Luminary: Joanna Macy

Luminary: Joanna Macy

Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, Ph.D., is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. She is also a leading voice in movements for peace, justice, and a safe environment. Interweaving her scholarship and four decades of activism, she has created both a ground-breaking theoretical framework for a new paradigm of personal and social change, and a powerful workshop methodology for its application. Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science. The many dimensions of this work are explored in her books Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World; Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory; World as Lover, World as Self and Rilke's Book of Hours. Joanna has also written a memoir entitled Widening Circles.

Over the past twenty years many thousands of people around the world have participated in Joanna's workshops and trainings, while her methods have been adopted and adapted yet more widely in classrooms, churches, and grassroots organizing. Her work helps people transform despair and apathy, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world, as our larger living body, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth.

Joanna travels widely giving lectures, workshops, and trainings in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband Francis Macy, near her children and grandchildren. She serves as adjunct professor to three graduate schools in the San Francisco Bay Area: the Starr King School for the Ministry, the University of Creation Spirituality, and the California Institute of Integral Studies.