The Work That Reconnects

The Work That Reconnects is a continuing body of group-process spiritual-ecological-psychological work developed across the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s by [[joanna-macy|Joanna Macy]] (b. 1929) and substantial collaborators. Macy’s biography is itself a substantial integration: doctoral work in religion and systems theory (Syracuse, 1978), early Peace Corps service in India, sustained Tibetan Buddhist practice, study with Sarvodaya in Sri Lanka, deep collaboration with Arne Naess and the deep-ecology movement, decades of group facilitation. The Work That Reconnects emerged from this integration.

The diagnosis

The work begins from a diagnosis the title of one of Macy’s books — Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age (1983, predecessor to the later Coming Back to Life) — substantially captures: that ordinary people in the contemporary moment carry substantial unprocessed grief, fear, and despair about the actual conditions of the world (originally, in the 1970s–80s, especially nuclear weapons; subsequently, increasingly, ecological-civilizational crisis); that the standard cultural response is to suppress these feelings, deny them, project them onto safe targets, or psychologize them away; and that this suppression substantially blocks the response the conditions actually require.

The argument: until the grief is felt and witnessed, the substantial energy it contains remains bound; once felt and witnessed, that energy becomes available for sustainable engagement with the work of caring for what can be cared for. The unfelt grief is itself the principal obstacle; the felt grief is the principal resource.

The four-stage spiral

The work is conducted in a four-stage spiral — a structure that can be moved through in a single workshop, in a multi-day retreat, or across a lifetime of practice:

1. Coming from gratitude. The work begins not with the crisis but with the goods that already are — life, breath, food, the body, the land, the community. Gratitude practices ground participants in what is already given; without this grounding, the subsequent stages substantially overwhelm.
2. Honoring our pain for the world. Sustained group practice of allowing the grief, fear, anger, and despair about the world’s condition to surface and be witnessed. The principal practices in this stage include the Truth Mandala (a structured group practice with stones, dead leaves, sticks, and an empty bowl, in which participants speak from each of four positions: grief, fear, anger, emptiness), the Council of All Beings (in which participants take on the voices of non-human beings — animals, plants, ecosystems — and speak the more-than-human grief and rage), the Cairn of Mourning, and various others.
3. Seeing with new eyes. The grief, once felt, opens new perception. This stage uses systems-theoretical and Buddhist resources — the recognition of interdependence, the recognition of the larger-than-individual self, the felt sense of belonging to the Earth — to rewire how participants perceive their situation.
4. Going forth. Re-engagement with the world, with the work that needs doing. The going forth is sustainable precisely because it has been built on felt grief and re-perception, not on bypassing or denial.

The principal practices

A non-exhaustive list of the practices Macy and collaborators have developed:

• The Truth Mandala (described above).
• The Council of All Beings (developed with John Seed and others; now widely used in deep-ecology and engaged-Buddhist contexts globally).
• The Cairn of Mourning — a group practice of placing stones for what is being mourned.
• The Bestiary — a group practice of naming endangered and extinct species.
• The Open Sentences — paired-conversation practices in which one partner speaks completing prompts and the other listens without responding (e.g. what I love about being alive in this moment is…; what I fear most is…).
• The Spiral of the Web — embodied group practices of interconnection.
• [[deep-time|Deep Time]] work — practices that connect the present moment with ancestors and future generations across [[deep-time|deep time]].

The continuing development

The work has been substantially extended by collaborators and successors:

• Molly Young Brown — Macy’s principal teaching partner across many decades; co-author of Coming Back to Life.
• John Seed — Australian deep-ecology activist; collaborator on the Council of All Beings.
• Anne Symens-Bucher — long-term collaborator and successor.
• Chris Johnstone (UK; co-author of Active Hope, 2012, with Macy).
• The continuing global network of trained facilitators conducting the work in dozens of countries.

Honest framing

A few notes for clarity:

• The work is not therapy. It overlaps with therapeutic work (particularly grief work) but is conducted in different settings and with different goals. Practitioners with substantial trauma histories may need professional therapeutic support alongside or instead of the group work.
• The work is not exclusively Buddhist. Although Macy’s framework is substantially Buddhist-inflected, the practices are accessible to participants of any religious or non-religious orientation, and the work has been adopted across substantially diverse spiritual contexts.
• The work has its critics. Some have argued that the workshop-format intensive group experience can produce premature catharsis without sustained subsequent engagement; some have argued that the focus on individual emotional process can substitute for collective political organizing; some have argued the work is too white-middle-class in its sociology. [[0mn1one|The platform]]‘s posture: the work has substantial value; the critiques have substance; both are true.

What this gives the platform

Three contributions:

1. A working practice for [[grief|ecological grief]]. [[0mn1one|The platform]]‘s mission engages substantial loss — biodiversity loss, climate disruption, the substantial-and-continuing displacement of indigenous peoples and traditional ways of life. Practitioners who engage this work need resources for processing the grief; the Work That Reconnects is one of the principal such resources.
2. A model of contemplative-political integration. The four-stage spiral structures how contemplative practice can ground political engagement without either dimension substituting for the other.
3. A continuing tradition. The substantial network of trained facilitators globally, the continuing publications, the workshop offerings — Macy’s work has built substantial institutional infrastructure for the continuing practice.

See also

Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.

• Subset of: [[engaged-buddhism]]
• Parallels: [[spiritual-ecology]]
• Member of: [[practice]]

Sources

1. [[joanna-macy|Joanna Macy]] & Molly Young Brown. Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to The Work That Reconnects. New Society, 1998 (rev. 2014). Source class: book / definitive practice manual.
2. [[joanna-macy|Joanna Macy]]. Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age. New Society, 1983. Source class: book / earlier predecessor work.
3. [[joanna-macy|Joanna Macy]] & Chris Johnstone. Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy. New World Library, 2012 (rev. 2022). Source class: book / contemporary articulation.
4. [[joanna-macy|Joanna Macy]]. World as Lover, World as Self. Parallax, 1991 (rev. 2007). Source class: book / theological-philosophical articulation.
5. The Work That Reconnects Network. https://workthatreconnects.org. Source class: institutional / continuing network.

Lenses still to grow

• The Truth Mandala in detail.
• The Council of All Beings as a continuing practice.
• Macy’s relationship to Tibetan Buddhism and the broader Buddhist tradition.
• The Active Hope frame of the 2012 book.
• The international network of facilitators in detail.
• Macy’s own biographical formation — Sarvodaya, [[deep-ecology|deep ecology]], the broader integration.