Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence

Magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day

Marin County. Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting

ecology, culture, and spirituality.

For our inaugural issue of the magazine, we sat down for an interview with eco-philosopher and

Tibetan Buddhist scholar

Joanna Macy.

As an activist and pioneer in the field of the epicology, Joanna has spent the last five decades

working to bridge ecological awareness and spiritual values.

As the root teacher of the work that reconnects, Joanna created a groundbreaking theoretical

framework of personal and social change

and has empowered people around the world. She has translated the poetry of Reiner Maria Rilke,

and is the author of numerous books, including World as Lover, World As Self, and her memoir,

widening circles. I got a chance to sit down and speak with Joanna about her life and her work at her home

in Berkeley, California in October of 2017.

But I would like to begin with just centering a minute and a grateful prayer.

Beloved, Mother, Father, a lover, Earth,

our larger self, our greater body, are so grateful to be granted a human life right now at this time of such anguish

turmoil and so much suffering and loss is occurring.

And we're so grateful to be given human identity and a human voice

and so we can take part in human councils

and help us to be ever more fully aware of the blessings of being part of your intelligence.

...