Finding Hope Beyond Ecological Despair

In an age of ecological collapse and spiritual disconnection, Joanna Macy emerged as one of the most profound prophetic voices of our time — a bridge between ancient wisdom and the urgent needs of a planet in crisis.

One year ago, the world lost a modern prophet in Joanna Macy (1929–2025), a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology — a true pioneer of the ecological dimension within socially engaged Buddhism in the West. 

Macy’s journey into her vocation featured many remarkable landmarks. Having worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1950s and the United States State Department in the early 1960s, Macy moved to India with her husband and three children in 1964. There, she worked with Tibetan refugees in northern India and fell in love with Buddhism, which became a guiding spiritual influence in her work. Upon returning to the US in 1969, Macy became involved in civil rights activism and the anti-Vietnam War effort while studying Buddhism at George Washington University. Throughout the 1970s, she wrote, taught, and earned a PhD in religious studies from Syracuse University. Her dissertation linked Buddhism and general systems theory, which emphasizes holism and the interdependence of systems. [1] Ecologist and philosopher David Abram reflects: “At the lustrous heart of Joanna’s lifework and practice sits the Buddha’s jewel-like insight into the truth of pratityasamutpada, a term that Joanna represents as ‘mutual causality’ in her splendid doctoral dissertation on the dharma of natural systems.” [2]

Then, in 1977, while attending a day-long symposium of the Jacques Cousteau Society, a cataclysmic sense of grief seized Macy’s heart. Fifteen years before the United Nations’ first climate conference, she was overcome with aloneness and despair.

Macy reflected on the sobering experience at the symposium: “There was no aspect of the natural world that seemed free of being undercut and losing its capacity even for vitality.” This recognition silenced her for fifteen months as she realized, “We are destroying our world with every aspect of the power that we’ve accrued in corporate capitalism. And it brought a tremendous internal avalanche of grief. It was so arresting to me. It was so huge a realization that I couldn’t speak it.” [3] From this emptiness arose a question that would animate her work for the rest of her life: “How can I be fully present to my world — present enough to rejoice and be useful — when we as a species are destroying it?” [4]

This experience would influence her writing and teaching for the next five decades as she invited people to join the Great Turning (a term that organically arose from her work and was coined by practitioners) through her integrative framework known as the Work That Reconnects. This framework would influence her work with grief and despair as well as a gratitude-animated “spiral” into the realities of our lives and world, through which honoring the pain of the world alongside deep seeing of our interconnectedness can help form our prophetic voice.

Macy situated the Great Turning as one of the three stories of our time. The first story, Business as Usual, is the story of the Industrial Growth Society that leads to endless consumption and the exploitation of resources and people. “This story teaches us to identify as consumers as if the way we spend our money is our primary source of meaning and power,” Macy warned. [5] The second story, the Great Unraveling, is where Business as Usual leads: to accelerating ecological and social collapse via climate disruption and the breakdown of living systems. The final story, the Great Turning, is the invitation to a new kind of consciousness that is actually perennial wisdom. It is a paradigm shift that views all reality — creation, economies, nations, history, and the diversity of the human race — as interconnected.

Aligning with the term “inter-being” coined by her spiritual brother and Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, Macy invited us into the notion that all that exists is inherently relational and interdependent: “Sometimes, as I behold the ways we attune and support each other in cooperative efforts on behalf of Earth, I imagine that we are like nerve cells in a larger brain — and that brain is starting to think.” [6]

Simply put, the Great Turning is what can emerge when people dare to think and live relationally — when Gaian consciousness — the philosophical and spiritual concept that the Earth functions as a single, self-regulating, and interconnected living organism — is cultivated on individual, communal, and societal levels. Only a relational mode of being can lead to a revolution and the evolution of human consciousness.

There is no telling where the Great Turning will take the human race, just as there was no telling what the transition from an Agrarian Society to an Industrial Growth Society would behold. But Macy’s prophetic call to join the Great Turning, each in our own unique way, is both urgent and necessary for the next stage of consciousness and organizing of society. As Macy stated, “Our belonging is rooted in the living body of Earth, woven of the flows of time and relationship that form our bodies, our communities, our climate… When we turn and open our heart-mind to Earth, she is always there. This is the great reciprocity at the heart of the universe.” [7]

References:
[1] See the published version of Joanna Macy’s doctoral dissertation: Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural Systems (State University of New York Press, 1991).

[2] Joanna Macy, A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time, ed. Stephanie Kaza (Shambhala, 2020), xii.

[3] Joanna Macy and Jessica Serrante, “Ep 1: Love and Loss,” We Are the Great Turning, April 17, 2024, podcast, 28 min., https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1-love-and-loss/id1740825892?i=1000652520557.

[4] Macy, A Wild Love for the World, 358.

[5] Joanna Macy and Jessica Serrante, “Ep 2: The Three Stories of Our Time,” We Are the Great Turning, April 25, 2024, podcast, 30 min., https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-2-the-three-stories-of-our-time/id1740825892?i=1000653603967.

[6] Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self (Parallax Press, 1991), 55.

[7] Macy, A Wild Love for the World, 360–361.

Reflect with Us  
Joanna Macy’s work helps us understand that grief for the world can become a doorway into deeper connection rather than despair. When we remember that we belong to the living earth, hope can begin to take root in us again. When do you feel both love and sorrow for the world? This week, spend a few moments intentionally with nature, and notice what gratitude, grief, or sense of connection arises within you.

Share your reflection with us. 

We Conspire is a series from the Center for Action and Contemplation featuring wisdom and stories from the growing Christian contemplative movement. Sign up for the monthly email series and receive a free invitation to practice each month.