JOANNA MACY and the GREAT TURNING
MELVIN McLEOD: You have had a long and influential career as a Buddhist thinker and writer, social justice activist, and respected voice in the environmental movement. You are also the root teacher of the “Work That Reconnects,” which you describe as a body of theory and practice that helps people “experience their innate connections with each other and the self-healing powers of the web of life, transforming despair and overwhelm into inspired, collaborative action.” Why is this work important now?
JOANNA MACY: I think the most important thing we need to hear is the voice inside us which connects us to all beings and to the whole web of life. That is needed now to counteract the crippling of the modern self, which is cruelly contained, as in a prison cell, by the hyper-individualism of the last five centuries.
When Thich Nhat Hanh was asked what we most need to do for the sake of our world, he said “to hear within ourselves the sounds of the earth crying.” I believe it’s true. The earth is crying, deep in our consciousness. Sometimes it reaches us.
The starting place of this work is the admonition to choose life, or, as
