Speaker 1: How can we build trust in each other and in
Speaker 1: ourselves when we ask ourselves that question, The question itself
Speaker 1: helps Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great
Speaker 1: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Joanna Macy,
Speaker 1: an environmental activist, author, and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory,
Speaker 1: and deep ecology. She has too many accomplishments for me
Speaker 1: to even begin to go into, but she is the
Speaker 1: author of twelve books, and Eric and Joanna cover many
Speaker 1: topics in this great interview. Hi Joanna welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be here. It is such an honor
Speaker 1: to have you on. I was joking with you beforehand
Speaker 1: and you were asking me, you know about the people
Speaker 1: who come on the show, and I said, well, the
Speaker 1: people come on the show are the sort of people
Speaker 1: who quote Joanna Macy all the time. In reading for
Speaker 1: about eight years for this podcast, and I read every
Speaker 1: guest book, and so I've read a lot of books.
Speaker 1: You were in the top five most quoted people. I
Speaker 1: think in all these books you the doll a Lama
Speaker 1: and Ian McGilchrist, and there's a couple others, but you're
Speaker 1: way way up there in both ecological and spiritual circles.
Speaker 1: So it's a real honor to have you on. Well, Eric,
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to meet you. Thank you. It's not
Speaker 1: that I can see your face, which our listeners can't,
Speaker 1: but you look very accessible. The fact that you actually
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about a real gun and his letters
Speaker 1: or any other part of this poet who has accompanied
Speaker 1: me through my life makes my heart open. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: I had wanted to talk to you for years, based
Speaker 1: on the work you've done around systems thinking and Buddhism
Speaker 1: and deep ecology and all that. And then when I
Speaker 1: saw that you recently had put out a new translation
Speaker 1: of perhaps my favorite book of all time, Letters to
Speaker 1: a Young Poet, I was like, that does it? I
Speaker 1: have got to talk to her. So here we are,
Speaker 1: and before we get into all that, let's start like
Speaker 1: we always do, with the parable. There is a grandmother
Speaker 1: who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second, and she looks up at her grandmother.
Speaker 1: She says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says,
Speaker 1: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 1: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 1: your life and in the work that you do. Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's right at the top of my and the important notions.
Speaker 1: Because what we're facing now with climate change, your climate catastrophe,
Speaker 1: and systems of war weapons and warmaking and the preparations
Speaker 1: for that, that seem to be accelerating that we have
Speaker 1: to really look at how has this come about? You know,
Speaker 1: what have we been doing? So whatever is inside of
Speaker 1: us that we're trying to satisfy seems to have to
Speaker 1: do with power over others, possessiveness, greed, having just what
Speaker 1: we want and not worrying about its effect on other people, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And that's what so many of us are trying to
Speaker 1: do right now, is to give us choice. That's what's
Speaker 1: great you to give choice to people and say you
Speaker 1: can continue the way you've been rolling along, or you
Speaker 1: can notice what's happening and see what you want to
Speaker 1: happen and what you need to do to express and
Speaker 1: express what that part of you that loves life, that
Speaker 1: part of you that it's grateful for the gift of life.
Speaker 1: So let's start by talking about Rilka. When did your
Speaker 1: interest in Rolka start? Because you recently again a new
Speaker 1: translation of Letters to a Young Poet, but I believe
Speaker 1: you've translated or co translated many before this. Where did
Speaker 1: that interest start? This was the first book of prose,
Speaker 1: but in writing the Letters to a Young Poet, while
Speaker 1: it was less fun for us in terms of the
Speaker 1: task than poetry. He gives it was he was writing
Speaker 1: in a hurry as well as we'll not as we
Speaker 1: talk about it. But so it wasn't like each sentence
Speaker 1: crafted like a necklace of jewels, you know, which was
Speaker 1: what it is with poems, and it made it so
Speaker 1: precious to say how to translate it. Here he was
Speaker 1: writing at a eight clip to a person he didn't know,
Speaker 1: and he was traveling often as he almost every letter
Speaker 1: was written from a new place, and to someone he
Speaker 1: didn't know, a young cadet, even younger than he. He
Speaker 1: was twenty seven and the military cadet was nineteen. But
Speaker 1: he had written some poems and he wondered whether he
Speaker 1: was in the right occupation. Maybe he should be a
Speaker 1: poet instead of army officer. And so Wilka did have
Speaker 1: a book that would have just been published, and he
Speaker 1: had been reading it, and he was encouraged to write
Speaker 1: him out of the blue and send him some of
Speaker 1: his poems and asked for advice, which was a little
Speaker 1: nervy now that you think about it, but nobody ever
Speaker 1: asked it. Wilka himself was only twenty seven and he
Speaker 1: hadn't been asked for this, and he was also extremely
Speaker 1: sampatique and sympathetic to people and the artists or somebody
Speaker 1: in the army wants to be a poet and he
Speaker 1: wants me to give him some critical comments about how
Speaker 1: to succeed, and I can't do it, and starts right
Speaker 1: out saying that, don't believe other people who are giving
Speaker 1: you advice about your writing. So and so he said,
Speaker 1: I cannot advise you about your writing. But what he
Speaker 1: then proceeded to do, perhaps without meaning to it was
Speaker 1: just his art opening was sharing views about how to
Speaker 1: live a life. And that's what's caught the attention of
Speaker 1: people over over a century. Yeah, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting because it's possible and you would know this better
Speaker 1: than I do. And maybe this is just here in
Speaker 1: the US that this is the case, But it seems
Speaker 1: to me that letters do young poet, at least in
Speaker 1: the U S would have outsold all of Rilka's other
Speaker 1: works of poetry. Is that accurate? I believe. So it's
Speaker 1: been by far the most popular and um, yes, this
Speaker 1: totally astonishes me. But then you know, for moments, how
Speaker 1: many times have you heard some of these in weddings? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're everywhere they're everywhere. Yeah, I mean I first came
Speaker 1: across that book. I was a young, very bad poet
Speaker 1: when I first read them slash Songwriter. But I mean,
Speaker 1: so that's thirty years ago probably, and it made such
Speaker 1: an impression on me. And every few years I go
Speaker 1: back and I read it and I just am struck
Speaker 1: by you know, just how much of an impression it's
Speaker 1: made on my whole life. Oh, that is quite wonderful.
