work that reconnects
“The central purpose of the Work that Reconnects is to help uncover and experience their innate connections with each other and with the systemic, self-healing powers of the web of life, so that they may be enlivened and motivated to play their part in creating a sustainable civilization.”
Joanna Macy
How does it work?
♥ Provides practices and perspectives drawn from systems science, Deep Ecology, and many spiritual traditions that elicit our existential connectivity with the web of life through space and time.
♥ Reframes our pain for the world as evidence of our mutual belonging in a relational universe, and hence our power to take action on behalf of life.
♥ Awakens stamina and buoyancy to live with full awareness of both the Great Turning and the Great Unraveling, historically and in present time, and to embrace the uncertainty.
♥ Awakens us to the systemic injustice, racism, and oppression of the Industrial Growth Society, and generates our commitment to transform all our institutions for the benefit of all humans, whatever their color, culture, religion, gender identity, and history.
♥ Affirms that our intention to act for the sake of all beings, and to become allies to all oppressed or marginalised people, can become organising principles of our lives.
♥ Helps us identify the strengths and resources we can mobilise in our commitment to the self-healing of the world.
♥ Presents the Great Turning as a challenge that every one of us, in collaboration with others, is fully capable of meeting in our own distinctive ways.
Core elements of The Work That Reconnects
Our Earth is alive.
Our true nature is far more ancient and encompassing than the separate selfdefined by habitand Western society.
Our experience of moral pain for our world springs from our interconnectedness with all beings, including humans of all cultures,
from which also arise our powers to act on their behalf.
Unblocking occurs when our pain for the world is not only intellectually validated, but also experienced and expressed.
When were connect with life, by willingly enduring our pain for it, the mind retrieves its natural clarity.
THe experience of reconnection with the Earth community arouses desire to act on its behalf, as well as on behalf of humankind.