In my teaching, in the work I do with groups these days, there’s more spontaneity, even glee. There’s more emphasis, just coming up naturally, on gratitude. I’ve become more aware of what I’ve received. Gratitude is necessary because it gives us a ground to stand on when there’s so much crashing around us. Gratitude is not dependant on external circumstances.
In the Western psyche, there’s a tendency toward self-loathing and self-hatred. An untrammeled love for life is like a raft, like a lifeboat—just to love it, just to love it.
In The Book of Hours, Rilke says, “I just want a little more time, just give me a little more time, because I am going to love the things as no one has thought to love them.”
If nothing else happens in the workshops I teach, I feel it’s time well spent if we can get back to loving life; if we can see that the pain we feel for the world and our love for it are not separate, but that they are two sides of one coin.
There’s a wonderful practice we do, written by Caitriona Reed, of bowing to our adversaries. As we bow we say something like: “You who destroy the environment for your own profit, you show me how much I value honesty and generosity, and how much love I have for our planet home. So I bow to you in gratitude.”
I visited the Onondaga Nation recently. They’re one of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee, in central New York, whom we used to call the Iroquois Federation. The Onondaga are among the poorest because they won’t build casinos. They know that once the casinos come in, the mafia comes too. Onondaga land goes in a huge swath from Pennsylvania all the way up to Canada, though only a tiny part of it outside Syracuse, New York, has been left in their control.
Last year the Onondaga finally brought a land rights claim against the state and federal government. Their tadedaho, which means their spiritual leader, announced it at a press conference. He’s a construction worker in long braids and a steel helmet, chewing gum, and there were tears in his eyes. He said, “This lawsuit is hard for us to do because if we fail at this, then there’s no hope left for our people. But we have prayed a lot and this is our demand.”
They’re not asking any recompense. They’re not asking anybody to move. They’re asking one thing only: that the land be cleaned up, that it be environmentally restored, for the sake of the white people living there as well as for themselves. This is the first such claim that has been made in this country.
When I visited the school in their nation, a teacher, one of the clan mothers, said: “Here in this hall, we meet every morning with the students for thanksgiving. Of course, we do a very abbreviated form because the real thanksgiving takes several days.” To my total delight, she proceeded to guide me in their 20-minute version. “Now we gather our minds as one mind. We give thanks to Grandfather Sun, who warms the seeds and gives us light so we can see each other’s faces. We give thanks to the moon, who changes her shape and pulls the waters. We give thanks to the maple, chief among the trees.”
I felt this is the way we’re going to survive, if we do survive. Our teachers will be those who have been through a holocaust and still love the world. If we can love our world, then we have a chance. We’ll save something of it. You don’t have to get a grant from the MacArthur Foundation—just love something. That’s my call to action.
As I sat there with that wise woman, I thought about the long journey we have all been on together. The life that is in us, breathing through our lungs and beating our hearts, goes back to the first unfolding of space-time. Over billions of years this planet has nurtured the life that is in us. Just as the Buddha, on the night of his enlightenment under the bodhi tree, remembered all his past lives, we can remember all the eons and beings that brought us to this point. You don’t have to believe in rebirth, as the Buddha pointed out himself, but you can know that you’ve been brought to be alive on Earth at this time for a reason. It’s a privilege to be alive now.
These are excerpts from an interview Our Long Journey Together with Joanna Macy from her web site www.joannamacy.net.
Joanna Macy will be leading two workshops on October 3-5 & 5-10. Click for details.
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