The Work That Reconnects

Drawing on the teachings of deep ecology, systems theory, and Buddhism, Joanna Macy’s “Work that Reconnects” is full of tools and practices that offer key insights into how we can work together to support a shift in our hearts and minds, our lives and our society that is truly life-sustaining.

The Work that Reconnects initially evolved in North America in the late 1970s, during a time of escalating concerns about nuclear weaponry and the hazards of nuclear power as “despair and empowerment work”, when creators Chellis Glendinning, Joanna Macy and Fran Peavey realised that when people share their feelings of fear, anguish or despair with others, their power to act for change is released. In the face of environmental uncertainty, climate despair, or whatever we want to call it, WTR allows us to access and honour our pain for the world, and through doing so realise our interconnectedness to the earth and all beings.

Choosing our narrative: WTR tells us that we can decide which narrative we want to believe about the current state of the world. We can choose to look at business as usual, the story of the industrial growth society, which tells us that getting ahead and growth are the main objectives - and that recessions, extreme weather conditions, and even environmental collapse are not really happening, or are small hiccups that capitalism and technology will solve. We can look at what is happening and panic - the Great Unraveling is the story told to us by sensationalist journalists and doomsdayers, and it is easy to feel anxiety when we see the harm that Business as Usual has caused to our ecological, economic, social and biological systems. On the other hand, we can see things from another perspective - the Great Turning. This involves celebrating the resilience and creativity of human responses to life-rocking changes, and focuses on how we can enable the transition of our world from an Industrial Growth Society to a Life-Sustaining Society. Imagine if, instead of giving up because the world as we know it is coming to an end, we ask ourselves how we can be part of birthing a completely different world - a world that acts in defence of nature, in defence of life, not of economic growth and profit.

The Spiral of the Work That Reconnects: Workshops guide participants through the “spiral”, which helps us to face the challenges of the world with new eyes and a sense of rootedness, belonging and energy. The spiral begins with gratitude - what are we grateful for having witnessed and experienced in this world? Then, we honour our pain for the world. All too often we bury and ignore our pain, numbing ourselves because the cost of feeling it is too high. By allowing the pain to speak, we also realise that we are capable of feeling for something far beyond our ‘selves’ as we have come to perceive them. Recognising our interconnectedness to life, we begin to see with new eyes, enabling us to go forth into the actions that call to us.

Do you feel the call to be a defender of the earth? What is the cost of ignoring your intuition about what is happening to the planet, and of continuing business as usual?

“As a society, we are caught between a sense of impending apocalypse and the fear of acknowledging it. In this 'caught' place our responses are blocked and confused…. On one level we maintain a more or less upbeat capacity to carry on as usual…. and all the while, underneath, there is this inchoate knowledge that our world could go at any moment. Awesome and unprecedented in the history of humanity, it lurks there, with an anguish beyond the naming. Unless we find ways of acknowledging and integrating that level of anguished awareness, we repress it; and with that repression, we are drained of the energy we need for action and clear thinking.” Joanna Macy.

I trained as a facilitator of the Work That Reconnects throughout 2020 and have had the honour of facilitating a series of workshops and courses alongside other practitioners.