On What Makes A Difference
Honoring Joanna Macy
Buddhist scholar and activist, Joanna Macy died on July 19 at the age of 96. I didn't know Joanna Macy, but I attended one of her workshops in the early 2000s in Hartland, Vt. And her telling of the story of the Great Turning, which she says is arising through our resistance to the desecration of life, informs all of the work at the Sustainable Herbs Initiative (see this recent SHI blog post for more).
Last year sometime, while searching in an old filing cabinet, I came across a file: Letters to Keep. I pulled out the folder, quickly forgetting what I was looking for in the first place. As I glanced through the papers, I saw an envelope with the return address of Joanna Macy. I was astonished. I had completely forgotten ever receiving a letter from Joanna Macy. I opened it. It was a letter thanking me for my book, Thin Places: A Pilgrimage Home, which I’d sent the previous year as thanks for the workshop.
It had taken her over a year to remember to read it, she wrote. She then said a bit about how the book had impacted her and she thanked me for writing it.
I'm sharing that now, not because of what she said about me or my book. But because she took the time to read a book sent by one person among the thousands of people who have taken her workshops over the years. And because she took time to write me about it, letting me know what it meant to her.
She ended her letter, "with strong, glad wishes for your life and work."
I am trying to work on the Impact section of the updated Sustainable Herbs Initiative website and so I've been thinking about how to measure the ways our work matters. And about about what makes a difference when around the world the crises all seem to keep getting worse.
I think of a story that Lauren Nichols-Sheffler, Sustainable Sourcing & Senior Purchasing Manager at WishGarden Herbs, shared at the recent SHI Oregon gathering, about how participating in SHI has helped her find the courage to speak up about things she believes. And about the story shared below, of a promise between two founders of tea companies and the impact that standing by that promise has made.
Joanna's letter, written in 2010, makes a difference to me now. It helps me trust myself a bit more deeply. Helps me find a bit more courage to speak out just a little more loudly. Because how do any of us know, really, which of our actions might make the differences that are needed?