humans in the world evolves. It heralds a turning from the industrial grow society to a sustainable society.
It emerges in our time. To encourage the emergence of this new consciousness, to support people on their way to a new orientation, who are asking ever deeper questions and to experience a way of acting that happens in groups and gives way to a larger whole – for all that we offer the holon- training. It is a one-year group process that supports the new way of seeing. It can help to assimilate this paradigm in our life and act from it.
Read more...
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Here in California I began the new year at the Franciscan center of San Damiano with some forty colleagues at a week-long facilitators retreat. Among the many ways I miss Fran, certainly one is as a thinking partner. He had such a lovely, unhurried way of focusing his attention on the matter at hand, there hardly seemed anything I couldn't sort out, sift through, and clarify, when we looked at it together. So a year ago, After he died, I told Anne I wanted to sit down with some colleagues in the Work That Reconnects to look at where it seemed to be going.
One of the concerns I brought relates to wide-spread borrowing of its interactive exercises to use them in other settings. A number of them are often taken separately and inserted into other programs, classes and curricula as an enlivening change from the usual lecture format. Desiring to share the Work, I have, from the very begining, offered it as a "give-away," establishing no conditions or credentials for its use; but recently I worry. Is the Work That Reconnects in danger of being dismembered or trivialized when its exercises are taken out of context and often conducted in an abbreviated fashion? Do I or we, who know the depth and full range of the Work, have a responsibility to protect its integrity? And how?
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The central purpose of the Work that Reconnects is to help people uncover and experience their innate connections with each other and with the systemic, self-healing powers in the web of life, so that they may be enlivened and motivated to play their part in creating a sustainable civilization. In order to do this, we pursue these contributing goals:
- to provide people the opportunity to experience and share with others their innermost responses to the present condition of our world
- to reframe their pain for the world as evidence of their interconnectedness in the web of life, and hence of their power to take part in its healing
- to provide people with concepts--from systems science, deep ecology, or spiritual traditions--which illumine this power, along with exercises which reveal its play in their own lives
- to provide methods by which people can experience their interdependence with, their responsibility
- to, and the inspiration they can draw from past and future generations, and other life-forms
- to enable people to embrace the Great Turning as a challenge which they are fully capable of meeting in a variety of ways, and as a privilege in which they can take joy
- to bring people into mutual support and collaboration in working for the world
These assumptions are the basis for the Work that Reconnects:
- This world, in which we are born and take our being, is alive.
It is not our supply house and sewer; it is our larger body. The intelligence that evolved us from star dust and interconnects us with all beings is sufficient for the healing of our Earth community, if we but align with that purpose.
- Our true nature is far more ancient and encompassing than the separate self defined by habit and society.
We are as intrinsic to our living world as the rivers and trees, woven of the same intricate flows of matter/energy and mind. Having evolved us into self-reflexive consciousness, the world can now know itself through us, behold its own majesty, tell its own stories--and also respond to its own suffering.
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Joanna offers extended trainings for those who have experienced an introduction to the Work That Reconnects in a weekend workshop or a course (see Joanna's public teaching schedule). These 10 or more day "intensives" offer theory and practice in despair and empowerment, deep ecology, and deep time work. Intensives at other locations are often sponsored by local organizations and groups (see calendar).
Each intensive is distinctive in character and in the discoveries we make, while adhering to the following goals:
- To enlarge our vision and capacity for the part we each can play in the shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization.
- To understand cognitively and to integrate psychologically and spiritually the guiding assumptions of the Work that Reconnects.
- To build strong, lasting connections with sister and brother warriors for life on Earth, and to uncover the courage and creativity that mutual trust brings forth.
- To review our lives and work, assessing our gifts, and clarifying the roles we want to play in the healing of our world. An intensive provides conceptual and process tools to apply in teaching, counseling, and organizing. It is not so much training in facilitating groups as an immersion in the new understandings it generates.
If you have experienced a workshop or a course with Joanna or you have been introduced to the Work That Reconnects by someone else, and you are interested in further information on an intensive, please contact info[at]joannamacy.net.
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