Workshop: Cultivating Active Hope

Jennifer Browdy and Aravinda Ananda invite you to "Cultivating Active Hope: A Work That Reconnects Workshop."

The world-renowned Work That Reconnects is designed to inspire and energize people who care about ecological and social justice, including community activists and changemakers. Through a dynamic, interactive approach, developed over the past 50 years by Buddhist eco-philosopher Joanna Macy and colleagues, thousands of people worldwide have been inspired to engage wholeheartedly in the positive transition -- "the “Great Turning” as Joanna calls it -- to a life-sustaining society.

Originally called Despair and Empowerment Work, the Work That Reconnects is a form of “active hope,” a term coined by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone in their 2012 book by that title. Through experiential techniques, the workshop invites us to befriend our feelings of pain for what is happening to our world and build strength and resilience for these times of deepening crisis. 

During our time together we will follow the spiral of the Work That Reconnects, which begins with grounding ourselves in gratitude for the gifts and miracles of life itself. From this resourced place, we turn together to face and acknowledge the pains of this world. 

There are so few places in dominant society where we can honestly bring the depths of our grief, outrage, and terror about what is happening on and to this beloved planet and to each other as humans. Being honest and authentic with our heartache for this world can open us to a deeper awareness of our loving interconnectedness with each other and with all beings in the Earth community. 

Our hope is that you will leave the day brimming with fresh insights and new ways of seeing and being in the world, inspired and energized to offer your unique gifts to a world much in need of what each of us has to contribute. 

About the Facilitators:

Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D., teaches literature and communications at Bard College at Simon’s Rock with an emphasis on writing and media strategies for social and environmental justice. Her blog, Transition Times, has focused on aligning the personal, political, and planetary in documenting the early years of the Anthropocene, terrain she deepened in her memoir, What I Forgot ...And Why I Remembered and her award-winning writer’s guide, The Elemental Journey of Purposeful Memoir: A Writer’s Companion. Publisher of Green Fire Press and editor of the online magazine Fired Up! Creative Expression for Challenging Times, Jennifer seeks, through her writing workshops, community conversations and media work, to draw more people into productive conservation around the urgent issues of our time so that we can work together to restore, regenerate, and steward our planet into the thriving future our children deserve. Find out more at JenniferBrowdy.com.  

Aravinda Anandais a social ecologist whose life’s work is helping to facilitate healing in the human-Earth relationship, which she calls Living rEvolution. She is working on a book of that title, and shorter pieces of her writing can be found on livingrevolution.net. Aravinda has been facilitating the Work That Reconnects for seven years in a variety of settings; is on the Interhelp Council -- a northeast regional Work That Reconnects network; was one of the founding Weavers of the Work That Reconnects Network -- a growing global network; was a guest editor of the special issue of Deep Times Journal on the impact of race and culture on the Work That Reconnects; and is on the facilitation team of the Earth Leadership Cohort -- an immersion in the Work That Reconnects for young folks ages 18-30. A growing edge for her is more deeply incorporating an oppression analysis and approach into her group facilitation work. 

This workshop is being offered on a sliding scale of $0-$60. Space is limited; please register through Eventbrite to reserve your seat. Participants are asked to bring a potluck lunch food to share.