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Though things didn’t look too promising at first, a widespread awakening occurred, and huge numbers of people rose to the challenge of creating the life-sustaining society familiar to the storytellers now. This is a motivational guide on how to enhance personal resilience while living in a world filled with many reasons to give up on any hope for the future. The book is not only encouraging hope, but is aiming for what its title describes as “active” hope. It is a hope that goes beyond a personal feeling to include a sense of motivation and productive participation with others to contribute toward making the hoped for future a reality.
Active Hope is very much like an instruction manual or a workbook. It is laid out methodically and written in simple, clear language. Interspersed throughout the chapters are thought exercises to try either alone or in groups. In a few places are extended narratives from the authors' experiences that illustrate the mental/spiritual journey they are writing about. Although the thought exercises can be done by individuals on their own, the book is really directed toward people who are working with a group on climate activism. Scan your recent memories and identify something that’s happened in the last twenty four hours that you’re pleased about. This chapter explores how to protect ourselves from disillusionment if we are struggling to believe that what we hope for is possible. Our well-being depends on our natural world and gratitude keeps us to our purpose of taking care of life. When we forget this, the larger ecology we depend on gets lost from our sight and the world unravels.
Chapter 4: Honouring our Pain for the World
A central theme the book explores is how we can engage in a collective transition referred to as ‘the Great Turning’. The new edition brings a shift in emphasis in the way we think about the Great Turning, from outcome to process and from ‘will it happen?’ to ‘What helps this happen?”. Looking at how this larger story can happen through us in any moment brings a focus on three types of turning – turning up with an intention to play our part, turning away from that which causes harm and turning towards a way of doing and thinking and being that supports the flourishing of life. After all, what is the point of making an effort to improve things if we believe catastrophe is inevitable?
Inspired dreams and visionary moments are simply times of increased connectedness with the deeper flows of our collective identity. Like seedlings that need thinning out, we need to choose which visions we support, and then clear space around them so that they have room to develop and thrive. 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. a commitment to act for the sake of life on Earth as well as the vision, courage and solidarity to do so.Chris Johnstone is a medical doctor, author, trainer and coach who worked for nearly twenty years as an addictions specialist in the UK National Health Service. A former Senior Teaching Fellow at Bristol University Medical School, he trains health professionals in behavioral medicine and gives courses exploring the psychological dimensions of planetary crisis. This conversation with Dr Mark Williamson was recorded at a live Action for Happiness event on the 23rd Feb 2023. As preparation for producing the course, I set up an ‘Active Hope Conversations Lab’ last year where I tried out various forms of one-to-one spirals. I wanted to develop a conversational practice that people who’d never come across the Work That Reconnects before could engage with easily. The form we’ve developed is called Seven Sentence Starters in Support of Active Hope. It is the first of the seven main practices introduced in the course and gives an overview of the spiral. You can see a demonstration, where two people go through the spiral in less than half an hour, on youtube at this link https://youtu.be/wDz8aYLpIJ8 (this video includes a short introduction). We’ve also used an adaptation of this practice successfully with a group of about two hundred people on a free webinar. The challenge is to listen for the vision that calls us most strongly and to recognise that to follow this well, we will need to refine our focus so as not to dissipate our energy.
In this pandemic moment, many of us are hearing the call to cultivate hope, resilience and deep connection (to ourselves, our community, and our earth)… these things are innate to each of us, but they are also skills that can be honed, so that we have access to them in trying times such as the moment we are in.We are in no way prophesying or predicting or compelling the future by this kind of imaging, any more than we are compelling the future when we pray. The enactment of the future depends on what we do, how we individually and collectively respond to what we envision.” If we recognise that we are living at a crucial point in human history, when our actions and choices will have consequences lasting thousands of years, is what we do any less important than an Olympic contest? While the video-based trainings won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, we’ve had a great initial response to the course – with over a thousand people taking part so far, and hundreds engaged each week. A survey of those starting the course shows that more than half are either new to the spiral or unfamiliar with it, while over a quarter are very familiar, including some who are experienced facilitators. One of these, Vincent Brown, wrote: Close your eyes, imagine yourself journeying forward through time and identifying with a human being living two hundred years from now. Imagine what this person would want to say to you. Open your mind and listen. Now begin putting words down on paper as if this future one were writing a letter just to you that starts Dear Julyan.. Joseph Campbell wrote, “Follow your bliss - and doors will open where there were no doors before.” Chapter 10: Daring to Believe It Is Possible
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