Speaker 1: Now I really want to interview you. Just think of
Speaker 1: what you've done with your life. And I can tell
Speaker 1: instantly that you're someone with an open heart and a
Speaker 1: lot of energy and love for life. And so what
Speaker 1: did you take? Seriously, must have been a pretty good
Speaker 1: medicine you've been drinking. Yeah, well, I've had lots of
Speaker 1: good medicine to drink, for sure. Roca has been a
Speaker 1: part of it, Buddhism has been part of it, so
Speaker 1: many different things. Twelve step recovery has been a part
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah. I've been fortunate. Yeah, and that's why
Speaker 1: you're so believable to people. So tell me what made you,
Speaker 1: at this stage in your life, decide that we needed
Speaker 1: a new translation of Letters to a young Poet. It
Speaker 1: was because my co translator and I, Anita Barrows, so
Speaker 1: loved hanging out with La. It was genuinely, truly, I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, Eric translating Lka was the most one either.
Speaker 1: It was that it was just totally engrossing, and we
Speaker 1: come to believe that for translation, it really is a
Speaker 1: huge asset to do it together, to do it diological
Speaker 1: and not to just be sitting there listening to the
Speaker 1: inside of your own head. So we would start, whether
Speaker 1: it was poem or a letter, reading it in the
Speaker 1: German and then listening to it and that's particularly important
Speaker 1: with the poetry, of course, and then working it into
Speaker 1: English so that it kept some of the feel of it,
Speaker 1: the personality that comes through to sort of keep that
Speaker 1: because we're going back and forth and listening, rather than
Speaker 1: sitting with a piece of paper and jotting notes and
Speaker 1: with lots of uh energy and laughter in it because
Speaker 1: you're doing it with another person that you love to
Speaker 1: work with. Now do you speak German? Yeah, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: where I found them. I I'm not chairman or don't
Speaker 1: have that ancestry, but I was living in my twenties
Speaker 1: with my young family in Munich and right after the
Speaker 1: birth of my second son, Uh, and I was over
Speaker 1: at the university I love to hang out. And I
Speaker 1: walked into a bookstar on the snowy morning, stomping the
Speaker 1: snow off my feet because they're right up against the alps.
Speaker 1: There and there on this book store was a little table,
Speaker 1: all just one book on several copies, and I walked
Speaker 1: in and picked it up and opened it and read
Speaker 1: a little short poem, I lived my life in widening
Speaker 1: circles that reach out across the world. I may not
Speaker 1: complete this last one, but I give myself to it
Speaker 1: and that right then, and they're just when I had
Speaker 1: thought my journey, my spiritual journey in life had been
Speaker 1: a linear, that it had been toward the Golden City
Speaker 1: or at board the heavenly gates, and it had been
Speaker 1: such a hodgepodge of trying this and trying that, and
Speaker 1: doing this and doing that that I had I thought
Speaker 1: that I was hardly on a spiritual path, and that
Speaker 1: saddened me a little bit. And suddenly I thought, a
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I've been doing that. That's the way
Speaker 1: as felt. And then the second and last verse that
Speaker 1: I read was in that same little second Paul I've
Speaker 1: been circling around God, that primordial tower. I've been circling
Speaker 1: for thousands of years, and still I don't know. Am
Speaker 1: I a falcon, a storm or a great song that
Speaker 1: was enough the grab ale of my heart for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. Those are pretty remarkable verses. I
Speaker 1: loved these poems so much, and they had come to
Speaker 1: him interestingly, by there's a word for this, almost like
Speaker 1: the divine dictation when he picked up a pen and
Speaker 1: it would just pour out, never changed it, never changed
Speaker 1: a word. This was for the book of Hours, and
Speaker 1: for this honads to Orpheus towards the end of his life,
Speaker 1: the same thing and never pausing. Well might put it
Speaker 1: in another way, just as if God were or some
Speaker 1: uh great angelic presence was whispering in his ear by
Speaker 1: the mountains and rivers themselves were whispering in his ear. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I was reading them in German, and the thing
Speaker 1: is that they were all rhyming and and and in German.
