Update On Joanna Macy
A gem....a beauty....in this miracle of life
“The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present, and when you're worrying about whether you're hopeful or hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you're showing up, that you're here and that you're finding ever more capacity to love this world because it will not be healed without that. That was what is going to unleash our intelligence and our ingenuity and our solidarity for the healing of our world.”
― Joanna Macy
Anne Symens-Bucher
Jun 29, 2025
Saturday, June 28, 2025
Dear ones,
I am sitting with Peggy as I write. Our hearts are heavy. On the heels of her coming home, it now seems clear Joanna has a chest infection. Without an X-ray it's not confirmed, but likely it is pneumonia. This morning and last night she clearly expressed that she does not want to go back to the hospital for IV antibiotics (or anything else). So we are following her lead, and find ourselves suddenly pivoting towards more of a hospice approach. Recovery looks like an uphill road. We are giving oral antibiotics and mostly focusing on comfort. She is happy.
We know you would want to be here with her if you could be and for that we are so grateful. She who loves so many people now feels the presence of each of you who is with her in your prayers, your thoughts, your love. She rests, a look of peace on her face. Her beloved family is with her now. They are everything. They are enough. Her three grandchildren sit at her bedside and they delight in each other's company. She is sung to and she waves her arms; she is the leader of the symphony.
One night in the hospital she told me she didn't know how to sing. I understand that was her experience of herself--at her workshops she counted on others to lead the singing. And if there was no music, no one noticed, because her poetry was her orchestra, her teachings were her song, her stories were her symphony. But in the hospital, she was making up little songs; songs that rhymed, songs that were profound, songs about the Great Turning, the Great Knowing and Unknowing and the Knowing Enough. She could and did carry a tune. I told her she definitely knew how to sing and that she was truly a great song:
"I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it. I circle around God, around the primordial tower. I've been circling for thousands of years and I still don't know: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?"
I think she would want us to hear these words now, words that Rilke penned in another time altogether, as if for this moment in which we find ourselves. She would be glad that we are thinking about her, certainly, and also about the world she loves so well. Hear her say:
"...Through the empty branches the sky remains,
It is what you have.
Be Earth now, and evensong
Be the ground lying under that sky
Be modest now like a thing ripened until it is real
So that the One who began it all, may feel you when reaching for you."
BE EARTH NOW!
