How can we reclaim what it is to be a human being and embrace the paradox of a finite human and infinite being. Where do the healing salves of storytelling, dancing, singing, and silence take place in our lives. How can we cultivate communities that support our aliveness and keep us from shutting down?

In the 21st century storytelling, might take the form of writing from the heart, acting in a local play, or an open mike performance at a local coffee house. Dancing could be attending a rave or ballroom dancing, while singing might be turning up the music in one’s home and singing with abandonment. And silence might be a long walk in nature, taking up a meditation practice, or turning off the radio while driving the car and bringing awareness to what is happening in the moment. The intention to slow down might reveal a spaciousness to cultivate healing in your own life as well as our communities. I reflect back to another prophetic moment in my own life when I was nineteen and hitchhiking along the Big Sur coast of California. As I was waiting for a lift, I noticed someone on the back of a highway sign had scratched the words, “Dig the Slowness!”

I share with with you a recent letter from Joanna Macy about how people have found the courage to act in their own lives as a source of inspiration and hope that you may find the courage to be part of the Great Turning.

 “The deeper the sorrow, the greater the joy” – William Blake

Joanna’s Letter

Groundhog Day, St. Brigid’s Day, Candlemas. Well, in addition to bringing a favorite movie to mind, this day seems to be about wondering if more light is there, and if spring is really coming. Well, that fits.

Have you noticed, in this Now that we’re living, how both the dark and the light seem to be intensifying?–and the swings between them swifter? Both the Great Unraveling and the Great Turning are accelerating.

On the Great Turning side, there’s no doubt about it: the Occupy movement is waking us up to the core pathology of our nation and, indeed, of capitalism worldwide (even making it okay to say “capitalism”!). Respectable mainstream journals and media are all of a sudden describing Wall Street’s financial and moral failures, with juicy disclosures of high-level venality and appalling reports on the poverty swallowing more millions of our people. Knowing this is bitter but essential.

So the Great Unraveling is being illumined by the Great Turning. Some of its features that have gripped me of late concern lost civil rights. With the National Defense Authorization Act, Congress actually voted to strip away last remnants of habeas corpus, and made each of us susceptible to indefinite detention in the hands of the military, without charges or trial, on mere suspicion of aiding the enemy. It’s important that we know this.

It fits with our mania for locking people up. Despite its enormous cost, our prison population has increased till it’s higher than any other nation, including China: it is now, in absolute terms, 25% of all incarcerated around the world, though the U.S. is only 5% of global population. To take part in the Great Turning we must know this.

To take part in the Great Turning, we must know about the ongoing disaster of Fukushima. We are being denied reporting of what’s befalling the Japanese people, and even information we need in order to protect our families from the radioactive fallout reaching us by air and sea. Each act of truth-telling, such as Arnie Gundersen’s reports on Fukushima is part of the Great Turning, a jewel in Indra’s Net. See www.fairewinds.com

The other night at dinner, as we were sharing news and views, my Creation theologian friend Matt Fox said, “Courage is the first sign of the Spirit. It is the root of all the other virtues.”

I loved his saying that. It caused me to think how courage is the essential ingredient of truth-speaking, how it sparks our fervor and our self-respect, how it lets us discover new strengths, new allies. And I got to reflecting on how lucky I am that the work I do acquaints me with so many courageous people. For example:

Last weekend in Boise I gave a workshop on nuclear guardianship for the Snake River Alliance, which is Idaho’s nuclear watchdog and clean energy advocate. Among the many inspiring folks I met was Beatrice Brailsford, who lives out near the Idaho National Lab. For over 30 years she has been keeping her eye on that huge nuclear mega-complex, and also on vast fields of plutonium-drenched waste from Rocky Flats. Dumped into unlined trenches directly above the great Snake River aquifer, the toxins are seeping down through the soil to the source of the region’s drinking water. Challenged by the Alliance, the Department of Energy has begun digging up one section of the mess. “We have to keep on it,” Beatrice said with calm simplicity. “The plutonium lasts forever, so that’s how long we’ll be at it—forever.”

