Reflections On the Passing of a Great Teacher and Dear Friend, Joanna Macy

The Buddha taught that Friendship is not half of the holy life. It is the holy life. (Upaddha Sutta)

As we deeply listen through the emergence of accelerated change in our world, we often feel unclear about what specific actions to take to make impact. We forget that community-building is skillful action in itself. Community is the mycelial network of the visible and invisible relational field of interdependence. A friend reminded me recently that in nature, while the mycelial network is vibrant, alive, and constant, it is rare to see the appearance of the fruiting body. I believe there is power in nurturing our mycelial networks of support in this time… in a devoted and unrelenting way… trusting the act of coming together rather than grasping for action/result.

One of Joanna Macy’s gifts was the recognition that community-building is sacred activism in a world of disconnect. The first treasure Joanna gave me as a young person was the understanding that turning towards our pain—together, in community and in ritual—opens the portal to freedom from the trance of separation. She gave me permission to turn towards, rather than away from my pain at a time when I thought my pain was a weakness that might swallow me whole. The motion of turning towards began to fortify a spiritual agency I could not access alone, or when numbing out to any part of my lived experience.

Perhaps the deepest, most painful human experience is the experience of believing we are alone, of feeling alone through whatever we might be going through. Entangled in the illusion of isolation, we try to “hold it all together.” While this is understandable, it is when this effort is dissolved, that we can truly experience “holding it all together,” as in knowing Interbeing through our joy and grief. 

I first read World as Lover, World as Self by Joanna Macy when I started college, and felt ignited by its core message: We begin to see the world as belonging to us as intimate as our own bodies. In 1992, it had just recently been published and I was eagerly discovering the teachings of deep ecology, engaged Buddhism, and the seeds for a new (ancient) paradigm based on interdependence. This book deepened my inquiry into the embodiment of Interbeing, from the micro to the macro. The radical responsibility of Interbeing calls us to both show up to be of greater service, and to be available to receive support.

When I first met Joanna Macy in person at the age of 22, after graduating college, I was working for Helena Norberg Hodge, Swedish activist, at the nonprofit organization International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC), focused on biological and cultural diversity. ISEC was based on the Ladakh Project, which celebrated the holistic traditions of indigenous Buddhist cultures high in the Himalayas, living in partnership with nature, and we advocated for indigenous cultures across the globe. Helena was part of a group of inspiring people running the International Forum on Globalization, who were some of my new heroes taking a stand for compassionate action in our world and the protection of ancient ways of knowing. Joanna Macy was one of them. 

The first time I met her in person, Helena and I went to Joanna’s home for tea and cookies, and I remember feeling equally delighted, awkward, and intimidated. At the time, I tended to project all over teachers I most respected, before dropping into a more authentic way of relating with them. I had started guiding community education groups for ISEC, and also started working with The Work That Reconnects spiral. Every time I engaged in the work, something in my perception lens shifted—and I felt more connected to myself, ancestors, people I would never meet across the globe, and the more-than-human world. Joanna’s work affirmed a portal bridging the inner and outer work, and this has been the foundation of my practice and teaching since. 

While my own path called me to pause in activist work at the age of 26 in order to move to a Zen Buddhist monastery to train in a more supportive, distilled, and radical spiritual community, The Work That Reconnects was always with me. When I exited the monastery 7 1/2 years later, I reconnected with Joanna and attended her facilitator training in Ojai, California. Soon, she invited me to assist her with a workshop and, on the long drive home afterwards, we dropped into a conversation I'll never forget. I opened myself to knowing Joanna more deeply and letting her know me more deeply.

That time in my life, post-monasticism, was a deeply creative, visionary, and pioneering time. It was also uncomfortable and scary, as I navigated coming into my own expression as an engaged Buddhist teacher in a world of so much complexity. I saw unique qualities in Joanna that felt outside-the-box in formal Buddhism. I saw a fierce tenacity, playfulness, and expressiveness alongside a humble heart, a vibrant recognition of the power of imagination and poetry alongside stillness, and an immeasurable warmth and generosity in her embodiment of community.  

Our relationship deepened when Joanna invited me to support her through a particularly hard time. I had internally blocked this kind of reciprocity with some of my own teachers, and witnessing Joanna avail herself to support from a mentee in this way made a huge impact on me. One of the topics we explored during that time was the gift of failure, and this topic, which seemed so taboo in our culture, was immeasurably transformative and healing for me.

One only needs to glimpse online to see how widespread Joanna’s work is globally to know that this was an extraordinary woman. Her work inspired thousands of us. Those of us who knew her personally knew that beyond her accomplishments, just the quality of presence, authenticity, and zest that she showed up with day in and day out was revolutionary. She was not just an extraordinary leader, but was also willing to show up constantly in child-like wonder. It felt that she was on the same page with all of us, an equal explorer, student, and discoverer, as she simultaneously guided us. She recognized awe as a true expression of shared power — and modeled looking through the lens of beginner's mind and seeing with new eyes.

