Macy, Joanna
88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Joanna Macy | |
|---|---|
 Macy in 2006 | |
| Born | Mary Joanne Rogers May 2, 1929 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Died | July 19, 2025 (aged 96) Berkeley, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Author, Buddhist scholar, environmental activist |
| Spouse | Francis Macy (m. 1953; died 2009) |
| Relatives |
|
88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
“Active Hope is waking up to the beauty of life on whose behalf we can act. We belong to this world.”
JOANNA MACY PH.D, AUTHOR & TEACHER, IS A SCHOLAR OF BUDDHISM, SYSTEMS THINKING AND DEEP ECOLOGY. A RESPECTED VOICE IN MOVEMENTS FOR PEACE, JUSTICE, AND ECOLOGY, SHE INTERWEAVES HER SCHOLARSHIP WITH LEARNINGS FROM SIX DECADES OF ACTIVISM.
Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and postmodern science. The many dimensions of this work are explored in her thirteen books, which include three volumes of poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke with translation and commentary.
As the root teacher of The Work That Reconnects, Joanna has created a ground-breaking framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application.
Based in Berkeley, California, close to her children and grandchildren, Joanna has spent many years in other lands and cultures, viewing movements for social change and exploring their roots in religious thought and practice.
Since the early 1980’s her travel was governed by invitations to teach the group work that she and a growing number of colleagues were developing. Many thousands of people around the world have participated in Joanna’s workshops and trainings. These methods, incorporated in the Work That Reconnects, have been adopted and adapted yet more widely in classrooms, community centers, and grassroots organizing.
In the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, this work helps people transform despair and apathy into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world as our larger living body. This perspective frees us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth.
TO SUPPORT JOANNA’S
ONGOING WORK
“Of all the dangers
we face, from climate chaos to nuclear war, none is so great as the deadening of our response.”
Work
Over the course of her life, Joanna has given much thought to the moral and psychological challenges presented by nuclear weapons and energy production. Some of her writings regarding Nuclear Guardianship and Guardianship Ethic will be shown on this site in the near future.
The Work That Reconnects
THE WORK THAT RECONNECTS IS A FORM OF GROUP WORK DESIGNED TO FOSTER THE DESIRE AND ABILITY TO TAKE PART IN THE HEALING OF OUR WORLD.
Since its inception in the late 1970’s, it has helped countless thousands of people around the globe find solidarity and courage to act despite rapidly worsening social and ecological conditions.
This work is also known as Deep Ecology Work (as in Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan), Active Hope (as in Japan) and Despair and Empowerment Work (as it was known in its first years).
This work can be done alone and has enriched many individual lives, but it is designed for groups. Its effect is deeper and more enduring when experienced interactively with others, for its approach is improvisational and its impact is synergistic.
Workshops have varied in length from an evening to a full lunar cycle.
From the first public workshop in 1978 it has been the aim of the Work to help people trust their raw experience and give voice to what they see and feel is happening to their world. Its interactive exercises frequently involve role-play and a shift in assumed identity; the Work aims to engage and expand people’s moral imagination, bringing wider perspectives on our world, while fostering both compassion and creativity.
CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATION
The Work That Reconnects is informed by Deep Ecology, systems thinking, Gaia theory, and spiritual traditions (especially Buddhist and indigenous teachings), as well as group wisdom from earlier workshops. Common to all of these is a non-linear view of reality. It illuminates the mutuality at play in self-organizing systems, and unleashes the power of reciprocity.
Furthermore, central to our use of systems thinking and the Buddha Dharma is the recognition that self-reflexive consciousness is a function of choice-making. Whatever the limitations of our life, we are still free to choose which version of reality –or story about our world– we value and want to serve. We can choose to align with business as usual , the unraveling of living systems, or the creation of a life-sustaining society.
STRUCTURE OF THE WORK
The experiential work follows a spiral sequence flowing through four stages beginning with gratitude, then, honoring our pain for the world, seeing with new eyes, and finally, going forth.
These consecutive stages reflect a natural sequence common to psychological growth and spiritual transformation. The Spiral is like a fractal, governing the overall structure of the workshop while also arising in its component parts. Within a given workshop, we can move through the Spiral more than once, and become aware that with every cycling through, each stage can yield new and deeper meanings.
