The Gifts of Uncertainty: Joanna Macy Speaks to the Present Moment
The Ojai Foundation, a sanctuary for spiritual seekers of all sorts, this week inaugurated a "great teacher series" by bringing deep ecologist and Buddhist Joanna Macy in to lead a workshop and give a talk on Thursday night. She spoke in the Foundation's gorgeous Council House, which was filled with people for the occasion.
A truly inspiring talk it was, and that's coming from one who is skeptical about gurus and leaders of all sorts, be they Buddhist, Christian, Democratic, ecological, you name it.
It's so easy, so enjoyable really, to turn our problems over to some one else to solve.
For skeptics and others troubled by the degradation of the planet, Macy made a fundamental point, .
"It is natural for us to be distressed over the state of the world. We are integral components of it, like cells in a larger body. When that body is traumatized, we feel it," she pointed out. "Our culture conditions us to view pain as dysfunction. A successful person, as we conclude from commercials and electoral campaigns, brims with optimism... "Be sociable." "Keep smiling." "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."
With that said, she went on to describe our plight as a conflict between two stories. In the first story, variously called Business as Usual, Late Capitalism, or the Industrial Growth Society, all the focus is on the growth of the economy -- money. "In order for us to be comfortable and safe, this system is ready and willing to do anything."
In the second story, which she calls The Great Unraveling, we see the bill for decades of extraction, exploitation, and ruin of the plane's ecosystems come due. "Just to speak of this, to transform it into words, seems inadequate," she said. "It takes moral imagination to see what is happening now, this moment is so huge."
But her focus is on the third story, which she dubs The Great Turning, and what's fascinating is that unlike most of our leaders -- even enormously popular ones, such as President Obama -- she admits to a profound uncertainty as to our fate. We really don't know how it's all going to come out.
Macy sees this uncertainty as a gift. As in love, as in childbirth, as in raising a garden, our success is not foretold.
"We have this notion in America that we ought to be sure [of triumph in an endeavor] before we start," she said. "We are addicted to hope in this culture. But hope takes you out of the present moment. You have a chance to be alive at this moment. Isn't that what you want?"
Thank you, Joanna Macy, for articulating this thought, for giving skeptics and believers alike a means by which to transform our fear for the world into a desire to act for it...out of love.
[cross-posted at A Change in the Wind]
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