Speaker 1: It's very beautiful to do this D's Kish league and
Speaker 1: do the bif league, and then you know the German
Speaker 1: with the verbs at the end in the past tense.
Speaker 1: It makes it very lovely and I would try to
Speaker 1: do that in English, and it made them sound sing
Speaker 1: song to put things in meter and rhyme, and so
Speaker 1: I gave up because I thought this, this really sounds tacky.
Speaker 1: But when I met Anita Barrows about thirty years ago
Speaker 1: here in California, and she's a poet and a psychotherapist,
Speaker 1: and she's a published poet. But she said, you know,
Speaker 1: it's been pointed out and the great poet Denise Levertov.
Speaker 1: We did this out that in a world, in the
Speaker 1: modern age, where there's so much change in anxiety, loves that,
Speaker 1: so much questioning, deep questioning, don't try to write in
Speaker 1: rhyme and meter. A rhyme and meter make things sound
Speaker 1: too sure, you know, kind of eyed up, as if
Speaker 1: you already know where you're heating. But we don't know
Speaker 1: where we're hitting. And so so then we tried some
Speaker 1: and then it came it just two things happened. We
Speaker 1: were talking them into existence, and we were forgetting about
Speaker 1: the rhyme and meter. You'll be interested in this. The
Speaker 1: first poem we picked of the Book of Ours was
Speaker 1: one that I asked another translator, Stephen Mitchell had gone
Speaker 1: him said there's a poem in the book of ours.
Speaker 1: I'm dying to give my American friends who are activists.
Speaker 1: They need this poem. Anybody who's an activist in the
Speaker 1: twenty one century needs this poem. And he said, no,
Speaker 1: I don't do it, do it yourself. Okay, So they
Speaker 1: that's what we did first, and then I'll just tell
Speaker 1: you the first two lines and then you'll know why
Speaker 1: I wanted that from the storm was voked. You're not
Speaker 1: surprised at the force of the storm. You have seen
Speaker 1: it coming. The trees flee their flight, says, the boulevards streaming,
Speaker 1: and just the this sense of things falling apart. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Stephen Mitchell told you then that he did not
Speaker 1: translate poems. No, No, he was a translator. He's got
Speaker 1: they had a whole book on real come and but
Speaker 1: hadn't done this home and he said he wasn't doing anymore.
Speaker 1: I see. Yeah, it's his translation of Letters to a
Speaker 1: Young Poet and his translation of dowd Ching that I
Speaker 1: have loved so much over the years. That's wonderful to
Speaker 1: see all of that he does. He does. I was
Speaker 1: fortunate enough to get to talk to him once for
Speaker 1: this show, and he does know that so do you
Speaker 1: have any particular parts of letters to a young poet
Speaker 1: that speak to you most in your life right now?
Speaker 1: Oh yes, oh yes. One that I have loved is
Speaker 1: let me see what if I can remember where he
Speaker 1: was when he wrote that. But he talks about God.
Speaker 1: He's cheering up the young cadet who apparently you never
Speaker 1: get the letters that the military cadet wrote back. But
Speaker 1: it does sound as if he's complaining and that he
Speaker 1: has a little sorry for himself, because continuously Arelka is
Speaker 1: kind of buoy him up. He's apparently been saying, but
Speaker 1: I've even not only have I beene failures, and but
Speaker 1: I've lost God. And so this is a letter where says, now,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, how can you lose God like you?
Speaker 1: It's God's not like a little coin er pebble in
Speaker 1: your pocket that you can lose. And then he goes
Speaker 1: with the flight of fancy, where Lka says that maybe
Speaker 1: God is growing along with you and along with all
Speaker 1: of us, and maybe he's not complete now, but it's
Speaker 1: matures and ripens along with the ripening of our life,
Speaker 1: and that we're building God by the choices we make,
Speaker 1: that He is coming into being through our needs and
Speaker 1: our adventures. Yeah, I love that section of the book. Also.
