Sustaining Ourselves
Reflections on a Workshop with Joanna Macy
With talk about sprawl and sustainability, a theme that may emerge from time to time is how does one sustain oneself, how does one keep the energy alive and fresh while doing work (political, cultural, personal, emotional) that appears on one level to be infinitesimal compared to the huge issues that inundate us daily. Measures like SOAR are important, band-aid methods as they are... but then again we’ve had 500 years of unconscious “progress,” and if we examine that progress (with its haughty momentum), often times we are ridiculed for simply questioning the assumptions underlying such behavior.
I attended a workshop with Joanna Macy last month to refresh my energies, to recharge my batteries (as it were), to connect deeper with other change agents to decipher what I’ve been doing right and what things need to be corrected. Joanna Macy is an environmental activist, a Buddhist scholar and a systems analyst. Her workshops are about deep ecology, creating the new story, telling our personal stories, compassionate listening and what it means to be living in these times of intense change. She calls it “The Great Turning.” She talks about the three elements of necessary change. One is called “Holding;” these are the legislative actions, the protests, the nonviolent direct actions. The second is “Institutional reforms” and innovations while the third is the “Changing of consciousness.” She was emphatic that these three have no hierarchical structure to them. They are all necessary, working in tandem with each other. HopeDance has explored each one and has also examined each’s limitations if and when one sees its specific mode as the only method in working for a paradigm shift. A fluidity, a flexibility, a resiliency must become inherent in one’s dialogue and actions to include the other two elements. Altering one’s consciousness to embody interdependency without the knowledge of political power could be dangerous. Political action without the understanding of the need for consciousness change could be devoid of a sustainable potency. Corporations making changes and renovations without the wisdom of interdependency as well as the necessary political restructuring of the transnational corporations can become impotent and hysterically meaningless. Joanna creates a safe space where activists can actually let down and feel what they are doing. Feel the grief of the world’s suffering that we are responding to. Feel the courage, the fear, the despair, the joy... all of it while trying to make a difference in a world that appears to be going on as usual toward its own demise. Her facilitated exercises are poignant and deep. Fifty people attended the 19th Peace Retreat at La Casa de Maria, people who are involved in disarmament, permaculture, wilderness treks, peace-making, publishing, building intentional communities, compassionate listening, local organizing, all intent on expanding our roles to include spirit, feelings and a camaraderie that goes beyond the daily details of one’s organization.
In one exercise we were to walk around the grounds and find something that represented a loss of some kind. And then to return to the group where we presented these symbolic objects on a white sheet outside in the pleasant sunshine. Cups of water were sincerely presented to represent the loss of fresh water; another brought bark that reminded her of the horror of human skin being embedded into the basement walls when the US rockets crashed through the hospitals during the US aggression against Iraq. Others left seeds, soil, “weeds,” branches... all representing various losses. Flowers were brought forth reminding us of the loss of innocence, the loss of wonder and imagination (“my grandchildren are just glued to the television”). I presented a raggedy old tennis ball I found near the tennis court symbolizing the loss of joy and playfulness in sports (it’s becoming more and more fierce, competitive, and corporatized).
I was astounded by the depth of peoples feelings, the sincerity, and the amount of pain they could tolerate and be motivated by. Throughout the four days, we had opportunities to speak about our passions, how we get so busy and forget why we are doing what we are doing. There were numerous times we would be sitting in a dyad with another person sharing stories, both insightful and evocative, or in the large group speaking about what we wanted others to know about or what kind of support we needed or what is up for us in the near future. It always inspires me to be with people who live deeply, who can listen profoundly, who can speak about their failures, their admissions of being asleep, their journeys into waking up, their shifts.... Evenings were full of music, chanting and dancing. We learned a dance commemorating a dance that a group of Latvians taught Joanna and her husband Fran during their workshop in a city damaged by the radiation of Chernobyl.
One evening, as we were singing in the chapel, a few of us saw the glow from Vandenberg at the launch of an anti-aircraft missile. We “prayed” it would fail... and were ecstatic to find out later that it indeed had failed. In one exercise, Joanna walked around and paired us, one to be in the inside of the circle and one on the outside. The people who formed the outer circle were our ancestors; the inner circle were folks living 100 years in the future in a sustainable world that had taken root. We sat in front of each other. The future, inner circle beings were to listen. The outer circle ancestors were to speak.
Joanna started the exchange with them [to paraphrase], “We have heard much about you, about your struggles with combatting the old paradigm of destroying the earth, but I have never actually spoken with such a person. Please tell us how it was for you?” And then the ancestors spoke. We moved on, and the ancestors had a chance to speak again to another face, answering the question: what changes had taken place when you chose to start making a difference. They spoke while the inner circle future people listened. Then we shifted again, to another face with another question: how did you sustain yourself during this period of the great turning. And again the future people listened. I was in the inner circle, listening to three ancestors’ stories. Then we had our chance to speak about what we had heard, to speak to our ancestors, to those pioneers who broke the ground for where we sit today. I felt an honoring of ancestors that I had never experienced before. I respect them as pioneers with a fierce determination to help create a positive future. I witnessed a commitment based on a saddened heart that could no longer simply sit idle and watch the destruction of species, natural resources, lives, and ecosystems.
If you are involved with a group of concerned citizens, friends, or associates, I recommend this exercise. It helps us remember why we are involved in social action, why we are trying to make a difference and it helps us share with others the awesome challenges we are faced with in our own work and in our various organizations. [Many more of these types of exercises are found in Joanna Macy’s book co-written with Molly Brown called Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World , with a Foreword by Matthew Fox; 800-567-6772.]
[this was written years ago; but still pertinent.]