And I think of Doug Mosel who served as my personal assistant for seven years when he lived in Oakland at the tail end of a career as a corporate trainer. A study group on deep ecology brought him into my life. Soon he was co-teaching with Fran and me. If Beatrice’s brand of courage is to face the horrible and stay put with unwavering presence, Doug’s is the courage to change course when called to a different aspect of the Great Turning. In our intensives he had been teaching powerfully about the food revolution and the return to locally controlled agriculture, when he became aware that no wheat was being grown in the counties north of San Francisco. So he upped and moved out there, despite lack of land and capital. Now six years later he is producing the first wheat grown in Mendocino County in four decades. Not only is he growing heirloom varieties of wheat, oats, barley and rye, but other farmers in five adjoining counties have followed suit. Furthermore, to produce the quality of flour he wants, he has seen to the import and operation of an Austrian stone mill.

Chris Johnstone, my co-author in the U.K., shows me another face of valor: the courage to stand up for one’s rights to health and well-being—and, of course, in the process, defending others’ rights as well. In our book to come out next month, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess we’re in without Going Crazy, Chris describes the dramatic ordeal he triggered when he was a medical intern in a British hospital. Extravagant hours were the norm for interns, often up to eighty a week, sometimes over a hundred. Experiencing the exhaustion and depression this kind of pressure produced, seeing the dangers and accidents that resulted, Chris was surprised there wasn’t a campaign to improve conditions. “We don’t have the power here,” his fellow-interns told him, “there’s nothing we can do.” He began meeting with like-minded doctors, and eventually considered legal action against the National Health Service. This had never happened before and at each step of the way he was advised against it at the cost of his career. Yet he pushed through. The case generated so much domestic and international publicity that finally, five years down the road, the National Health Service settled out of court. The case was won and the age of hundred hour work weeks was over.

The courage to receive and follow a vision, to risk comfort and security in radically rearranging your life, that’s what I see these days in Anne Symens-Bucher and her husband Terry. When Doug went north, Anne replaced him as my personal assistant. I had known her as a founder of the Nevada Desert Experience (a faith-based protest presence at the Nevada Test Site), a secular Franciscan, and the busy, home-schooling mother of five children. Watching the deteriorating conditions and the mounting gang violence in their east Oakland neighborhood, Anne and Terry decided to open up their family compound and turn it into an urban center for growing food and people. Honoring St. Francis they would call it Canticle Farm, for Francis’s beloved canticle for Brother Sun and Sister Moon. Young people had already been showing up, now more began to arrive and move in, generating regular meetings for gardening, clean up, rituals, meditation, workshops, you name it. Last week the papers of incorporation arrived. Canticle Farm is now a legal reality. That’s good, because on the next street Anne saw a For Sale sign on a house adjoining the rear of their property. She immediately envisioned it as a nonviolence training center, a good thing for that street where a shooting had just occurred; it’s the turf of two gangs and the tensions are high.

It’s a fairly big house and all you need to do to make it part of Canticle Farm is move the chicken coop and take the fence down—oh, and first raise two hundred thousand dollars. That’s happening. Meanwhile I learn more definitions of courage. It’s betting on your values and trusting what will emerge. It’s readiness to risk your personal security and have your life turned inside out.

The young people coming to Canticle Farm demonstrate the power of the Work That Reconnects, because that’s how most of them heard of this new community and were motivated to join. I have loved having them show up at my workshops and I have become powerfully committed to increasing their numbers. Few can afford even the modest fees for a residential intensive, which is long enough to be really transformative. That is why I am making an appeal for a scholarship fund for young activists. Please read about the particulars here to see how you can support a young activist in the Great Turning.