Speaker 1: I think it's a beautiful idea. I think he goes
Speaker 1: on to sort of say in that section. I think
Speaker 1: he talks about something like you could only lose him
Speaker 1: like a little stone. That's right. Yeah. And I think
Speaker 1: he says the final fruit of a tree whose leaves
Speaker 1: we are, I think is another description that's used. Yeah
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, Well that's also the kind of holy
Speaker 1: or divine a patience and curiosity even that he seems
Speaker 1: to encourage us to develop like that great phrase that
Speaker 1: one can never tire of, which is to live the
Speaker 1: questions now. And that also uh advises patients, doesn't it
Speaker 1: m to hang in there and let's something so he
Speaker 1: that's another verb Eric that he loves. He uses the
Speaker 1: verb ripen. We can ripen, questions can ripen, relationships can ripen.
Speaker 1: And that from the natural world, which he found to
Speaker 1: be such an unfailing source of inspiration for himself. Another
Speaker 1: word that I think runs through that book a lot
Speaker 1: is trust. He's always going on about trusting, trusting in
Speaker 1: the difficult. Like you said, I think to give something
Speaker 1: time to ripen is to trust it, you know, you
Speaker 1: trust it will come along. I think that that is
Speaker 1: practically the stance, the posture, the activity that we most
Speaker 1: need right now is we're facing so much hardship, fear
Speaker 1: and explicable challenging, falling away of what we used to
Speaker 1: be able to have faith in, and whether it's our
Speaker 1: government or are notions of God and his angels? Do
Speaker 1: you have any German Eric, I don't. I should, given
Speaker 1: a lot of my ancestry is German, but I do
Speaker 1: not speak it well that you all love that just
Speaker 1: the trust trust is fair thrown, fair trowing, because throwing
Speaker 1: it is the word. It linked to truth. It's sort
Speaker 1: of hanging on to a confidence that there's truth, it's truth,
Speaker 1: and being patiently and faithfully with something. This has been
Speaker 1: very much in my mind. It's interesting that you mentioned
Speaker 1: it because I'm thinking of the young people now looking
Speaker 1: at a lifetime that's so challenged right now, with what's
Speaker 1: falling apart, and with what's the climate is doing and
Speaker 1: what science is saying, and how can we build trust
Speaker 1: in each other and in ourselves? And when we ask
Speaker 1: ourselves that question, the question itself helps I want to
Speaker 1: be trust worthy, trust myself, and how how hard that
Speaker 1: must feel when it'll look at what's happening around us,
Speaker 1: both with the falling away of the natural world, but
Speaker 1: also what's happening in our human culture. We're not acting
Speaker 1: very trustworthy when we're starting to bad mouth other world
Speaker 1: leaders as if you're trying to build towards the hostilities
Speaker 1: and creating concredible you know, when you think of that
Speaker 1: defense budget we just passed over three quarters of trillion,
Speaker 1: when people are hungry and sounds of what are we
Speaker 1: preparing to mount on ourselves now? So I gave a
Speaker 1: talk just a couple of days ago at the Zen Center,
Speaker 1: and I found myself saying, how wonderful it is to
Speaker 1: be thinking of doing what you can trust? How can
Speaker 1: you make yourself trustworthy to yourself? How you can be
Speaker 1: being to trust yourself? And it's a suite because there's
Speaker 1: an awful lot of counsel that we can find on that.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of gu items there. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: Zen talks about the three indispensables you know, great faith
Speaker 1: or slash, great trust, great doubt, great determination, and all
Speaker 1: three of those you know, which which I find the
Speaker 1: great faith, slash great trust to be the hardest of
Speaker 1: those three. Determination I do alright with doubt. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got that one down, all right. Yeah, that's a beautiful question.
Speaker 1: Because again and again, while walk in these letters to
Speaker 1: the young poet, while he speaks of fell talent of trusting,
Speaker 1: he again and again says, uh, go into the natural world,
Speaker 1: get close to nature in hell it be with it,
Speaker 1: Gaze upon it, let it speak to you. Look at
Speaker 1: the little things. How the grass grows, I guess, or
Speaker 1: mushrooms that grow, or the trees drink the rain, which
Speaker 1: they're doing right now here in Berkeley. We're having good
Speaker 1: good Oh it is. It's like we're all standings and
Speaker 1: it's a look of shock and stunned and and yes
Speaker 1: and even fair throwing on our faces. Well, let's turn
Speaker 1: our attention a little bit to the other big part
Speaker 1: of your life, which has been something called the work
Speaker 1: that reconnects, And it's really about, you know, how do
Speaker 1: we reconnect to ourselves into the world and reconnect to feeling,
Speaker 1: really feeling the world. Yeah, we didn't know what to
Speaker 1: call it. We had all different names for the events
Speaker 1: we would our intensives or what. But it was when
Speaker 1: we were doing the last manual on it, which actually
Speaker 1: is twenty years ago. My co author and I we said, well,
Speaker 1: we need a generic name for this. And my husband,
Speaker 1: I was alive then and who he loved the work
Speaker 1: and he spent a lot of his life and focused
Speaker 1: on Russia and the former Soviet Union. He took it
Speaker 1: there too. He said, what are you doing and they said, well,
Speaker 1: everything's fine. We're wearing up the book. As the book,
Speaker 1: by the way, that's called coming Back to Life. Defined
Speaker 1: a term for the work itself, sort of just a
Speaker 1: definition of it, and he said, well, what does it do? Okay?
