07.25.2025 A Wonder Beyond Words: Honoring Joanna Macy   The renowned Buddhist thinker, environmental activist, and author Joanna Macy passed away on July 19, 2025, at the age of 96. “If the ecological crisis is the greatest challenge that humanity faces today, then Joanna Macy is unquestionably one of the most important teachers of our time,” wrote David Loy in the January 2022 issue of Lion’s Roar. “Whenever I reflect on the path of the ecosattva — the bodhisattva dedicated to saving the earth — Joanna is the model that comes to mind.” A scholar of Buddhism, systems theory, and deep ecology, Macy inspired hundreds of thousands of people to turn environmental despair into action with her training for nurturing activists, known as “The Work That Reconnects.” In all she did, she emphasized gratitude and interconnection, her message grounded in the insight that we are not separate from the world — both its suffering and its beauty. “We have received an inestimable gift,” she wrote in her book World as Lover, World as Self. “To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe — to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it — is a wonder beyond words.” In her memory, we invite you to revisit the three pieces below, each sharing her vision for the great awakening our planet needs. May they inspire you to “seize this chance to be alive right now on planet Earth,” as she encouraged us to do. —Lilly Greenblatt, digital editor, Lion’s Roar Remembering Joanna Macy’s Wisdom Buddhist thinker and environmental activist Joanna Macy on the global awakening the planet needs. At heart, it’s a spiritual revolution. Melvin McLeod: The starting place of this work is the admonition to choose life, or, as you put it, to return to the wellsprings of life. All of us probably aspire to that, but how do we do it in practice? Joanna Macy: We can begin by choosing to be present. We can choose to pay attention. That is the essential magic of mindfulness, and of the Buddha’s own life. When you pay attention to your experience, you realize that you’re not just a separate organism sitting here breathing. You are not only breathing but being breathed. You need an oxygen-producing web of life for you to breathe—you need trees, you need plankton. So where does the self begin and where does it end? When you really pay attention, you see that you are part of the whole web of life. That leads you to want to know that life and to protect it. ADVERTISEMENT Joanna Macy: Guide for Our Time Stephanie Kaza reflects on this treasured spiritual guide and landmark thinker. With humanity at a crossroads, she offers us the wisdom, courage, and love for life we need. Radical uncertainty requires considerable courage. It is not for the faint of heart. Joanna summons us to work from love, from a place of fearlessness, in order to open to what is right before us. She invites us all into the profound practice of mutual belonging, rooted in the living body of Earth. These gifts of courage and belonging are her legacy to us and to future generations of bodhisattvas, serving with joy to benefit all beings. On behalf of all of us who have been inspired by Joanna and her teachings, I offer my deep thanks for this beloved wisdom elder, an ocean of blessing beyond measure. Why We Need the Great Turning It’s the movement of all those who want to create a life-sustaining society, writes Joanna Macy, and it’s even more important at a time when the future looks so bad. Being fully present to fear, to gratitude, to all that is — this is the practice of mutual belonging. As living members of the living body of Earth, we are grounded in that kind of belonging. We will find more ways to remember, celebrate, and affirm this deep knowing: we belong to each other, we belong to Earth. Even when faced with cataclysmic changes, nothing can ever separate us from her. We are already home. Our belonging is rooted in the living body of Earth, woven of the flows of time and relationship that form our bodies, our communities, our climate. When we turn and open our heart–mind to Earth, she is always there. This is the great reciprocity at the heart of the universe. My gratitude to all. May we experience “sheer abundance of being,” as Rilke says, and know that we truly belong here. MORE FROM LION’S ROAR