Seeds of a Second Renaissance Issue 4 (May 2025) - Joanna Macy's Work That Reconnects
Introducing Joanna Macy’s work which empowers us to respond to socio-ecological crises, transfiguring apathy and despair into creative action. Plus, events & opportunities for inner-led change.
Welcome to Seeds of a Second Renaissance* – a monthly newsletter for explorers of inner-led change towards radically wiser societies.
For both seasoned travellers and those new to these shores, each edition offers a bite-sized exploration of keystone ideas and thinkers whose work you may wish to know more deeply.
You’ll also find curated events, opportunities, and resources from around the ecosystem below.
Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects: A spiral of change for a Great Turning
February’s issue, which introduced Donna Haraway’s notion of “staying with the trouble”, ended with a question: how do we avoid overwhelm, to remain responsive to the troubles we’re entangled in? The Work That Reconnects speaks to this inquiry directly. Joanna Macy’s practical, soulful framework helps us to own our feelings about what’s happening in the world, transfiguring apathy and even despair into creative action.
Joanna Macy (born 1929) is an activist, author, and scholar of Buddhism, systems theory, and deep ecology. A cherished figure in environmental movements, her teaching has supported countless activists to cultivate the motivation, courage, and resilience to take action amid socio-ecological crisis.
The Work that Reconnects is a framework and open-source collection of practices for personal and social change; a ‘spiral’ journey through four touchpoints: Coming from Gratitude, Honouring Our Pain for the World, Seeing with New Eyes, and Going Forth. Let’s step briefly through each…
Coming from Gratitude
Gratitude for the gift of life nurtures a foundation of trust and unconditional joy, even in difficult times. Macy considers gratitude a subversive stance — “that primal ‘Wow!’ at being alive” that refutes the message of dissatisfaction driving the industrial growth society and that is a refreshing alternative to guilt or fear as a source of motivation for environmental action.1
Honouring Our Pain for the World
Resourced by deep roots of gratitude, loosening our curated image of composure or politeness, we make space to voice our feelings about what’s happening in our world. As we witness each other in our sorrow, outrage, fear, and numbness, we may notice how our pain tells a story “...about our interconnectedness. We feel distress when other beings suffer because, at a deep level, we are not separate from them. The isolation that splits us from the living body of our world is an illusion; the pain breaks through it to tell us who we really are”.2
Seeing with New Eyes
By experiencing our collective care for the world, we may deepen our sense of community with widening circles of life. (This kind of shift, depicted below, recalls the Integral model of development explored in issue 3.)
As we deepen a sense of belonging to the ecology of life, connected with beings across geographies and time, our resourcefulness to express our care for the world grows. We realise forms of power beyond aggression or domination, learning to wield “power with” instead of “power over”: working in partnership with others, dancing with what is beyond our control, and aligning our actions with the rhythms of life itself.
Going Forth
The final station in the spiral invites imagination and action. Here we dare to believe that radical change is possible — and already happening. We tend the inner fire that blooms from our deepest hopes for the world, and orient our actions towards making them real — persevering regardless of uncertain outcomes. This is Active Hope.
This four-part journey can be undertaken solo or in a group; relating to issues big or small. You might take time to wind your way through the spiral if you’re feeling disturbed by a news report — or when feeling stuck as a group of neighbours organising a local community project. A great collection of resources (including exercises and activities for each station of the spiral) is freely available in the online Work That Reconnects Resource Library.
The spiral is a practical tool towards what Macy calls the Great Turning (or, we might say, a Second Renaissance): a fundamental shift in ways of living and relating to the world, akin to the Agricultural or Industrial Revolutions. Through the Work that Reconnects, we acknowledge pain and distress as natural, widespread, and healthy reactions to the state of our world; cultivate ever-widening circles of care; and begin to act in alignment with emergence, grounded in Active Hope.
In this way, despite grave odds and heartbreaking times, countless small stories, campaigns, and actions continue to weave in service of a larger narrative. A deep-rooted, far-reaching shift towards life-sustaining civilisation: the Great Turning.
Explore the field of inner-led change…
A selection of events, opportunities, and resources recommended by readers, friends, and allies in the arena of inner-led regeneration.
👋 Help us to showcase the best opportunities and resources: please suggest items to include in the Events, Offers & Links or Jobs Board WhatsApp channels.
Upcoming Events
Tamera’s 30th Anniversary Summer University: Building Community in Times of Global Crisis
📍Tamera, Relíquias, Portugal 📅 5-11 July 2025 💸Sliding scale from €900-€1520
“As Tamera turns 30, we invite friends, fellow voyagers and all those engaged in community-based alternatives for an immersive gathering. Together, we want to look back on our journey, situate ourselves in today’s global context and ask: What makes intentional communities contextually relevant today, as we confront a crisis of civilization? We’re honored by an outstanding array of speakers, including leaders of various intentional and frontline communities, social movements and Indigenous groups, and thought leaders and visionaries from around the world.”
Mindful Research Retreat
📍INTP campus in the French Pyrenees 📅 20-27 July 2025 Apply by 31 May 💸€500/week
“This is a meditation retreat. It's also a time you can be productive in your research. But most importantly, it's a time to intentionally lean deeper into the joy of doing the work we love, together with like-minded people, surrounded by beautiful mountains. The core of this will be a guided exploration of how to make our research itself a deep and joyful meditation practice.” Run by Institut Natura e Teoria en Pirenèus (INTP), an independent research collective and residency centre in the Pyrenees.
