Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World

Many of us feel called to respond to the ecological destruction of our planet, yet we feel overwhelmed, immobilized, and unable to deal realistically with the threats to life on Earth. Noted spiritual and environmental thinkers Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown contend that this crippling response to world crisis is a psychological defense mechanism that has been endemic since the years of the Cold War arms race, when we had to adapt within a single generation to the horrific possibility of nuclear holocaust. Since its publication in 1983, Joanna Macy's book, "Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age" has sold nearly 30,000 copies and has been the primary resource for groups of men and women confronting the challenging realities of our time without succumbing to paralysis or panic. "Coming Back to Life" provides a much needed update and expansion of this pioneering work. At the interface between spiritual breakthrough and social action, "Coming Back to Life" is eloquent and compelling as well as being an inspiring and practical guide. The first third of the book discusses with extraordinary insight the angst of our era, and the pain, fear, guilt and inaction it has engendered; it then points forward to the way out of apathy, tio "the work that reconnects." The rest of the book offers both personal counsel and easy-to-use methods for working with groups in a number of ways to profoundly affect peoples' outlook and ability to act in the world. Table of Contents Foreword by Mathew Fox1. To Choose Life2. The Greatest Danger: Apatheia, The Deadening of Mind and Heart3. The Basic Miracle: Our True Nature and Power4. The Work that Reconnects5. Guiding Group Work6. Affirmation: Coming from Gratitude7. Despair Work: Owning and Honoring Our Pain for the World8. The Shift: Seeing with New Eyes9. Deep Time: Drawing on Past and Future Generations10. The Council of All Beings: Rejoining the Natural World11. Going Forth12. Meditations for Coming Back to Life Joanna Macy has developed an international following over the course of 40 years as a speaker and workshop leader on Buddhist philosophy and the deep ecology movement