Yours in gladness for life,

Joanna

One year ago, Debra Larson, close friend,  passed away after a two year struggle with cancer. She was one of the first women to come to Breitenbush Hot Springs in Oregon and create a new experiment in community living. Her beauty and wonderful smile touched all that new her. Her ex-partner Peter Moore and I spent many a Saturday morning enjoying breakfast at her home after we came back from our regular walks at Minto-Brown park, a 900 acre place of wildness in Salem, Oregon. Reflecting over the past year, she is one of many, myself included, that have been diagnosed with some form of cancer. Recent studies show that one out of three persons in our lifetime will be diagnosed with cancer. Indications that increased environmental toxicity premeating the earth is naturally affecting humans at an alarming rate. As a matter of survival, it is urgent that we work for an end to the rampant industrial growth that has plagued our world and move towards a future that is sustainable.

Let each person in our lives who is diagnosed with cancer be a call to action to create a safe world for our future generations.

with love and remembering Debra,

Werner

In the fast pace of our cultural addiction to consumption, we have forgotten how to be consumed by the natural world, seduced by earth. Slowing down has become a cultural taboo. Esalen offers a place to be truly indulged by the magnificence of the land, nourished by the food, and invited to connect with other humans who are moved by spirit to explore the deeper conversations with the world. Can we find the time to remove ourselves from the endless revolutions of the hamster cage treadmill, and as Robert Michael Pyle so eloquently asks; “What is there, after all, besides memories and dreams, and the way they mix with land and air and water to make us whole?”

In 1969 , I journeyed across America and Canada. My first stop brought me to the doorstep of Esalen. Who knows what might have happened, had my curiosity brought me to stay at Esalen, a breeding ground for new systems of thought and feeling that expanded beyond the constraints of mainstream society. But I continued north, only to return 41 years later.

Below is a photo essay of my 5 days at Esalen where I attended a workshop Seduced by Earth: Deep Imagination, Soulcraft™, and the Dreaming of Nature guided by Bill Plotkin and Geneen Marie Haugen of the Animas Valley Institute.

May your heart open to the deeper longing of soul.

In some ways this is how our own mental perceptions work.  We see a situation and instead of seeing it for what it is, our mind begins to weave a story that can create an outcome that is far removed from the reality of what we are observing. How do we bring ourselves to radical presence and cultivate a deep listening without being seduced by our own judgements and projections? I find the relationship between photography and how we embrace our everyday experiences quite profound. In photography, there is the desire to capture the sacredness and emotional flavor of the moment. When we explore the conversational frontier with a loved one, our work, or ourselves, are we not looking for the sacred ground that connects us at a soul level, where our perceptions diminish and we surrender to a vulnerability that brings forth what is hidden but we long to reveal.

Let us participate in the world with our full dynamic range of who we are, and as David Whyte, the poet writes in All the True Vows;

“Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.“

People “find themselves” when in some kind of trouble. What troubles us always seems bigger than we are, it grabs hold of us and we find ourselves being pulled deeper and deeper into it. That’s the point of trouble: to get us into deeper waters than we might choose on our own. People have problems and can even handle them, but people “find themselves” when in the midst of what truly troubles them.

Real trouble has purpose hidden in it; that’s why it’s so troubling to us. Typically, serious trouble must develop for us to recall what is most important to us. For what truly troubles us would also change us. Trouble wants us to face up to it; to turn and face what we came here to learn about. The right trouble draws on all our resources, making us more resourceful and more aware of capacities we didn’t know were there. The right trouble can make us more resilient, more creative, and less troubled in general. Those who would avoid trouble at all costs simply wind up in the wrong trouble. In the end everyone gets into some kind of trouble, but wisdom depends on being in the right trouble. Being wise doesn’t keep us completely out of trouble, but leads us to finding the right trouble to be in. That’s a message from the black dog: find the right trouble and learn from it who you already are.

Listen to a New Dimensions Interview with Michael Meade

His premises in writing the book are that a more mature human society requires more mature human individuals, nature (including our own deeper nature, soul) has always provided and still provides the best template for human maturation, and every human being has a unique and mystical relationship to the wild world, and that the conscious discovery and cultivation of that relationship is at the core of true adulthood.