Speaker 1: I said, come on, you know it as well as
Speaker 1: I do. You know it connects the mind with the heart,
Speaker 1: It connects the reason with hands, it connects the inner
Speaker 1: with the political, and he went on. He was looked
Speaker 1: and he said, well, I guess it sounds like it's
Speaker 1: a work that we connects. And I said, well, yes,
Speaker 1: but that is such a clunky word. Never work that reconnects.
Speaker 1: And then we thought, way, you know, nobody could ever misrepresented.
Speaker 1: So that's what we got. Well, I like the description there,
Speaker 1: and there's so much in this that we're not going
Speaker 1: to have time for, but I wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: to get to at least the most commonly held stories
Speaker 1: that we tell about the world. You say, story is
Speaker 1: our vision of reality, the lens through which we see
Speaker 1: and understand what is happening now in the world. And
Speaker 1: you talk about three sort of dominant ways we could
Speaker 1: view what's happening right now. Could you walk us through
Speaker 1: those three? Yeah, Well, when we wrote that book, these
Speaker 1: stories were and particularly that became a little more clearer
Speaker 1: in a very popular book that does about the work
Speaker 1: called Active Hope. And the first is business as usual,
Speaker 1: and by that we really mane the growth economy, industrial
Speaker 1: growth society, and we tended to use that it's the
Speaker 1: same thing as capitalism. But there are very powerful nations
Speaker 1: and economies that wouldn't want to call themselves capitalists, but
Speaker 1: they're competing with capitalism and and have the same effect
Speaker 1: on the body of living body of Earth and other
Speaker 1: species and us. And it is terrifying because it has
Speaker 1: an addictive grip on us that it's entered into our
Speaker 1: psyche in the way that to sense restlessness that we
Speaker 1: have to succeed, we have to keep growing, We have
Speaker 1: to do more. It has to be more, We have
Speaker 1: to make more. We have to grow. If we aren't
Speaker 1: growing something then it's no good. And it is this
Speaker 1: that is turning the species, other species, and the natural
Speaker 1: world into money, the earth itself. And it's terrifying because
Speaker 1: we have built such powerful instruments and organizations that enshrine
Speaker 1: this addiction to grow. So that's business as usual. But
Speaker 1: what it does to the world now and what we're
Speaker 1: seeing the story we used the phrase we got from
Speaker 1: David Corton called the unraveling. I like that phrase because
Speaker 1: that's what systems do. Ecosystems, political systems, human systems, biosystems.
Speaker 1: They don't fall over dead. They begin to unravel, They
Speaker 1: begin to lose their coherence, to lose their memory. And
Speaker 1: then the third the story is the great tourney, and
Speaker 1: that is the coming to our senses that it's choice based.
Speaker 1: Starts with the choice as we can make in any life,
Speaker 1: any community, and any institution, to begin to slow down
Speaker 1: the destruction of earth or three steps. There first step
Speaker 1: is or not step. It happened at the same time.
Speaker 1: But what we tend to think of as activism is
Speaker 1: this slowing down the destruction of our world, of the
Speaker 1: slowing down the destruction of the forest, the oceans, you
Speaker 1: know all that, but it also is more than that.
Speaker 1: It is building in new ways of doing things. And
Speaker 1: when we were developing this, I got so excited to
Speaker 1: realize how we're doing this at such a clip and
Speaker 1: with such ingenuity us as a species, that we are
Speaker 1: building new ways of growing and cultivating for food. We're
Speaker 1: but new ways of settling arguments, new ways of making energy,
Speaker 1: new ways of settling differences. It's like there's more things
Speaker 1: sprouting right now that we can remember from any other time,
Speaker 1: so much ingenuity. You know, when people have started doing
Speaker 1: something that matters to them, they get so sharp. The
Speaker 1: third part of the Great Journey is just as essential
Speaker 1: because these ways of doing it, these institutions, these forms
Speaker 1: of activity, the ways that we're building, are all going
Speaker 1: to turn to dust if we don't have this, if
Speaker 1: we don't in the values and the purposes for which
Speaker 1: we're inventing and caring for the earth. And this means
Speaker 1: the inner revolution, they moral or spiritual. What is the
Speaker 1: flame burning in our hearts? I love that that's my
Speaker 1: definition for me, a bodhicitta in the Buddhis and the
Speaker 1: caring for all beings. This has to work this time,
Speaker 1: not just for us, not just for you, but for
Speaker 1: all of us, because this is a planet, and we've
Speaker 1: got a planet to save and a planet to care
Speaker 1: or and a kind of definition for ourselves that we
Speaker 1: can begin to own that we're a planet people. We
Speaker 1: have different ways of showing it, different things to do,
Speaker 1: but so much to do. It's a wonderful time. I
Speaker 1: love this idea of these three visions. I think we're
Speaker 1: most often presented with two visions, right, and the two
Speaker 1: that I'm most often here are the business as usual view,
Speaker 1: as you're saying, which is like, all right, we're just
Speaker 1: going to carry on. Everything's fine, nothing to see here,
Speaker 1: just you know, go on, everything's fine. And the other
Speaker 1: is we are all screwed, like you know, it's all
Speaker 1: falling apart. There's nothing you can really do. The forces
Speaker 1: are too big, corporations are too powerful. As somebody who
Speaker 1: never likes only being given binary choice like this or that,
Speaker 1: I love this idea of the great turning, which you say.
