Active Hope in a World on Fire

So today, if you saw what Andy sent out, the dramatic,

was it

Instagram posting of whatever those postings are, calling this the active hope.

in a world on fire, and with a tribute embedded in this to Joanna Macy.

And in Poland, not a lot of people are familiar, are as familiar with Joanna Macy.

But I think so many people here are.

She was such a force and a light in Dharma in the West.

And she died on the very last day of our Seven Days Sashin on July 19th at the age of 96.

At home with family, sounds like she went peacefully.

But I She's not as familiar to people there, and so I didn't focus in on that in my next talk.

But I'd like to bring her into our midst today, both to honor her, but also because her books are wonderful.

World as Lover, World as Self.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with that one, but I've always loved it.

Prajna, Paramita, Sutra, and the Mother of All Buddhas, and so on.

But the one that came to mind now, in these times particularly, is a book called Active Hope.

And I started to think, you know, I think I have that book.

And I do, it turns out, on Kindle.

I thought, oh, I should have read this.

And then I opened it up and it's got all kinds of highlights that I've, pages and pages of, I've highlighted on.

So today I'm going to kind of move through this territory.

Here's the thing, being in Poland,

it becomes even more acutely obvious what a difficult, difficult time we're in.

After this part of the 50th anniversary weekend, which was quite a to-do, we had a couple times out in the large garden area, people eating massive things of dhal and rice, and Lots of people came, people, and some of them I've never even met.

And a couple women came up to me.

They're both mothers of young children.