In the aftermath of losing her, I will miss Joanna greatly. I have a lot to sit with, as do all of her disciples, about what is called for and required of us in these times. Her teachings and memory will always point me to the power of community and turning towards, rather than away, together. 

I had a visit scheduled with Joanna the week after she died, a yearly visit that I had been deeply looking forward to. In the last conversation we had prior, she had spoken of how much excitement, curiosity, and awe she held about her own moving towards death. She recognized Death as yet another sacred threshold. Joanna truly lived in gratitude for every moment, including gratitude for the final crossing her spirit would take in this lifetime.

Thank you, Joanna, for being a great teacher to so many of us and for taking a seat in the ancestral throne of shared power in our world. I believe the need for Joanna’s teachings and The Work That Reconnects has never been more potent, and I bow in appreciation to everyone who is helping to carry out this work.

On August 23, 2025, Purpose Guides is hosting Remembering Joanna Gathering, an invitation to celebrate Joanna Macy online. This event is also a fundraiser to support Joanna’s legacy and the Work That Reconnects. Mindful Living Revolution is honored to be one of the chosen organizations to be a beneficiary of this fundraiser! All are welcome!

Lastly, I want to acknowledge and express my endless appreciation to Anne Symens-Boucher, an extraordinary woman, foundational to the Work That Reconnects movement, who was also Joanna’s long-term executive assistant. Over the years of knowing Joanna, I have learned so much from Anne (co-founder of Canticle Farm) and her embodiment of Community, Sacred Activism, and True Service.

The Beauty Inherent in Repair

At our recent retreat, Return to Source, nestled in the snowcapped mountains of Colorado, a 19th Century black and gold Japanese kintsugi tea bowl sat upon our altar. Kintsugi is a Japanese art form featuring broken pottery and translates to "golden repair.”  Kintsugi invites us to embrace imperfection and recognize the beauty inherent in repair. Each day on retreat when I bowed slowly to the altar, thanking it for holding our community’s stillness, grief, love, and despair, I acknowledged the significance of the cracked bowl in my everyday life… 8 months after Hurricane Helene cracked my world and changed it forever.

I made it through a near death experience. I lived! Ever so slowly, step by step and with patience for processes that cannot be hurried, my husband and I are rebuilding our lives. Not everyone is given the opportunity of rebuilding after experiencing such devastation. But the crack nevertheless extends throughout  every aspect of our existence. In praise to one of my favorite songwriters, Leonard Cohen, “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. This is how the light gets in.”

Cracks in my once reliable schedule continually surprise me as I travel from place to place as a nomad -- juggling time zones. Cracks arise in the internet connection of temporary offices I set up along the way. Administrative cracks from mail that was oddly sent to an old address leads to an overdue notice. On the material level, any items I found in the rubble of my home are each cracked in their own way. 

Spirit has a great sense of humor. My boot and jacket zippers haven’t zipped properly since the hurricane. My laptop breaks down once a month mysteriously. My teeth have become more crooked and there remain mud stains on the surface of a backpack I found in the debris of my home and use daily. 

These cracks are symbols of the holes in our lives as we have known it. The holes in the ground we - personally and collectively - once perceived as solid. The holes in systems that are unravelling. The holes in ways and customs the US perceived as fixed. The unconditionally cracked nature of our world collectively is being revealed ever more rapidly through The Great Unravelling. 

To the untrained eye, this could be perceived as scary and alarming. But Buddhism teaches that this is our path… following the cracks. Each sacred crack is a teacher, inviting us into a deeper truth.

Meditation reveals to us that Reality is cracked. Ever changing and interdependent. Nothing is fixed nor finished. Light does not exist without shadow. Recognizing this, we see in each crack both emptiness and all possibility. We see our agency to respond to each moment free of a conditioned script. We see each crack - our vulnerability, our fragility, our weakness, our longing, our incongruencies, our paradoxes, our polarities, our messiness, our shadows - as holes invoking healing. It’s not about filling the holes. It’s not about getting to a fixed, enlightened, polished, untarnished destination. It’s about opening our hearts to the space between. It’s about leaning into and meeting each crack with love, being the liquid gold that coats the kintsugi bowl. 

Practice invites us to be continually tenderized and made soft in the face of what is hard, to know ourselves undeniably as the wholeness that is nondual and leaves no part out. Our cracks are portals affirming wholeness, rather than proof that we are lacking.