Speaker 1: It involves the emergence of new and creative human responses
Speaker 1: that enable us to make the transition from an industrial
Speaker 1: growth society to a life sustaining society. And the central
Speaker 1: plot is about joining together for how we act and
Speaker 1: I love this idea that another way we can see
Speaker 1: things is that there is a turning happening in the
Speaker 1: three ways that you talked about in actually people starting
Speaker 1: to slow down, the destruction of the Earth, the starting
Speaker 1: to try and save the commons, transformation in the way
Speaker 1: we're doing things. And then as you say this sort
Speaker 1: of fundamental shift in worldview and values, you know, the
Speaker 1: roots of this go back to the mid twentieth century
Speaker 1: because we had in science with systems thinking, with a
Speaker 1: holographic view in science coming forward to see how intricately
Speaker 1: interwoven this living planet Gaia theory. Our planet is life,
Speaker 1: and not only that, but it's who you are. Every
Speaker 1: molecule in your body is given you by this planet.
Speaker 1: We have a terrific heritage. And then you can lean
Speaker 1: back against this living world as something that supports you
Speaker 1: like at any moment you can feel it like grace
Speaker 1: supporting you, acting through you. I got a lot lot
Speaker 1: of help with that from Australia when I went there
Speaker 1: with his work and started working with this fellow John
Speaker 1: c Rainforest Action rainforced activist, because he had had an
Speaker 1: experience that was his actual experience of in the action
Speaker 1: that it was not he who was saving this remains
Speaker 1: of an old growth forest from when it was from Gondwanalan,
Speaker 1: you know that Ryan Mordal continent. It wasn't his force.
Speaker 1: It was the rainforest. The rainforest was just acting through him,
Speaker 1: was at his back, and he could just stand there
Speaker 1: with the kind of long range confidence. I'm just showing
Speaker 1: up for it. But it's it's big Mama. Who's who's real? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's back to the trust idea from Rocco there. Yeah, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: One things that you say is that of all the
Speaker 1: dangers we faced, from climate change to nuclear wars, none
Speaker 1: is so great as the deadening of our response. Say
Speaker 1: more about that, Well, that question of yours actually leads
Speaker 1: back to how I got started with this work because
Speaker 1: I felt that did me among people who even knew
Speaker 1: what was happening. And this was back, oh good fifty
Speaker 1: years ago and more when I was in thanks to
Speaker 1: one of my sons, in nuclear power concerns, and and
Speaker 1: we started trying to stop the more reactors getting built,
Speaker 1: and I was involved in a lawsuit, so I learned
Speaker 1: what was involved. I did the research that showed that
Speaker 1: people knew that what was happening, that when you're close
Speaker 1: to a reactor. The miscarriages, the birth defects, they still births.
Speaker 1: All of those grew as well as the cancers hugely,
Speaker 1: and so people knew, but it was very hard for
Speaker 1: them to talk about it, or not just because it
Speaker 1: involved female bodies, but that if it was distressing, it's
Speaker 1: hard in America, which is a country built on manifest
Speaker 1: destiny and being cheerful and smiling a lot. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's how you sell everything from cars to politicians. It
Speaker 1: struck me as uh, this numbing. I felt it myself,
Speaker 1: and I sensed it and other people, and I saw
Speaker 1: that there were very admirable psychiatrists that we felt that
Speaker 1: it was somehow un American, and it was unpopular if
Speaker 1: you were to talk about how worried you were, or
Speaker 1: how depressed you were, or how sad you were, or
Speaker 1: how shocked you were by what you saw happening around you.
Speaker 1: I think that's even more so true for men than women,
Speaker 1: And that couldn't allow you to respond as a human being.
Speaker 1: And so I thought, how can we come alive? How
Speaker 1: can we come alive to what we're actually doing? You know,
Speaker 1: we seem to accept that there are things that we
Speaker 1: can't change, then we might as well not talk about it.