The critical passage or hinge of the workshop happens when, instead of privatizing, repressing and pathologizing our pain for the world (be it fear, grief, outrage or despair), we honor it. We learn to re-frame it as suffering-with or compassion. This brings us back to life.
FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE WORK THAT RECONNECTS
“To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe – to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it – is a wonder beyond words.”
88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Mary Joanne Rogers Macy (May 2, 1929 – July 19, 2025), known as Joanna Macy, was an American environmental activist, author and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology. She was married to Francis Underhill Macy, the activist and Russian scholar who founded the Center for Safe Energy.[2]
Life and career
Macy was born Mary Joanne Rogers in Los Angeles on May 2, 1929, and was brought up in New York City.[1] Macy credits poet and activist Muriel Rukeyser with starting her on the path to becoming a poet and writer herself. When she was a high school student in New York City, she cut school and took the train from Long Island to Manhattan in order to attend a poetry reading by Rukeyser; the hall was already full to capacity when Joanna arrived, but Rukeyser invited her to come onto the stage and sit at her feet during the reading. In 1953, she married Francis Macy, who died in 2009; the couple had three children.[1]
Macy graduated from Wellesley College in 1950 and received her Ph.D. in religious studies in 1978 from Syracuse University, Syracuse. Her doctoral work, under the mentorship of Ervin László, focused on convergences between causation in systems thinking and the Buddhist central doctrine of mutual causality or interdependent co-arising.
Macy was an international spokesperson for anti-nuclear causes, peace, justice, and environmentalism,[3] most renowned for her book Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World and the Great Turning initiative, which deals with the transformation from, as she terms it, an industrial growth society to what she considers to be a more sustainable civilization. She created a theoretical framework for personal and social change, and a workshop methodology for its application. Her work addressed psychological and spiritual issues, Buddhist thought, and contemporary science.
Macy died in Berkeley, California on July 19, 2025, at the age of 96, from complications following a fall.[1][4]
Key influences
Macy first encountered Buddhism in 1965 while working with Tibetan refugees in northern India, particularly the Ven. 8th Khamtrul Rinpoche, Sister Karma Khechog Palmo, Ven. Dugu Choegyal Rinpoche, and Tokden Antrim of the Tashi Jong community. Her spiritual practice was drawn from the Theravada tradition of Nyanaponika Thera and Rev. Sivali of Sri Lanka, Munindraji of West Bengal, and Dhiravamsa of Thailand.[5]
Key formative influences to her teaching in the field of the connection to living systems theory were Ervin Laszlo who introduced her to systems theory through his writings (especially Introduction to Systems Philosophy and Systems, Structure and Experience), and who worked with her as advisor on her doctoral dissertation (later adapted as Mutual Causality) and on a project for the Club of Rome. Gregory Bateson, through his Steps to an Ecology of Mind and in a summer seminar, also shaped her thought, as did the writings of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Arthur Koestler, and Hazel Henderson. She was influenced in the studies of biological systems by Tyrone Cashman, and economic systems by Kenneth Boulding. Donella Meadows provided insights on the planetary consequences of runaway systems, and Elisabet Sahtouris provided further information about self-organizing systems in evolutionary perspective.[5]
Work
Macy traveled giving lectures, workshops, and trainings internationally. Her work, originally called "Despair and Empowerment Work", was acknowledged as being part of the deep ecology tradition after she encountered the work of Arne Naess and John Seed,[6] but as a result of disillusion with academic disputes in the field, she called it "the Work that Reconnects". Widowed by the death of her husband, Francis Underhill Macy, in January 2009, she lived in Berkeley, California, near her children and grandchildren. She served as adjunct professor to three graduate schools in the San Francisco Bay Area: the Starr King School for the Ministry,[7] the University of Creation Spirituality,[8] and California Institute of Integral Studies,[9] where she was still on the faculty.
Writings
- Macy, Joanna (1983). Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age. New Society Pub. ISBN 0-86571-031-7.
- Macy, Joanna (1985). Dharma and Development: Religion as resource in the Sarvodaya self help movement. Kumarian Press revised ed. ISBN 0-931816-53-X.
- Macy, Joanna; Seed, John; Fleming, Pat; Naess, Arne; Pugh, Dailan (1988). Thinking Like a Mountain: Toward a Council of All Beings. New Society Publishers. ISBN 0-86571-133-X.