Microsolidarity Network EU Summer Camp - Save the Date
📍Casa Tilo, near Barcelona, Spain 📅 20-25 August 2025
Hot off the press: “Expect nothing less than a bootcamp for community hosts: grow your organising skills; deepen your connections with people in the network; cut loose for one of the great parties of the summer. We’re going to have a low ticket cap of 40 people, so click here to let us know if you’d like to join and we’ll send out more details soon.”
Life as Practice: a Year-long Mentorship Program
📍Online 📅 September 2025 to August 2026 Apply by 30 June for early bird pricing 💸 €1799 to €2796
“You are warmly invited to Life as Practice, a unique year-long group mentorship guided by Stockholm-based couple Stephen Reid and Laura Gottlieb. Running from September 2025 to August 2026, this immersive container is designed to help you integrate personal development into your daily existence, transforming routine into ritual and challenges into catalysts for growth. It’s a journey into living more consciously and embodying your practice fully, within a supportive community structure.”
Jobs & Opportunities
Ecological Futures Camp at Black Mountains College
📍Troed-Yr-Harn Farm, Talgarth, Wales 📅 28 July-1st August. Apply by 30 June.
A free residential programme for young people aged 16-25. “Experience Black Mountains College and explore your future. How can you use your passions and skills to make a difference in a climate-changed world? Spend 5 days with us, on our 120-acre farm and surrounding mountains. Imagining, designing and taking action. Guided by activists, artists, and industry professionals, you will explore your role in creating a just society within safe planetary boundaries.”
Systems Thinking Internship at ReImagined Futures
📍Remote (EU residents only) 📅 Starting September 2025. Apply by 15 June.
“ReImagined Futures is looking for a passionate systems practitioner for a 6-month full-remote internship starting in September 2025. Key Highlights: Co-create systems maps in areas like biodiversity, food or childcare; Opportunity to work on projects with local governments, global networks and systemic investors.”
Lecturer (Sustainable Futures, Ecology, Political Economy or Alternative Economics) at Black Mountains College
📍Black Mountains College, Talgarth, Wales 📅 Apply by 1 June
“We are seeking to recruit a Lecturer to contribute to our undergraduate degree, a BA (Hons) in Sustainable Futures: Arts, Ecology and Systems Change. … We are looking for a candidate with an ability to teach in at least one (and preferably two) of the following areas: ecology, perspectives on sustainable futures as they pertain to the Global South, and political economy or alternative economics.”
Volunteer Opportunity at L’Arbre Qui Pousse
📍L’Arbre Qui Pousse, Ottignies, Belgium 📅 Apply asap
“We are looking for 1 French-speaking volunteer asap for a 1-year immersion in one of the liveliest ecovillages in Belgium! Mostly to work on events and developing an education campus inspired by the Schumacher College.”
Links & Resources
If you would like to explore Joanna Macy’s work further, check out some of these free resources…
Active Hope Foundations Training
“A free, video-based, engaging & practical online course designed to nourish our capacity to make a difference in the world. It is available now and you can start at any time.”
Deep Times Journal
“Deep Times is a journal offering articles, art, and poetry rooted in the Work That Reconnects, which emphasizes interdependence within ecosystems and societies. It aims to foster life-sustaining, equitable cultures through inspiration drawn from reconnecting with ancestors and future generations, a concept termed “Deep Time” by Joanna Macy.”
Songs for the Great Turning
“Songs, especially when sung together and in harmony, are a vital tool in the Great Turning ... They help us experience in the body our connection to each other and the planet, summon our collective courage, enliven us and inspire us to play our part in creating a life-sustaining society. We present here a collection of songs that are easy to learn and sing in groups, at Work That Reconnects gatherings, in our work in the world, in our daily lives.”
Study Guide for Coming Back to Life by Joanna Macy and Molly Brown
“Joanna Macy and Molly Brown have created a study guide to accompany the new edition of Coming Back to Life to help deepen your understanding of the Work That Reconnects and its underlying worldview and paradigms. Questions are designed for reflection, journaling, and study group explorations. We invite you to create small groups in your own community using Coming Back to Life to widen the circle of the Work That Reconnects.”
Second Renaissance
*“Second Renaissance” is one way of framing current times as a period of civilisational crisis and potential renewal – and of pointing to an ecosystem of people and organisations working to catalyse the emergence of a new, regenerative, cultural paradigm. If you recognise terms like metacrisis, Metamodern, Regenerative, Liminal Web, Game B, Integral, conscious evolution and so on, then you’re on familiar ground. Explore the core thesis and theory of change in more detail here.
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Finally, we leave you with some —
Art to nourish the soul…
Joanna Macy is also well known for her translations of the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, together with her collaborator Anita Barrows. We hope you enjoy this beautiful poetry film produced by The On Being Project.
‘Let this Darkness be a Bell Tower’. Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows. Read by Joanna Macy. Directed and animated by Matt Huynh and Mila Nery.
Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re In without Going Crazy (Novato, California: New World Library, 2012)
Thank you for reading the fourth issue of Seeds of a Second Renaissance.