Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy

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This workshop, inspired by the Active Hope model (following the best selling book 'Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power' by resilience expert Chris Johnstone and eco-philosopher Joanna Macy) and, is offered by the sUStain eco-anxiety project at Norfolk and Waveney Mind. Several generations of children have had daydreaming bred out of them. Our literacy is confined to numbers and words. There is no image literacy.”

Going forth involves clarifying our vision of how we can act for the healing of our world, identifying practical steps that move our vision forward. Chapter 3: Coming from Gratitude First, when we act in alignment with our deepest values, we experience an inner sense of rightness behind what we do. Second, when we apply ourselves to facing a challenge in a way that absorbs our attention, we are more likely to go into flow states. When we have this “team spirit” heightened sense of spiritual connection with life. Chapter 8: A Larger View of Time Based in Berkeley, California, close to her children and grandchildren, Joanna has spent many years in other lands and cultures, viewing movements for social change and exploring their roots in religious thought and practice.When people coordinate their actions through a collective thinking process, we can think of this as “distributed intelligence.” Power-with arises from what we do rather than we we have. The shift in perception from seeing power as a noun to seeing it as a very has surprising potency.

After reading numerous books about environmental issues and the climate crisis, I was drawn to Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy, by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone. They are meeting exactly one hundred years ago today to try to understand, with their limited mentality, the ways their “experts” are containing the poison fire.

The Sydney Morning Herald

In our workshops we often use an exercise called “the milling” in which participants move around the room and then stop to face each other in pairs. We invite them to consider the possibility that the person in front of them might become a victim of the unraveling we face. I think one of the most important things this book did for me was to redefine and broaden the definition of activism. Activism doesn't have to mean being the next Angela Davis or Fred Hampton; activism means, " using our skills, experience, networks, enthusiasm, and temperament to the healing of our world." And when our activism aligns with our values, it can even lead to flow, a state described as, " [when] people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it." The thing about flow though, is that there must be a challenge enough to absorb us but not so difficult that we feel overwhelmed. The revised tenth anniversary edition is published on 14 June 2022 in the US, and 15 July 2022 in many other countries.

How “ The Work that Reconnects “ can help you - personally and professionally - to face ongoing, challenging times by opening your eyes, mind, and heart. The core tent of Gaia theory is that our planet is a self-regulating system. Living systems have the capacity to keep themselves in balance. Gaia theory shows how life looks after itself, different species acting together to maintain the balance of nature.I think a lot of the ideas presented in this book tie in beautifully with the things I learned in Braiding Sweetgrass as well. (another book I highly recommend). The authors frequently speak of a spiritual connection with Gaia (or Earth and all life on it). This had me pondering the spiritual experiences I've had and so many that others have shared with me. It seems that if you were to ask almost anyone to describe a spritiual experience, it would center on communion with nature, or connection to humans on either a very grand or very intimate scale. How then, can we expand our sense of self to include such? The authors use a 4 part framework for developing such a sense. They emphasize the need to look at where an issue overlaps with the self, the immediate community, society-at-large, and all of life on Earth. They speak of gratitude as more than just "politeness" but rather as a necessity in recognizing our place in the web of life. They also emphasize that connectedness with a healthy community brings out our latent, distinct gifts. Here connected consciousness stems from a widening of our self-interest, where we are guided by the intention to act for the well-being of all life. At this special event, resilience specialist and authorDr Chris Johnstonewill introduce Active Hopeas a practice we can use each day to nourish our sense of purpose and possibility.