Dearest Friends,

Thank you for your presences and your participation in our most recent gathering.

In our last session, we continued to explore the work of the beloved environmental activist, systems theorist and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy—focusing specifically on the framework that she created called The Work That Reconnects. This experiential group process is one that Dr. Macy devised to help people transform their grief, despair and anxiety over the state of the world into constructive and collaborative action. The work follows a cyclical “spiral” with four distinct stages:

1. Coming from Gratitude: Participants center themselves in thankfulness for the gift of life; gratitude generates the emotional resilience needed to face the realities of intersecting planetary crises.
2. Honoring Our Pain: Participants given themselves permission to feel and express their grief, anger, fear and despair over ecological losses and social injustices. Acknowledging pain collectively frees participants from the additional burden of isolation and supports them in recognizing that their pain is a natural and appropriate response to planetary suffering.
3. Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes: Participants shift from an individual and isolated sense of self to a much wider one that recognizes the truth of radical interconnectedness. Participants remember and reclaim their profound belonging to the web of life across past and future generations.
4. Going Forth: Participants translate their expanded perspective into actions that support life. They identify the roles they can play and the resources they can leverage in supporting a global shift towards a regenerative society.

In our gathering, we focused on the first stage of the spiral—which is the work of coming from gratitude.

SUGGESTED PRACTICE:

Sit quietly and attend to your breath. After a minute or so, meditate on the following prompts:

• Gratitude for Personal Well‑Being: Direct your awareness inward. Rest your hands on your belly as you breathe—cultivating gratitude for this quiet miracle that sustains you without your volition or your participation. Then rest your attention on the different aspects of your daily life that support you, e.g., your body, your senses, your health, your home, the food that nourishes you, etc. Hold these in awareness with a sense of reverential thanks.

• Gratitude for Human Others: Now, expand your awareness to hold the people in your life. Rest a hand on your heart as you recall the ones you love, the ones you respect and the ones you admire. Who has offered you kindness, support and inspiration recently? Bring them to mind with gratitude for the gifts that their presence brings into your life.

• Gratitude for the More‑Than‑Human World: Now, extend your awareness to hold the living Earth and the entire web of life. Imagine your breath as an invisible thread that binds you to all living beings across space and time, e.g., the beings that crawl, that burrow, that swim, that fly…and also the rooted ones and the planted ones. Bring all these to mind as your kin—kin who gift you with sustenance, joy and inspiration.

To conclude, take a deep breath in…and as you breathe out, imagine your gratitude flowing out of you through the exhalation. Carry this sense of appreciation into the rest of your day.

RECOMMENDED POEM:

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s Gratitude

REFLECTION PROMPTS:

1. What was the meditation like for you? What was it like to deliberately cultivate gratitude in ever-widening circles of being?
2. The German medieval theologian, philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart once said: “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” Is there an opportunity for you at this point in your life to say thank you more often?