Speaker 1: There's going to be a famine Afghanistan and we still't
Speaker 1: have war sanctions against that country, so we can't get
Speaker 1: any money in there. But it's hard to talk about
Speaker 1: things that are really really stressing you or that stressing
Speaker 1: the world. And so that's what I start did with
Speaker 1: and invented ways in a group that we could actually
Speaker 1: come clean or spontaneous. We had, you know, invented ways
Speaker 1: of talking like open sentences or practices like the truth Mandela,
Speaker 1: where it was almost ritualized that you could and it
Speaker 1: was so incredibly powerful to see what happened when they
Speaker 1: felt free and to speak their hearts, people from all
Speaker 1: walks of life, ages, backgrounds, and then what came was
Speaker 1: this when they could do it together, this explosion of
Speaker 1: energy and high spirits, even to hilarity. Suddenly you know,
Speaker 1: you're just feel oh, I can face anything. I'm up
Speaker 1: for anything. You know, if you can just say it
Speaker 1: as it is and not nervously look over your shoulder
Speaker 1: and chew on your lip or you know a nawyer
Speaker 1: from nil or and this is not for me to
Speaker 1: talk about and to realize that you don't want it.
Speaker 1: You don't want people treat it this way, or you
Speaker 1: don't want this people made sick in this way. And
Speaker 1: with that comes such energy and as I said, sometimes
Speaker 1: even the hilarity laughter. And so that was the discovery.
Speaker 1: And then as soon as we worked, as the years
Speaker 1: went by, it and this work, it developed into a
Speaker 1: spiral that has become identified with the work that recollects
Speaker 1: of four stages. Maybe you read about that too, I
Speaker 1: definitely did. I'm gonna ask you a little question about
Speaker 1: that and a little comment. I mean, the first thing
Speaker 1: is you were just talking to made me think a
Speaker 1: little bit about experience in twelve step groups where all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you notice a sense of hilarity and
Speaker 1: energy when people are suddenly talking about things that up
Speaker 1: till now you just never talked about and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden once that comes out, Like you said, I
Speaker 1: think that was a great way of describing it, sort
Speaker 1: of hilarity and energy, and I relate with that absolutely.
Speaker 1: It's the same. Yeah, Now we don't start with, you know,
Speaker 1: ask people to start with admitting a higher power, but
Speaker 1: I think and there's a feeling of also it's close
Speaker 1: to hitting bottom, and that when you can face some
Speaker 1: of the worst fancies you have about what could happen.
Speaker 1: I had some military people in the commander of a
Speaker 1: nuclear submarine and to actually talk about what some of
Speaker 1: the nightmares were, to share some of them was let free,
Speaker 1: Set Free. You know. I think the other piece of
Speaker 1: it is you talked about how we have sort of
Speaker 1: this American sense of optimism, and you know, it's fine,
Speaker 1: and you know, smile and move on. But the other
Speaker 1: thing that runs through this, I think, and and I
Speaker 1: know this certainly plays to me perhaps more even than
Speaker 1: being American, is that a lot of our at least
Speaker 1: the way we have perhaps co opted our spiritual traditions
Speaker 1: to make them more American, has brought this in also,
Speaker 1: which says that, you know, we've got the serenity prayer,
Speaker 1: which exposes some some real wisdom, right, you know, the
Speaker 1: serenity to know what we can change and what we can't.
Speaker 1: But you say in the book also that if we
Speaker 1: only allow ourselves to care about what we can actually control,
Speaker 1: that diminishes us as people. And when you said that,
Speaker 1: I went, Wow, that really kind of hit me, because
Speaker 1: I'm a definite like focus on what you can control
Speaker 1: aspect it. It caused me to look at that differently.
Speaker 1: Well pointed out, I love that you're saying that because
Speaker 1: there's a lot now that we can't control and that
Speaker 1: we have to learn to live with and still see
Speaker 1: where we have choice. It's made a big difference for me.
Speaker 1: Eric that not at the beginning, but pretty soon we
Speaker 1: found that we needed if we're going to really look
Speaker 1: at some of the dysfunctions and suffering in our cultures
Speaker 1: and it why that we're gonna need something to ground
Speaker 1: us to look at that. And you couldn't start right
Speaker 1: off coming together and facing and talking about it. You
Speaker 1: needed to feel somehow held and so it actually was happening.
Speaker 1: It was happening naturally that we would be talking about
Speaker 1: what was working in our lives and what we were
Speaker 1: grateful for. It's amazing that because that didn't come in
Speaker 1: by a decision, but it was them by the time
Speaker 1: in the year ninety eight or ninety nine. At the
Speaker 1: end of the twenty century, Week wrote another book about it.
Speaker 1: We had a book in eighty three, and then a
Speaker 1: book at the end of the nineties, and then that's
Speaker 1: when the gratitude came in, and that has had an
Speaker 1: incredible effect on well, I guess, but on me. It's
Speaker 1: changed me, changed my life. I always had a lot
Speaker 1: of love, but that's why I was able to handle
Speaker 1: the pain. But this pattern of doing the work in
Speaker 1: that first station, where you know, you take stop and
Speaker 1: with some and say it's gonna take ten minutes and
Speaker 1: just run the spiral, and then you do it together.
