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Befriending Our Despair: Guidance from Joanna Macy

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Joanna Rogers Macy is an environmental activist, author, and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. In this short video she advises that pain alerts us to what needs attention. Pain is not the enemy of cheerfulness, but tells us there is suffering. When we face suffering, our hearts and eyes open to beauty. We are not alone in our despair and when we have the courage to speak of it, it cracks open so the love can be found. The key is not being afraid of the pain, not being afraid of the world’s suffering. If you aren’t afraid, nothing can stop you.

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You can find out more about Joanna Macy and her work at the Great Transition Initiative.

Become involved with Work That Reconnects Network—a community of facilitators and supporters linked together for communication, collaboration and mutual support to take positive action.

Take 7 minutes for this guided meditation on ending suffering with Thich Nhat Hanh.

Reflections (19)

Barbara Alaimo

Pain like grief needs to be embraced so that we can move through it. It is not to be feared or avoided because only in fully recognizing how we feel, can we continue to move forward. We have a oneness in nature that helps us to appreciate its beauty and its cycles including its deaths.

Laurena

Down to earth! Real! I need to affirm...pain is not the enemy of cheerfulness. Pain is not the enemy of cheerfulness. Pain....

Lisa Rogers

Such well spoken wisdom. Thank you.

Stell Seeley

Oh, such a kindred Spirit, thank you for helping me understand.
Love, stell

david doane

I certainly agree with and liked Joanna's emphasizing that pain is part of life and pain is a signal that something is causing the pain and calls for our attention. It is sad that we have created so much unnecessary pain for ourselves and our planet. Our challenge is to live and suffer pain in a way that does not create unnecessary pain.

Amelia

I love her walk through nature. The video has a beautiful setting. I think it is important to see suffering as an alert to what might be wrong and to draw our attention to it. I, too, felt physical suffering when the leaf was picked. I am glad to find a community of people who share the "love of the leaf," as Cedrus stated so eloquently.

Patrick

To hold great love and great suffering is to experience our humanity in its utter fullness. }:- â¤ï¸ anonemoose monk

Kit

"Despair is our covering of our love for the world"

Wayne

The arrogance of perception and the perception of arrogance...

Mark Stowe

We get old to soon....and wise to late. Some learn from laughter and joy...most learn from pain and suffering. As Nature gets distant for so many of us, as technology and politics occupy more of our time we finally begin to understand. Just look at the issues our children are now fighting for, gun control, climate change, I fear if we do not listen to our children, and take money out of politics this will be the end of us...by then again I suppose this is as well but the nature of things. All things borne come to an end...I just wish we could go out with a little more class...and love in our hearts.

John

The power of this message emerges in Joanna's childlike awe and feel for Nature, juxtaposed with her crude extraction of the glittering leaf from its nest, significantly presented as sub-text, while metaphorically evincing the enigmatic quality of our evolving existence.

Cedrus

I agree with everything she says. Everything.

And then the action following the words: the leaf is picked into an ego-driven (her desire to have the leaf for her own) death. Why not just let it be? Let it continue to have its own life and continue to share its magnificence for its unknown and God-given time on earth. This was the suffering for me...that came from the love of the leaf.

It struck me to the core. More than anything else she said.

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Befriending Our Despair: Guidance from Joanna Macy

Reflections (19)

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