Make For Yourself A Teacher
A new podcast, on gratitude, love and loss
Hello friends.
We Are The Great Turning is finally here, and I can’t wait for you to listen!
This podcast isn’t like any other. It consists of two very dear friends, one of whom, Joann Macy, is one of the wisest and most compassionate people you’ll meet, speaking about the most important things in the world. Love and death, and pain and fear, and courage and devotion, and sensuality and bliss, and karuna and bhakti. “How to live through these wild times with our hearts intact,” as Jess Serrante, the creator of the podcast (and a pretty wise woman herself!), says.
There’s going to be podcast listening clubs, and I’m starting one! We will listen to the episodes and then get on a Zoom or two and discuss them and do some of the interactive bonus exercises. Let me know if you want in! We will start next month.
This podcast is Jess’s triumph, and the product of so many hours of hard work. I worked closely with her as the producer since last August. It was an absolute pleasure diving into Joanna’s work and ideas together, and helping shape their conversations into a form that we hope will be most satisfying and helpful for the listener. It stretched me so much as a writer and an editor—especially since our editorial advisor was the great
of Death, Sex and Money, which I am such a huge fan of.
And though this isn’t about me, I want to share the backstory about how I came to work on it, because it was a little bit magical. It reminded me of the phrase that I quoted in the title, which comes from the Jewish Mishnah, Pirke Avot, the sayings of the fathers : “Make for yourself a teacher, acquire for yourself a friend, and judge everyone with the scale weighed in their favor.” But then again, it could also be a case of, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”
Harriet Shugarman, known online as Climate Mama, is someone who’s been facing and telling the truth about climate change for decades. She brings together mothers (and others) from all over the world who are organizing based on love.
On one of the nights last June that wildfire smoke was fouling the skies above New York City, I went to see Harriet on a panel at the Greenpoint Library. Afterwards, we went for a drink. While sharing how horrified we both were about what was happening and what was coming, I mentioned how much I loved the work of Joanna Macy.
Joanna’s work spoke to me so directly. When I found it, a few years ago, it lit a flare of recognition. It was spiritual and community-building work for people whose focus is not only on their personal healing, but on what she calls our “pain for the world” (which reminds me of the German Romantic word, Weltschmerz).
While she’s written more than a dozen books, the soul of what she created is The Work That Reconnects, which is a group experiential practice.
She studied Tibetan Buddhism, first meeting her teachers when she moved to Northern India with her family in 1964; has a PhD that relates Buddhist thought to systems thinking; organized with Quaker Pacifists in the antinuclear movement in the 1970s; and she’s a translator of Rilke.
The Work that Reconnects uses all of this: ritual, imagination, poetry, music and dance, time in nature, meditation. It doesn’t uphold a false dichotomy between inner and outer work; it seeks transformation on all scales.
Your Heart Was Made For This: Parenting As A Spiritual Journey
A month after I quit my job at NPR, I went to my first Work That Reconnects workshop at an Episcopal retreat center in Massachusetts. I slept in the narrow cell of a novice, with one tiny fan. I was the youngest participant by three decades, and while I learned so much from the women and few men who were there, I was sad to think Macy’s work wasn’t reaching younger generations. I was sadder still to learn that Macy herself was in her 90s, rarely left her home in Berkeley, and didn’t teach anymore. I distinctly remember feeling a small dart pierce my chest as I thought to myself, “Oh! I’ll never learn from her directly.”
While I was there, talking about my interest in climate and parenting, someone told me about Harriet’s work.
Nine months later, I had made Harriet my friend and teacher. That night at the bar, hiding out from the smoke, she suggested I call Jess Serrante, a close friend and student of Joanna’s.
Jess, an activist and climate leadership coach in her mid-30s, was convinced of the urgency of Joanna’s work in this moment. She sat with her for a series of intimate interviews, raised money and found a great distributor and partner, Sounds True. But she didn’t really know how to make a podcast. I did, thanks to working at NPR for 8 years. I opened my mouth on that first, intro call and found myself offering to become her producer.
And four months after that phone call, in October of last year, I came to Berkeley to meet Joanna and Jess for two sacred days. We brought Joanna pomegranate seeds that glowed like jewels in the sunshine, and she couldn’t stop exclaiming her delight.
That day, she shared a teaching that you’ll hear in the last episode of the podcast.
And that’s really all I have to say, except that I’m so very grateful to have been a part of this project, I’m excited for it to be out in the world, and I hope you’ll listen and give us your feedback.
Where have you found your teachers?
Last thing ! The Climate Emotions Wheel was back in Times Square for Earth Day (Thanks to the sponsor, Hope Hydration, #HopeRefilled). Love to see it.
I would love to be a part of the group discussing the We Are The Great Turning so please share details when you have them!