- Macy, Joanna (1991). Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural System (Buddhist Studies Series). State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-0637-7.
- Macy, Joanna (1991). World as Lover, World as Self. Parallax Press. ISBN 0-938077-27-9.
- Macy, Joanna; Barrows, Anita (1996). Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God: poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. Riverhead Books. ISBN 1-59448-156-3.
- Macy, Joanna; Young Brown, Molly (1998). Coming Back to Life : Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World. New Society Publishers. ISBN 0-86571-391-X.
- Macy, Joanna (2001). Widening Circles : a memoir. New Catalyst Books. ISBN 978-1897408018.
- Macy, Joanna (2010). Pass It On: Five Stories That Can Change the World. Parallax Press. ISBN 9781888375831.
- Macy, Joanna; Johnstone, Chris (2012). Active Hope : how to face the mess we're in without going crazy. New World Library. ISBN 978-1-57731-972-6.
- Macy, Joanna; Brown, Molly (2014). Coming back to Life : the updated guide to the work that reconnects. New Society Publishers. ISBN 978-0-86571-775-6.
- Macy, Joanna (2020). A Wild Love for the World : Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time. Shambhala Publications. ISBN 978-1-61180-795-0.
See also
- David Korten, a collaborator with Macy on the Great Turning Initiative
References
- Gabriel, Trip (July 23, 2025). "Joanna Macy, Who Found a Way to Transcend 'Eco-Anxiety,' Dies at 96". The New York Times. Retrieved July 23, 2025.
- "Obituary: Fran Macy". the Guardian. May 19, 2009. Retrieved July 4, 2021.
- George Prentice (January 18, 2012). "Anti-nuclear activist is 'just a sucker for courage'". Boise Weekly. Archived from the original on August 15, 2018. Retrieved January 21, 2012.
- Oliver, Joan Duncan (July 20, 2025). "Ecodharma Leader and Activist Joanna Macy Has Died". Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Retrieved July 21, 2025.
- Bragdon, Emma (November 4, 2021). "Joanna Macy: Climate Crisis as Spiritual Path". IMHU. Retrieved July 25, 2025.
- "John Seed is founder and director of the Rainforest Information Centre in Australia".
- "Joanna Macy | Starr King for the Ministry". Starr King for the Ministry. Retrieved June 1, 2021.
- "Matthew Fox's Christmas Letter, 2013". Welcome from Matthew Fox. December 17, 2013. Retrieved June 1, 2021.
- "CIIS Council of Sages". www.ciis.edu. Archived from the original on May 31, 2021. Retrieved June 1, 2021.
88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Joanna Macy, Who Found a Way to Transcend ‘Eco-Anxiety,’ Dies at 96
With books and workshops, she helped others deal with the stress caused by climate change, inspiring them to take action and not be paralyzed by despair.
Joanna Macy, a pioneer in facing the emotional stress caused by climate change, who wrote books and led workshops on what became known as eco-despair or eco-anxiety, died on Saturday at her home in Berkeley, Calif. She was 96.
Her family said the cause was complications of a fall.
Ms. Macy was not a psychotherapist; she was trained in religious studies and systems theory. She drew from those fields, as well as her practice of Buddhism, to propose a way past the heartbreak and hopelessness that many people feel when contemplating the extinction of species, the degradation of natural places and the threats to human life on a warming planet.
One of her fundamental insights was that what lies at the root of people’s despair over the environment is a reverence for the earth’s magnificence and an understanding that human beings are part of the web of life.
“You have to allow yourself to experience the love that is underneath the horror,” she told The San Francisco Examiner in 1999, when very few others were talking about the psychic toll of knowing that humans could irreparably damage the biosphere.
Advertisement
At the time, psychotherapists largely dismissed the notion of eco-anxiety — the idea that climate change could cause people who were merely following the news to experience anxiety or despair. Today, the Climate Psychology Alliance offers a directory of hundreds of climate-aware therapists.
But in the 1970s, when Ms. Macy told a psychotherapist of her sadness over the destruction of a nearby forest, she was informed that the problem was her fear of her own libido.
In 1977, she attended a symposium in Boston, held by the Cousteau Society, on threats to the environment. Heading home on the train, she crossed the Charles River, where sailboats sparkled in the sunset, and she burst into tears.
