FACING CLIMATE CHANGE & OTHER GREAT ADVENTURES

A talk by Joanna Macy

The transition from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining one is the essential adventure of our time. Whether it succeeds or not, this revolution expands the capacities of all who take part in it. The talk will be a unique and inspiring approach to climate change and other challenges of our time.

Joanna Macy is a leading voice in movements for peace, justice and a safe environment. Interweaving her scholarship and four decades of activism, she has created both a ground-breaking theoretical framework for a new paradigm of personal and social change and a powerful workshop methodology for its application.

Monday 9th May 2005
6 - 8.30pm Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall street, central Oxford. £2-£5 on the door, no booking required.

Background
Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, Ph.D., is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology. She is also a leading voice in movements for peace, justice, and a safe environment. Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science.

Over the past twenty years many thousands of people around the world have participated in Joanna's workshops and trainings, while her methods have been adopted and adapted yet more widely in classrooms, churches, and grassroots organizing. Her work helps people transform despair and apathy, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, into constructive, collaborative action.

Coming Back to life
Her most recent book 'Coming back to life: Practices to reconnect Our lives, Our World' (co-authored with Molly Young Brown) offers a compelling insight into the roots of despair about the industrial growth society. She points the way forward out of apathy into grounded and powerful collective action, a process she describes as 'the Great Turning'. The book is available from Greenspirit books 01985 215679  alan@gsbooks.org.uk

Climate change
Among the issues covered in the talk, Joanna will draw particular attention to climate change: naming the different ways in which climate change tends to drive us to feelings of despair and powerlessness; setting the issue within the context of the Great Turning; and eliciting the practical steps we can all take to meet this challenge.

Other chances to hear Joanna Macy
Joanna will also be talking on Saturday May 7 at 6.00 at the University of Bath. Admission by Ticket from Carolina Salter 01225 386156 email:  iceoffice@management.bath.ac.uk

For free email newsletter about UK events inspired by Joanna Macy's approach, contact  chris@chrisjohnstone.info

some words on travel...

* For more detailed directions check the web -page:  http://www.wesleymem.org.uk/findus and www.coinet.org.uk/macy

* Since this is a talk on climate change, we ask that people do not drive to the event unless more than 2 seats are filled

* Travelling from London - there are frequent trains and two coach companies depart from Victoria and Marble Arch (exit 4) every 6-12 minutes, approx journey time of 90 mins.

This event launches a series of seven monthly speaker events on climate change organised by the Climate Outreach Information Network. For more information on this and other speaker events go to www.COINet.org.uk/speakers, call 01865 241 097 or e-mail  jo@planb.org

www.coinet.org.uk www.joannamacy.net

The Network of Engaged Buddhists will be running a stall at the following event. Please come, please publicise.