Speaker 1: But it's automatically what's going for me right now? Just
Speaker 1: say something that you are so incredibly thankful for. You
Speaker 1: just mentioned as we talk about the spiral, or you
Speaker 1: describe the work that reconnects as a spiral mapping through
Speaker 1: four stages. You talked about coming from gratitude. Um, we've
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about honoring our pain for the world.
Speaker 1: We're running out of time, but let's talk about the
Speaker 1: third stage of the spiral, which is seen with new eyes. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the things that happens. I think of the
Speaker 1: whole thing, the critical point is honoring the pain. It's
Speaker 1: not diagnosing it and it's not pathologizing it, which is
Speaker 1: what the power holders in the current world system. It's
Speaker 1: very convenient for them to pathologize people suffering because then
Speaker 1: it's not a judgment on. It doesn't lead you to
Speaker 1: want to change a system if it's just somebody's crankiness
Speaker 1: and paranoia. And what happens in honoring the pain is
Speaker 1: that you begin to see that it's not from craziness
Speaker 1: that you're feeling this grief, but it's from caring. And
Speaker 1: this caring is your love for life. It's like two
Speaker 1: hands pressed together, or that your pain for the world,
Speaker 1: moral pain, physical pain, dread, all the emotions, and your
Speaker 1: love for the world are in separable. There are two
Speaker 1: sides of the same coin. It helps to remind people,
Speaker 1: but it becomes evident in doing the work. And so
Speaker 1: then when you realize your oneness with the world them
Speaker 1: your capacity is everything is seen looks afresh. Then your
Speaker 1: identity with the world. You are caring for the world,
Speaker 1: your anguish for the world. It is the most natural
Speaker 1: thing in the world because that's your true identity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then that is such good news. But it opens things.
Speaker 1: It opens your relationships with every other part of the
Speaker 1: planetary body and this being. That's in terms of space,
Speaker 1: but also in terms of time and what we have found.
Speaker 1: The changes that makes in our relations with our past,
Speaker 1: past civilizations, past ancestors, become intimately related to us, and
Speaker 1: it's been so beautiful in some of the rituals, like
Speaker 1: harvesting the gifts of the ancestors is incredibly beautiful, empowering
Speaker 1: or in relation with future beings, intimate sense of connection
Speaker 1: with those who aren't born yet, but they are in
Speaker 1: us because they are in our bodies. Our bodies carry
Speaker 1: in our DNA, the future ones, and they can be
Speaker 1: poisoned by what we breathe in or take in, even
Speaker 1: though they may not be born for another thousand years.
Speaker 1: That is an amazing idea to really reflect on that that,
Speaker 1: like you know, the future versions of us exist in
Speaker 1: us today. It is such an interesting idea, and they
Speaker 1: can help us so that it's a two way street.
Speaker 1: So the entire at work is a celebration, i would say,
Speaker 1: and cannot be understood from a linear standpoint, but rather
Speaker 1: from the awareness of the great reciprocity at the heart
Speaker 1: of the universe. We're doing it with the ancestors and
Speaker 1: the future ones and the other beings. Like the ritual
Speaker 1: of the Council of All Beings. When you let in
Speaker 1: another quitter talk through you in your voice, you step
Speaker 1: aside from your human identity it's this broadening of what
Speaker 1: it's like to be a conscious choice making being on
Speaker 1: a planet like Earth. Sky's the limit. That's such a
Speaker 1: beautiful sentiment. And I love the fact that in the
Speaker 1: middle of that sentiment you use the word critter, which
Speaker 1: just makes me, just makes me happy. It's such a
Speaker 1: great word. So we're out of time, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to bring us back to where we started, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to read just a short bit of Rilka from
Speaker 1: your latest book, and then all allow you to sort
Speaker 1: of add anything you'd like to to the end of it.
Speaker 1: This is just a couple of lines where it says, furthermore,
Speaker 1: life happen to you. Believe me, you can count on
Speaker 1: life in any case. And as to feelings, all feelings
Speaker 1: are pure that hold you together and lift you up.
Speaker 1: Impure is the feeling that arises from only one aspect
Speaker 1: of your being and thus tears you apart. Thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're on the way to coming together in this time
Speaker 1: if we choose that to be. It is true. It
Speaker 1: may not be coming together enough for what we'd like
Speaker 1: to see happen, but we are. We're facing and making
Speaker 1: choices to trust each other and trust ourselves and it's
Speaker 1: wonderful to have beings like Realca to remind us and
Speaker 1: like Eric Zimmer to remind us as well. It's been
Speaker 1: such a joy listening to you and talking with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you well, Thank you so much. And you may
Speaker 1: have just made my life by putting me in a
Speaker 1: sentence with Rilka. So thank you so much, Joanna. It
Speaker 1: is such a pleasure and such an honor to have
Speaker 1: you on. Thank you. If what you just heard was
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