“Between the beauty of this world and the knowledge of what we are doing to it came a luminous and almost unbearable grief,” she wrote in “World as Lover, World as Self,” originally published in 1991.
Advertisement
Soon after that experience, she began leading workshops in what she called “despair work,” allowing participants to explore their anxiety about the fate of the earth and, if possible, to find ways to positively channel their emotions.
Americans’ “cult of optimism,” she believed, had caused them to repress and numb the pain they felt about the planet, and she compared despair work to moving through the stages of grief popularized by the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.
“Pain for our world, like pain for the loss of a loved one, is a measure of caring,” she wrote in “Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age,” a 1983 book that reflected her own and others’ anxiety about nuclear war as well as environmental collapse.
Thousands attended the workshops Ms. Macy led in the 1980s in the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia, gathering in churches, schools and retreat centers. Those workshops were designed to help people from being overwhelmed by dread, to break through a psychic numbing and to find the motivation to act — by joining a protest movement, say, or changing their own habits.
Advertisement
“Let us dare to translate our caring into a sense of belonging to all humanity and the web of life,” she wrote.
With the end of the Cold War and a waning of the threat of nuclear war, Ms. Macy’s focus increasingly turned to the climate crisis. In a 2021 revision of “World as Lover, World as Self,” she noted that the world’s industrial nations had collectively failed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by “the slightest fraction of a degree,” and that a feeling of despair was more understandable than ever.
“It represents a genuine accession to the possibility that this planetary experiment will end, the curtain rung down, the show over,” she wrote.
She and other workshop leaders refined their approach, calling it “the work that reconnects.” A workshop, which might last one or two days, included four stages, which Ms. Macy called a spiral: acknowledging gratitude for the world; expressing pain for the world; “seeing with fresh eyes”; and “going forth” to make a difference.
Advertisement
Ms. Macy, who retired in 2024, came to believe that the world was on the cusp of what she liked to call “the Great Turning,” a transition to “a life-sustaining society.”
The Work That Reconnects Network, an organization founded by her followers, continues to hold online and in-person workshops based on her ideas. The Joanna Macy Center for Resilience & Regeneration at Naropa University, a Buddhist institution in Boulder, Colo., where Ms. Macy taught environmental leadership, has also spread her philosophy.
“Her genius has been the ability to design transformative practices and workshops that enable participants to go beyond an intellectual understanding to an empowering embodiment,” David Loy wrote in 2020 in Tricycle, a magazine of Western Buddhism.
Mary Joanne Rogers was born on May 2, 1929, in Los Angeles and grew up in New York City, one of three children of Hartley Rogers, a stockbroker, and Margaret (Kinsey) Rogers, a church administrator.
Advertisement
She graduated from Wellesley College in 1950 with a B.A. in biblical history. After receiving a Fulbright scholarship to study in France, she was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency, where she worked as a political analyst in the early 1950s.
In 1953, she married Francis Macy. She accompanied him abroad in the 1960s while he worked for the Peace Corps in Nigeria, Tunisia and India. The couple and their three children returned to the U.S. in 1969, when Mr. Macy became Peace Corps director for Africa.
In 1978, Ms. Macy, an active Buddhist for much of her adult life, received a Ph.D. in religion from Syracuse University with a dissertation titled “Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory.” The religious studies scholar Huston Smith was her adviser.
In the early 1980s, she and her family settled in the Bay Area. Ms. Macy is survived by her children, Christopher, Jack and Peggy Macy, and three grandchildren. Mr. Macy died in 2009.
Among Ms. Macy’s other books were “Widening Circles” (2000), a memoir, and “Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re In Without Going Crazy” (2012), written with Chris Johnstone. She also translated four books of poetry and prose by Rainer Maria Rilke, with Anita Barrows.
Advertisement
In a 2010 interview for the American Public Media radio program “On Being,” Ms. Macy said that a “dance with despair” was the central experience of her life — but that by not running away from grief, she had learned that the feeling could be transformed.
“When we take it in our hands,” she said of grief, “when we can just be with it and keep breathing, then it turns. It turns to reveal its other face, and the other face of our pain for the world is our love for the world, our absolutely inseparable connectedness with all life.”
888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
"The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present. And when you're hopeful or hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you're showing up, that you're here, and that you're finding ever more capacity to love this world because it will not be healed without that." (11/28/2024)
88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