For me, It’s uncomfortable right now. I’m exhausted and need to rest more often than before. I pack, unpack, and misplace things too often. There are so many aspects of the process of recovering from a climate event that require waiting… and waiting longer. And I am one of the lucky ones, supported by privilege and community in my recovery. 

But deep inside, I love the discomfort of the cracked bowl. It’s a wildly and vibrantly alive place. I love the reminder to embrace messiness more than ever and not take myself seriously or personally. I love arriving to teach on Zoom in the same clothes I did the week before. I love the questions that replace clarity more and more often, directing me to slow down and spend even more time in not knowing. I love the awkwardness and discomfort of the cracks within conversation or conflict… Just hanging out in the middle of fecund unknown together, being with the messiness of misaligned or divergent perspectives - rather than seeking the boring route of conclusion, finish line, or me versus you.

Meditation is a practice of emptying. As our fixed ideas of self and collective crack open, there is more space for seeing with the heart. 

Like the kintsugi bowl, these times invite us to see - with renewed clarity - the beauty in our despair and the opportunity in repair. Everything is broken. Can we let go of superficial concerns or made up standards of perfection and become intimate with reality as it is, together? Can we let go of presentation, polish, or trying to appear a certain way and just be raw and real together? Can we give ourselves to the art of repair together? 

This requires showing up empty, open, real, and cracked. This requires letting go of crutches we’ve used to try to hide the cracks, or used to hold on to the false comfort of relative world orientation. Beyond feeding stories of separation, distance, or self-consciousness… beyond the habit of brushing our hair to appear on Zoom… or planning what we are going to say… beyond hiding our age or our weaknesses… beyond continuing to believe the capitalistic notion that we are not enough… we could conserve endless energy and resources by just showing up as we are. The energy that gets freed up in this way of being can then fuel our generosity of service to others.

Let’s revel in the process of what we might create through a culture that celebrates the art of repair. Let's awaken through our longing to be real and embrace messiness... To be seen and see one another as we actually are…cracked and whole simultaeously. Embracing our collective shadow requires that we embrace our personal shadows. If we block or numb out the shadows we cannot hear the call to respond. Let’s melt into all that is broken like gold in the cracks of the broken tea bowl… willing to bring all of life’s broken pieces into radical wholeness.

Meeting the Great Unraveling

The day Hurricane Helene hit, in late September 2024, my husband, Mark, and I woke up early and settled into morning meditation. At 9:00 a.m., Mark walked the land to ensure that our gardens and tiny trickle of a creek were faring well. The rain and wind had intensified. We had kept an eye on weather reports and had innocently stocked up on extra candles in case the power went out for a few days. With the internet down, we were unaware that the storm had changed course dramatically in the middle of the night and that our region was about to become its bull’s-eye. Everyone, including elders who had inhabited these mountains for eighty years, believed the mountains would always protect us. 

Suddenly, the loudest crash we had ever heard erupted, and a river of debris cascaded down from the mountain above with no warning. We watched it pick up my office at the back of our house and carry it away, then begin pushing mud into our home through the open wall. Time slowed down and sped up simultaneously as the flooding then destroyed my husband’s office. There was a quickening in our hearts as we prepared to escape and entered the micro-moment awareness of mindful witnessing and action, when a huge tree crashed into the living room and punctured the propane tank. 

Just as we were running out, the entire house crashed down upon us. My husband dove out the front sliding glass door while I was swallowed up by the landslide and flooding. As I tumbled into the underworld beneath our home, I suspected I was dying. Yet a few minutes later, a slight opening of light emerged in the muddy dark in which I was tumbling. With that light as a guide, I quickly slid out. In the chaos of the storm, I heard my husband screaming my name as he pulled me out of the mud he thought had killed me.

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None of my old subconscious fears about where danger and harm could come from touched my near-death experience. My home—the place where I believed I had the most safety and control—assaulted me, alongside the trees, earth, and water I had so lovingly stewarded. 

I’ve been a student of climate change since I was a teenager. I’ve helped others metabolize the grief, frustration, and desperation of witnessing society’s resistance to addressing both the clear and the more subtle signs of the climate crisis. I’ve long devoted my dharma teaching to bridging the timelessness of practice with a conscious response to the polycrisis we face today. 

Yet my own experience of natural disaster held myriad surprises. Seeing the walls, roof, and foundation of our home dissemble before our eyes, and all our belongings wash away, both shocked my human orientation and affirmed the truth of impermanence. Through a near-death experience, I met the threshold to death with curiosity, innocence, and beginner’s mind. This has ever-deepened my trust in life and practice. Practice had prepared me for this like nothing else. Practice equips us to meet what my mentor Joanna Macy has long called The Great Unraveling. 

