Widening Circles
Dear friends,
I’m writing with a heart both full and broken open—the kind of heart Joanna Macy taught could hold the whole universe. At 96 years old, surrounded by loved ones, Joanna has now transitioned into what comes next. A lifelong activist, scholar, teacher, mother, and earth-being, Joanna gifted this world with her wisdom and love. And now, more than ever, we need wise and powerful ancestors. May her teachings and her love continue to ripple outward.
At the Climate Justice Hive, Joanna’s lineage runs deep. Through our connection with the Joanna Macy Center for Resilience and Regeneration at Naropa University, her teachings are quite literally rooted in our organizational home. It’s this lineage that led us to participate in this spring’s Reconnecting for a Just and Regenerative Future conference, hosted by the Center—a gathering where we piloted our participatory ecosystem mapping to support the Great Turning: the shift from an industrial growth society to a life-affirming one.
Joanna Macy’s life’s work has always pointed toward the truth of interconnection, reminding us all that the story of separation is just that—a story.
For me personally, Joanna’s teachings were a turning point. I first encountered her work in 2006 as a student in Naropa’s Contemplative Psychotherapy program. Her words helped shape my sense of self and of belonging to this Earth, and they’ve carried me into the work of building the Hive.
Whether it’s about facing threshold guardians, the magic of emergent properties (two gases oxygen and hydrogen making a liquid – water? What?!), the welcoming of despair and grief for what is happening in and to our world as proof of my indestructible interconnection, or encouragement to just keep showing up, these have all been touchstones for me. (If you haven’t read/listened to Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience & Creative Power, I highly recommend it.)
Today, at the Hive, we honor Joanna’s legacy not just as memory, but as practice.
We see our work as a living expression of the Great Turning itself –
– By growing movement infrastructure.
– By mapping ecosystems so movements can see themselves and find each other.
– By helping shift us from fragmentation to interconnection.
– By holding courageous space as systems crumble and new possibilities emerge.
In Joanna’s words, the Great Turning is “the essential adventure of our times.”
At the Hive, we aim to carry her legacy forward by weaving together the global network of people and organizations holding this work. To amplify our collective impact. To build stronger community. And to help birth the more loving world we all long for.
So look around you.
Gather your people.
Link arms.
And know: you are part of the circle too.
With gratitude for walking alongside us,
– Lodi
On behalf of the Climate Justice Hive
P.S. For a beautiful remembrance of Joanna’s life, you can read Tricycle’s obituary [here].
“Don’t waste your spirit trying to compute your short-term chances of success, because you are in it for the long haul. And it will be a long haul, with inevitable risks and hardships ahead for all. So just keep on, steady and spunky like a Khampa pony crossing the mountains. And then keep on keeping on, because in the long run it’s perseverance that counts.”
—Joanna Macy, World As Lover, World As Self, 1991
In World as Lover, World as Self, Joanna Macy explains that compassion provides “the juice, the power, the passion to move. When you open to the pain of the world, you move, you act.” Compassion provides the heat but alone it can be too hot. By itself, compassion can lead to burnout, so you need prajna: “insight into the radical interdependence of all phenomena.” With prajna, “you know that actions undertaken with pure intent have repercussions throughout the web of life, beyond what you can measure or discern.” Alone wisdom can be too cool, too conceptual to sustain you so you need the heat of compassion. Truly, the two are inseparable. Without wisdom, compassion is idiot compassion. From wisdom, from the understanding of interdependence, genuine compassion naturally arises.
