"For me, beauty resides in authenticity. As Keats said, ‘Truth is beauty and beauty truth.’ Our lives encounter so much that's artificial and phony. Freeways and malls and plastic throwaway stuff. Industrial growth. Ugliness. We are starved for beauty, so starved that we forget how important it is. We're in danger of losing our sense of what is authentic and true.
"Those people whom I most envy and admire are those who have turned away from the super-fluidity and cluttered materialism and returned to the beauty of the natural world and objects made by human hands, the texture of wood, the woven basket, the mixing of compost into soil in the back garden, a good soup cooking on the stove, an evening around the table with family and friends. Rediscovering this kind of beauty involves a slowing down, doesn't it? And it certainly involves listening to the priorities of the heart.
"I get nourishment from the night sky. I am also nourished by the beauty of the people whose lives encompass the natural world – who embrace an expanded definition of self-interest. People who risk their comfort, their material security, to try to slow down the destruction of the natural world and who take part in the evolution of a sustainable society inspire me. I'm a sucker for that courage -- the capacity to let go of certainty. Opening to the pain of our time opens us to the reality of our compassion.
"But authenticity, and this beauty, includes brokenness and darkness and death. In moments of darkness and uncertainty, we encounter the depths of our desire that life go on. And, paradoxically, it opens us up to gratitude for this moment -- our chance to breathe the air, feel our heart beating, look into the eyes of another being. In times like that, what's trivial or tawdry gets stripped away. And the stark grandeur appears. A grandeur that reaches down into our hearts.
"It's not surprising that in every spiritual tradition there is somewhere near the center that practice, that recollection that ah, yes, death is at my side and death can give me back this moment. The awareness of death is full of astonishing freshness. Pristine clarity. It strips away the trivial. You look at the world with eyes fresh-washed. Everyone who works with the dying or who faces a life-threatening illness experiences that. And it is a matter of choice for those others of us that are not bumping right up against it. Walking with an awareness of death offers a profound richness."
- Heron Dance interview ( Issue 23. Summer 1999) Joanna Macy is author of several books including
World As Lover, World As Self
Coming Back To Life
Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age
Despair Work
Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory
Widening Circles
Finally, here are a couple of quotes I’ve come across over the years attributed to JoAnna Macy, source unknown.
Everything is interdependent and mutually conditioning -- each thought, word, and act, and all beings, too, in the web of life.