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In the first week following Hurricane Helene, an indescribable sobriety and simultaneous awakening rippled through our mountain community in western North Carolina, an experience I suspect only people who have witnessed an entire region transformed by natural disaster, war, or a climate event can understand. With access roads destroyed by landslides, our community was trapped on the mountain where we lived. We had limited resources, many neighbors in need of help, and no clue if the storm’s ferocity had run its course.

As I nursed my injuries and served in the initial recovery efforts by being emotionally present and making sure people were fed, I was aware that my life and perspective would be forever changed by the unimaginable events I had just experienced. 

I took these notes on the back of an envelope:

What is resiliency? Community resiliency is our willingness to both give and receive support from one another moment by moment. Bodhicitta is the seat of our resiliency. The bodhisattva in today’s world is adaptive, fluid, vulnerable, collaborative, and willing to soften rather than harden in the face of disaster. 

What is preparation? The only true preparation is within oneself. We cannot fathom what direction the creative-destructive force of Earth’s storms might take. Emergence is the organizing principle of life on earth, and presence is the only preparation for emergence. There is no planning. You must flow. So commit to practice. You may not know what the escape route might be. 

What is revealed in the wake of a climate event? A climate event takes us beyond the thin veil of separation between oneself and one’s neighbor, and beyond the false divide between oneself and those events that happen “out there.” The social constructs and built environment we often find security in are revealed as just that: constructs. In the wake of a storm, what remains is the naked truth that we are all in this together, at ground zero. 

While love thy neighbor was already a value in western North Carolina, Hurricane Helene seeded a community awakening in our region. It was as if people were starving to embrace one another with a quality of unconditional kinship that appeared only when social constructs were stripped away.

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Throughout the liminality, discomfort, and complexity, I have taken refuge continually in stillness. The still certainty that comes with strong intent and years of practice has given me a foundation throughout my journey of displacement. I’ve continued to teach while living out of a suitcase and not knowing where I will land, and this has been invaluable for my sangha. 

Teaching in full transparency in the aftermath of the hurricane has normalized for many in my sangha that it’s OK to be messy. That’s our collective reality. I’ve been showing up and modeling the reciprocity of holding community while allowing community to hold me. This has offered me an honest teaching about resilience.

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Bodhicitta, referred to in Mahayana Buddhism as “awakening mind,” is our immeasurable magnitude for care and kindness toward all of life. We are sometimes only partially aware of its potential in everyday life. Bodhi means “awake,” or “completely open.” Citta means “mind,” “heart,” and “attitude.” Bodhicitta is about tenderizing and softening rather than hardening. It is the foundation for vulnerability in moments of gratitude, radical generosity, and building bridges in the relational field. It is about protecting what we love rather than defending against what we fear. 

The potential of bodhicitta was exhibited by neighbors, strangers, and sangha who organized with a joy of service. I was reminded of my training as a Zen monastic. Everyone rallied for the common cause of care for all. The specific ways the Buddhist community co-organized affirmed that sila and sangha should be core teachings in these times. 

While my Zen mentor Pam Weiss started a GoFundMe for us before we were even off the mountain, my colleague Kritee Kanko organized help for our escape from the mountain. Ivan Meyerhoff, a Buddhist chaplain from Davidson College, heroically responded and drove hours to rescue us as soon as the roads were partly clear. Another knock on the door of the neighbor’s house in which we were sheltering revealed a sangha member from Tennessee, who drove a long distance on dangerous roads to deliver supplies to the Buddhist sanghas he was connected to. 

Our relationships matter, and our dharma must focus on nourishing them. Systems are unraveling. Any attempt to spiritually bypass by trying to hold on to an individual island of peace is useless. We are all in this together.

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A few weeks after we lost our home, my husband and I flew to Los Angeles from New Jersey, where we had been staying with family after leaving North Carolina. While we were in New Jersey there were ten wildfires and days of 75-degree temperatures. Our last day in California was January 7. As we waited on the tarmac for our plane to take flight, large billows of gray smoke suddenly appeared over the Pacific Palisades, just a few miles away. This was the start of the Palisades fire that would devastate a community, with the Eaton fire destroying another nearby community in Altadena just a few days later. 

This is a time that requires our consciousness to change. Just as we might consider ways that Covid was an ally shaking us out of our slumber and helping us to awaken, these climate events are also our allies. They are helping us to wake up—if we are willing. People have been blind to the impact of our actions and interconnection on this planet for too long. As the earth heats up, the invitation is to open our hearts in a bigger way. 

The polycrisis points us to radical acceptance of reality. These storms are not going to stop anytime soon. As we move more into acceptance, our fragility can be supplanted by the knowledge that we’re part of the natural feedback system and the web of interconnection on planet Earth. Let’s support one another to awaken to the teaching of this time. Let’s show up for one another and those who are most vulnerable through this chaos, welcoming the reality that everything is cracked.