"Coming Back to Life", Readings and Practices

Having read the theory behind the Work that Reconnects from the book Coming Back to Life by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown, facilitator Joanna Tomkins will guide us through some of the practices extracted from the book Coming Back to Life.

Please prepare a quiet space and make sure you are comfortable. You will need a notebook and pen. 

This episode is about Gratitude, the first stage of the spiral of the WTR, which was introduced in the previous episode.

The Work that Reconnects is usually based on collective, and in physical presence, workshops, and we invite you to connect to the page www.workthatreconnects.org to find out if there is a workshop close to you.

Joanna Tomkins has selected some practices and meditations that she can facilitate to you alone (or with your family or friends, would you like to recreate a group setting) but there are many more "hands on" exercises that are available within a collective workshop.

This is Gaia Speaking. Thanks for listening.

In this episode, Joanna Tomkins reads from the book "Active Hope" by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone to introduce the Spiral of the Work That Reconnects. The rich and broad knowledge of the work has been condensed into this incredibly simple structure upon which all the practices of the Work That Reconnects depend. It goes through the four following stages:

1) Coming from Gratitude

2) Honouring our Pain for the World

3) Seeing with New (or Ancient) Eyes

4) Going Forth

In the following Episodes, 7 to 10, she will introduce a practice for each of these stages.

This is Gaia Speaking, Thanks for Listening!

In this episode Joanna Tomkins, a Work that Reconnects facilitator, reads selected extracts from Chapter 3 of the book "Coming Back to Life" by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown. 

“THE GREAT TURNING ARISES in response to what we know and feel is happening to our world. It entails both the perception of danger and the means to act. As conscious, embodied beings endowed with multiple senses, we are geared to respond: instantly we leap from the path of an oncoming truck, dash to douse a fire, dive into a pool to save a child. This response-ability has been an essential feature of life throughout human evolution; it allows us to adapt to new challenges and generate new capacities. It enables whole groups and societies to survive, so long as their members have sufficient information and freedom to act. In systems terms, response to danger is a function of feedback — the information circuit that connects perception to action. Appropriate response depends on an unblocked feedback loop."

This episode will navigate through the following structure:

Chapter 2: The Basic Miracle: Our True Nature and Power

part 1: Living Systems Theory

part 2: Ancient Spiritual Teachings

part 3: The Miracle of Mind

part 4: the Nature of our Power

In this episode Joanna Tomkins, introduces the next cornerstone of the framework of the "Work That Reconnects": The Three Dimensions of the Great Turning. To do so, she borrows an extract from another book: Active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone.

The First Dimension: Holding Actions

The Second Dimension: Life-Sustaining Systems and Practices

The Third Dimension: Shift in Consciousness

These are the 3 ways we are participating in the Great Turning. The book "Coming Back to Life" has its focus on the third dimension: Shift in Consciousness.

You can buy the books Coming Back to Life and Active Hope at all major online book stores.

In this episode, Joanna Tomkins, a facilitator of the Work That Reconnects, provides insights into the First Chapter of the book "Coming Back to Life", by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown, called "to Choose Life". 

Including quotes by the contributors to this inspiring book, this opening episode will invite you to listen deeper to your own questioning and maybe research further on some of these great authors.  

This episode presents the "3 stories" that are exposed in The Work That Reconnects framework:

1) Business as Usual

2) The Great Unraveling

3) The Great Turning

It also introduces the "3 dimensions" of the Great Turning:

1. Actions to slow the damage to Earth and its beings
2. Analysis and transformation of the foundations of our common life
3. A fundamental shift in worldview and values

The book "Coming Back to Life" is available in hardback and kindle on many online bookstores. 

We invite you to purchase this book or others by the same authors or to find more resources to practice "The Work That Reconnects" on http://www.workthatreconnects.org

This episode is available also as a post here: https://gaiaspeaking.com/2021/05/07/to-choose-life-choosing-our-story/

In the first episode of this podcast Joanna Tomkins provides an introduction to "The Work That Reconnects" by Joanna Macy, a framework followed by a growing network of people willing to truly look at and honour their pain for the world, so that they can work towards "active hope", and take part in the "Great Turning", this historical moment we have been called to be part of.

It includes a reading of the core assumptions that motivate the Work That Reconnects (please see transcript below) and a brief introduction to its historical background.

Listen on. The following episodes, based on the book "Coming Back to Life", by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown, will give you further insights into these concepts and will undoubtably provide relief to your feelings of grief and will inspire you to continue the work that you are doing, in reconnecting in your own way to your greater "ecological being", the one we all share, the one that represents our "interbeing".

This episode is also available as a post on her blog: http://gaiaspeaking.com/2021/04/13/the-core-assumptions-of-wtr/

This is Gaia Speaking. Thanks for Listening. 

The Core Assumptions of the Work That Reconnects: 

1. Our Earth is Alive. It is our body.
2. Our true nature is far more ancient and encompassing than the separate self designed by habit and Western Society.
3. The Planet as a living system can know and see itself through us, behold its own majesty, tell its own stories and also respond to its own suffering.
4. Our experience of moral pain for our world springs from our interconnectedness with all beings – including beings of all human cultures – from which also arise our powers to act on their behalf.
5. Unblocking occurs when our pain for the world is not only intellectually validated, but also experienced and expressed.
6. When we reconnect with life, by willingly enduring our pain for it, the mind retrieves it natural clarity.
7. The experience of reconnection with the Earth community, human and other-than-human, arouses desire to act on its behalf.