Dear Zhiwa, what a tribute and terrific overview of Joanna’s great work, and a realisation that I probably found your ‘planetary hospice’ work from her too. How wonderful and to hear of that special date with her.
I never met Joanna in person sadly. However I did meet her once in a dream. I’m a person who rarely remembers dreams but this one was extraordinary - I knew I had travelled to a land with bays, water and sunshine - not in rainy Ireland where I live. Then I was in a wooden modern room for a talk with about 50 others. It must have been after lunch as I chose a spot near the window as I know I dose easily. I then realised our speaker was entering the room behind me.. it was Joanna in white, yellows with a turban! She came right by me, stopped — then took my face in her hands and deeply smiled at me! It was extraordinary, unforgettable - I had just begun teaching ecoliteracy, developing an eco pedagogy for creatives and so unsure of my new role - I had never imagined myself as an educator - the nerves!!. Joanna’s work of course is an ever unfolding lodestone for me and our eco creative community, and so loved how you share how her work is illuminated by all our work.
Will be sharing your post… thank you Zhiwa. 💚🙏✨👥🌍🪷
What a beautiful piece of writing. Never having worked with Joanna, I didn’t know what she really was all about and so I appreciate the introduction. In a comparable reality of great beings in my life, Lex Hixon was a light who left us and Brian Swimme still shines. A yearlong project with Lex was spiritual practitioners from different religions meeting monthly at my house to demonstrate that the heart of all religions is the same neighbor as yourself, and I felt that reading this. I am not Buddhist, but I am you.
I’d also like to share this short video of Joanna speaking about Embracing Pain - a video I’ve returned to time and time again, because each time it offers me a fresh portal into how not to get stuck in despair, but instead turn to joy and compassion:
Thank you Tham Zhiwa for this extraordinarily beautiful essay, which is, in fact, a small book on Joanna Macy, Buddhism, Ecological Consciousness & the Great Turning.
I’d like to share with you a poem, that I wrote on Christmas Day 2024:
How then, shall we live?
Morning after morning waking up
To the heartbreaking recognition
That this age we inhabit is rife with peril
Wrought by the depth of our separation
Not only from our ever bounteous Earth Mother
But also from our more-than-human kin
When we have forgotten the taste of the sacred
And our original thirst before the eternal forgetting
Provides no solace as we continue on our
Ongoing daily pilgrimage of the breath
Entering a new country with nothing to hold us
How shall we find and hold on to a sense of awe?
From the many mythologies and cosmologies
That languish in the aridity of our rejection
Perhaps we can extricate some expansive spaces
In which to breathe these questions out into the ether
As we allow the mind to settle and abide in the heart
Aware of the body thrumming to primordial vibrations
Whose rhythm ebbs and flows in infinite fractals
Where sound is clapped out in beats of silence
While light and darkness sway in eternal dance
Revealing that grief’s wellspring is ever brimming with love.
NB: This poem posted on Christmas Day addresses the question asked in Ezekiel 33:10, “How then shall we live?”
For the people of God in any culture and under any circumstances, it has always been imperative that they develop and maintain a enquiring lifestyle that conforms to truth and reality.
I'm back to say that I just cross-posted this to my Substack subscribers, with this message from me:
"This tribute to Joanna Macy is from a writer who says so many things I say and better than I say them. I read a lot of pundits and I get well-informed, and then I read a brilliant writer and it makes me think in the bigger perspectives I gravitate to about what is causal to what’s going on which is key to changing things. You don’t have to know Joanna Macy's work to understand what Tham Zhiwa says, but for a little framework Chat DPT gave me a sentence: “The Work That Reconnects is a journey that moves through Gratitude, Honoring Our Pain for the World, Seeing with New Eyes, and Going Forth, guiding people from awareness to empowered action for life on Earth.”
Dear Zhiwa, what a tribute and terrific overview of Joanna’s great work, and a realisation that I probably found your ‘planetary hospice’ work from her too. How wonderful and to hear of that special date with her.
