Joanna Macy at Bioneers 1/3

well, this is Sunday morning Planet Earth, this beautiful world you know, this time that we are living is so extraordinary that I keep trying to believe it, and to understand it and as I do, and ispired by what Nina quoted from Scott Momaday, and her words as well that we make sense of life and we guide ourselves by the stories we tell ourselves about us and the context in which we live the larger story, that can give meaning to us and so, I want to talk this morning about three stories that we're living in this time and as I do, there will be, I hope yes, there, that's us! that's a story and that story is coming forward now, our cosmological story but these pictures that will come up refer to all three of the stories since because they interweave, they're not gonna be any particular order are you dying to know, what these stories are? the first, that most people believe, and particularly those in economic and political power is business as usual in the industrial growth society the second story that follows from that, the first kind of slides into it which is the story, that I know, many of you particularly those who are activists and scientists carry in your heart the story of the Great Unraveling of living systems and this Planet Earth and there is an other story, the third: and that is the story of the Great Turning that shift from the industrial growth society to a life sustaining society and that is what you are all involved in, that is what Bioneers is dedicated to so I would like to look at these three in turn business as usual is very successful at that, we ceaselessly tell ourselves we are to keep us in comfort, convenience, security no cost is spared and the power-holders in this society are actually proud of that can you believe it? they are proud the fact, that no cost is spared to keep us comfortable, to keep the lights on we're ready to explode the mountaintops, we're ready to peel off the boreal forest we're ready to let miles, the size of Texas of plastic sweep over the Pacific for our convenience, for our security this society only asks in return for that, very little of us actually doesn't asks much: it asks to consume, and it asks us to shut up to be silent, to consume, and to obey but there are lot of people in this hall and in this movement and in Bioneers who are already breaking the mold on that and the secret of the power behind this main story, and of also of its downfall because it is in the process of self-destruction, you know that as well if you don't know it in your mind, your body knows it, the erosion of life but anyway it is because this industrial growth society sets its goals and measures its success by how fast it grows haha, grows in what? wisdom? fertility? health? one thing only, you know it: corporate profits, market share now, systems thinkers know, and it's common sense as well that you cannot maximize one variable in an open system, without it going out of control and this system is on runaway, it's out of control and so it slides, and it's sliding into and you here at Bioneers, you've seen evidence of that in your life that it's sliding into the second story, which is the Great Unraveling I don't even know how to begin to talk about that I mean I can make lists of words I can say words like sixth mass extinction I can say words like economic meltdown I can tell words like loss of biodiversity billion people living in slums, and those words, it doesn't begin to encompass something that is really beyond our capacity to comprehend and yet it won't leave us alone it resides in the grief that we carry, each one of us each one I think that I'll move on to the third story I'll come back to how we handle this but the third story of course is this transition from the industrial growth society to a life sustaining society we are alive at this time you have managed, as have I, to get ourselves born into this epochal transition it's the third revolution of this magnitude and scope of our journey on this planet it's as vague the agricultural revolution which took centuries to unfold it's as vague as the one that happened three hundred years ago, in England the industrial revolution, which changed everything all over again and changed our relations to each other and to the Earth and turned the Earth into what we see now as mainly a stockhouse and a sewer for drawing up its resources we need and dumping our waste we aren't putting up with that and so there is this revolution, that is happening but as you know, in spite of the cameras here, this real revolution is not televised we're living it, though and it's happening in our resistance to the desecration of lifeforms it's happening in the farmer's markets, and green building, and the new kind of shools and the technologies safe, renewable, it is happening, and also in our heart-minds and the voices that we are hearing, the indigenous voices that has come here and the indigenous voice inside each one of us from science and from spirituality, and it is at the core a recognition that our Earth is alive