Lead-in quote to Chapter One.

it’s 3:23 in the morning
and I’m awake?
because my great great grandchildren?
won’t let me sleep?
my great great grandchildren?
ask me in dreams?
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?
surely you did something?
when the seasons started failing?
as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?
did you fill the streets with protest?
when democracy was stolen?
what did you do? once? you? knew?… ?
— Drew Dellinger, “hieroglyphic stairway”

A Patho-Adolescent Society

“In current Western and Westernized societies, in addition to the scarcity of true maturity, many people of adult age suffer from a variety of adolescent psychopathologies — incapacitating social insecurity, identity confusion, extremely low self-esteem, few or no social skills, narcissism, relentless greed, arrested moral development, recurrent physical violence, materialistic obsessions, little or no capacity for intimacy or empathy, substance addictions, and emotional numbness.

We see these psychopathologies most glaringly in leaders and celebrities of the Western world: Politicians blatantly motivated by image preservation, reelection prospects, power, wealth, and privilege. Moralizing religious leaders caught with their moral compasses askew. Entertainment icons killing themselves with alcohol, drugs, eating disorders, and cosmetic surgeries. Captains of industry reaching unprecedented nadirs of greed and power obsessions.

When we take an honest look at the people in charge of the governments, corporations, schools, and religious organizations of industrial growth societies, we find that too many are psychological adolescents with no deep understanding of themselves or the natural environment that makes their lives possible.”

The question that arose that week was ‘Where are the Men?” Most of Joanna’s workshops are attended by 80 percent women. In response to the question “Where are the men?” Joanna and her husband Fran offered the first workshop for men only in the spring of 2006. Afterwards, a smaller group stayed on and continued to share their vulnerabilities as they were witnessed by others. This seeded an ongoing self-organized group of men who continue to meet to this day. In a culture that discourages men to express their full range of emotions and sexuality, we as men have disconnected from our own aliveness, many of us raised by fathers who themselves have suffered from the effects of war. We continue to damage our young men (and women too) by sending them off to battle.

So this small band of self-organizing men meet once a year for several days surrounded by the beauty of the natural world. We stay connected through phone conversations and online community. Some of the original men have left, and new ones are invited, but the collective soul of this group of men continues on.

Spontaneously, someone suggests we meet at their house, six of us gather, hold council as we offer our vulnerabilities to be witnessed, the joys and sorrows we carry within; emotionally absent fathers, the tension of holding relationship, grief for our own sons and daughters, and as the day ends we have done our work by being fully present with each other.

It was late August week at Big Sur. Esalen Institute gave us a tented pavilion overlooking the sea so that two dozen folks in their twenties could join me in the Work That Reconnects. Our event was organized by Joshua Gorman, engaging and tireless founder of Generation Waking Up. Here’s how he conveys his vision:

A new generation of young people is waking up. We are the middle children of history, coming of age at the crossroads of civilization, a generation rising between an old world dying and a new world being born. We are the ‘make-it or break-it’ generation, the ‘all-or-nothing’ generation, the crucible through which civilization must pass or crash.”

So much beauty of place and face, I wondered if I’d wandered into Eden. Flowers and rows of veggies running up to the cliff’s edge. Early foggy stillness turning to breezes out of blue sky and sea. Hours of quiet sharing and rapt concentratio

n erupting into free singing and rap and dancing bodies.

I was moved that they saw with such clear eyes the crises of our time, the ecological unraveling, the political bankruptcy. The courage to see things as they are breeds a simple, radical readiness to come alive and act for life.

Earlier in August at a gathering of veteran facilitators at the Land of Medicine Buddha, I shared stories from my life and teachings I’ve drawn from over the years, that have helped to shape the Work That Reconnects. DVDs of those talks judged useful to other interested parties will be made available by mid-Autumn when they are edited.

Violetta Korper was the mother of a childhood friend of mine. She acted in Hollywood as Violetta Rensing in the 1950′s and 1960′s and was chosen as one of the “Wampas Baby Stars of 1956.” My father over the years had filmed 8mm home movies of family gatherings, and after she passed away, I put this tribute together for her surviving son, Rene.