Book Discussion Group: Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re In Without Going Crazy

Facilitated by Willow Embry – environmental and community activist, and Rita Renee Toll-DuBois – local farmer, environmental stewardship coordinator and workshop facilitator

February 9th – March 15th, Sundays, 3-4:30, for 6 weeks

Listening Wellness Center’s Yoga Studio, 35 South St, Barre MA 01005

The Active Hope book discussion group is free and all are welcome.

Please RSVP by Feb 2nd to Willow Embry. You will be sent a follow-up email with the agenda for the weekly meetings and also with further details. (If the group has already begun, go ahead and contact Willow about your possible participation.)

Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy was written by Joanna Macy and Christopher Johnstone. The book skillfully outlines a process that has been offered in workshops for decades. It has been developed by Joanna and a growing number of colleagues and has been presented on almost every continent and in many languages.  Joanna is well known for her long-time environmental activism, is an author of Coming Back to Life, Spiritual Ecology, World as Lover-World as Self And Pass It On. She is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology.

The process laid out in Active Hope is empowering and helps restore a sense of connection with the web of life and one another. Because of this it has come to be known as The Work That Reconnects and is part of what Joanna calls The Great Turning. “This reconnection can show us the opportunity we have to come alive to our truest power, to look straight into the face of our time, which is the biggest gift we can give”, Joanna describes The Great Turning as a shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization. It is, she believes, the third major revolution of human existence, after the agricultural and industrial.