I never met Joanna in person sadly. However I did meet her once in a dream. I’m a person who rarely remembers dreams but this one was extraordinary - I knew I had travelled to a land with bays, water and sunshine - not in rainy Ireland where I live. Then I was in a wooden modern room for a talk with about 50 others. It must have been after lunch as I chose a spot near the window as I know I dose easily. I then realised our speaker was entering the room behind me.. it was Joanna in white, yellows with a turban! She came right by me, stopped — then took my face in her hands and deeply smiled at me! It was extraordinary, unforgettable - I had just begun teaching ecoliteracy, developing an eco pedagogy for creatives and so unsure of my new role - I had never imagined myself as an educator - the nerves!!. Joanna’s work of course is an ever unfolding lodestone for me and our eco creative community, and so loved how you share how her work is illuminated by all our work.
Will be sharing your post… thank you Zhiwa. 💚🙏✨👥🌍🪷
What a beautiful piece of writing. Never having worked with Joanna, I didn’t know what she really was all about and so I appreciate the introduction. In a comparable reality of great beings in my life, Lex Hixon was a light who left us and Brian Swimme still shines. A yearlong project with Lex was spiritual practitioners from different religions meeting monthly at my house to demonstrate that the heart of all religions is the same neighbor as yourself, and I felt that reading this. I am not Buddhist, but I am you.
Dear Zhiwa,
I’d also like to share this short video of Joanna speaking about Embracing Pain - a video I’ve returned to time and time again, because each time it offers me a fresh portal into how not to get stuck in despair, but instead turn to joy and compassion:
https://youtu.be/7fnEUhZIirw?si=igmRIjGio8xltMne
Thank you Tham Zhiwa for this extraordinarily beautiful essay, which is, in fact, a small book on Joanna Macy, Buddhism, Ecological Consciousness & the Great Turning.
I’d like to share with you a poem, that I wrote on Christmas Day 2024:
How then, shall we live?
Morning after morning waking up
To the heartbreaking recognition
That this age we inhabit is rife with peril
Wrought by the depth of our separation
Not only from our ever bounteous Earth Mother
But also from our more-than-human kin
When we have forgotten the taste of the sacred
And our original thirst before the eternal forgetting
Provides no solace as we continue on our
Ongoing daily pilgrimage of the breath
Entering a new country with nothing to hold us
How shall we find and hold on to a sense of awe?
From the many mythologies and cosmologies
That languish in the aridity of our rejection
Perhaps we can extricate some expansive spaces
In which to breathe these questions out into the ether
As we allow the mind to settle and abide in the heart
Aware of the body thrumming to primordial vibrations
Whose rhythm ebbs and flows in infinite fractals
Where sound is clapped out in beats of silence
While light and darkness sway in eternal dance
Revealing that grief’s wellspring is ever brimming with love.
NB: This poem posted on Christmas Day addresses the question asked in Ezekiel 33:10, “How then shall we live?”
For the people of God in any culture and under any circumstances, it has always been imperative that they develop and maintain a enquiring lifestyle that conforms to truth and reality.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jayasreesrivastava/p/how-then-shall-we-live?r=740b5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Beautiful tribute Zhiwa, thank you!
I'm back to say that I just cross-posted this to my Substack subscribers, with this message from me:
"This tribute to Joanna Macy is from a writer who says so many things I say and better than I say them. I read a lot of pundits and I get well-informed, and then I read a brilliant writer and it makes me think in the bigger perspectives I gravitate to about what is causal to what’s going on which is key to changing things. You don’t have to know Joanna Macy's work to understand what Tham Zhiwa says, but for a little framework Chat DPT gave me a sentence: “The Work That Reconnects is a journey that moves through Gratitude, Honoring Our Pain for the World, Seeing with New Eyes, and Going Forth, guiding people from awareness to empowered action for life on Earth.”
"I hooked up with this after finding Zhiwa's best takedown of trump I have seen: https://substack.com/@panpsychic/note/c-148289596."
PS: I just realized this message went with another post of Zhiwa's, that I went ahead and also sent to my subscribers: "PLANETARY HOSPICE 2025
Becoming Spiritual Midwives for a Hotter, Wetter Earth" https://substack.com/@panpsychic/p-167792895
My comments were to thank you for sharing the thought provoking article. I appreciate your passion for finding light amidst this chaos.
Thoughtful tribute, thanks a lot 🙏