Saturday, the eve of St. Francis of Assisi’s Feast Day, a full house of enthusiastic people gathered at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco to celebrate the extraordinary life and work of Joanna Macy.
Not all of the 1200 present were local. In front of me there were two Catholic sisters, one from Toronto and one from BC, Canada, who had flown in just for the occasion. The evening began with a greeting from the dean of the Cathedral, Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young, and a welcome from Joanna’s second son, Jack, and her daughter, Peggy.
Anne Symens-Bucher, who was Joanna’s executive assistant for over 20 years, and oversees Canticle Farm, which is an intentional community in Oakland that was dear to Joanna, gave an overview of the evening that was based on the “Spiral of the Work That Reconnects,” which is Joanna’s way of naming our spiritual journey.
The evening followed that format, which parallels perfectly the journey of the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality. Joanna names them this way: Coming From Gratitude; Honoring Our Pain for the World; Seeing with New & Ancient Eyes; and Going Forth.
It is not hard to recognize in this spiral the spirals of the Via Positiva, Negativa, Creativa, and Transformativa in creation spirituality.
The evening included poems from Rilke that Joanna had translated from German and a composer friend put to music. There was poetry from Drew Dellinger and Thich Nhat Hanh, Marge Piercy’s Kaddish, and a short eulogy from Anne’s husband, Terry, on Mary Magdalene encountering the risen Christ, and “Five Vows” that Joanna had created.
I could not help but remember the special times Joanna and I shared in that Cathedral, such as a Cosmic Mass celebrated on Pride Sunday with the theme of “The Return of the Divine Feminine.” Joanna was the “teacher” (our term for “preacher”) at that Mass. About 600 people attended, and the sound engineer told me afterwards, I’ve been operating the sound for events in the Cathedral for the past eight years, and without any doubt this was the most energetic event I have ever witnessed at Grace Cathedral.
Joanna was the emcee at Grace Cathedral at the launching of my and Bishop Marc Andrus’s book, Stations of the Cosmic Christ. The original sixteen Stations that make up the book were created by artists M.C. Richards (her seven “I am” tablets hung at St. John the Divine Cathedral for three years) and Javier Ullrrich Garcia’s nine tablets depicting Cosmic Christ events in Jesus’ life were on display. On the cover of the book is Joanna’s statement: “This book is revolutionary. It celebrates the sacred at the heart of the universe.”
Among the many gifts Joanna gave to the world were her generous readings and comments on the writings of others, including myself. She commented on my autobiography: The unfolding story of this irrepressible spiritual revolutionary enlivens the mind and emboldens the heart—must reading for anyone interested in courage, creativity, and the future of religion.
Over the years we led numerous workshops and retreats together at La Casa de Maria Retreat Center in Santa Barbara; during Holy Week in Findhorn, Scotland when she and her husband Fran returned from a visit to Chernobyl; in Munich, Germany; at the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland where we taught on “The Buddha Nature and the Cosmic Christ”; with Andrew Harvey, in a series of “The Christ Path”; and at Green Gulch Zen Center where we dialogued a few days after her husband died.
Joanna exited a fundamentalist version of Christianity when she was in college and years later discovered Buddhism and married it to scientific systems theory and deep ecology. With that, she had a big story to tell the world—a story about “the Great Turning”—a choice to choose a life-sustaining society and consciously act like caring ancestors toward future generations.
One story told Friday night was that Joanna liked cathedrals because they were evidence that previous generations poured themselves into projects for future generations to enjoy, knowing that such projects would not be completed in their lifetime.
A great lesson to meditate on at Grace Cathedral or any place in 2025.
Banner Image: The spiral of The Work That Reconnects. Image gifted by artist Dori Midnight to Joanna Macy, used with permission. From Joanna Macy’s website.
Queries for Contemplation
What do you learn from the life and story, and spiritual and ecological witness of Joanna Macy?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Stations of the Cosmic Christ (by Matthew Fox and Bishop Mark Andrus)
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Confessions: The Making of a Post-denominational Priest
Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation (by Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox)
Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action (by Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson and Jen Listug)
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
The Lotus & The Rose: A Conversation Between Tibetan Buddhism & Mystical Christianity (by Rev. Matthew Fox and Lama Tsomo)
One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths
2 thoughts on “Celebrating the Life & Gifting of Joanna Macy at Grace Cathedral”
Beautiful tribute in this DM, especially the enclosed videos, to the life and legacy of Joanna Macy! She’s another Spiritual Warrior/Shambala Warrior in Heaven inspiring and supporting our own inner Spiritual Warrior with other Warriors to serve Our Living Compassionate Source~Co-Creator’s Spirit with-in Us and Beautiful Sacred Mother Earth and All Her physical and nonphysical spiritual creatures in Our LOVING DIVERSE ONENESS in the Sacred Flow of the ETERNAL PRESENT MOMENT….
She gifted us with a love of creation, a dedication to justice, and the perspective to realize that we are planting seeds and will most likely not live to see the harvest–but that we have faith that the harvest will yield all good things for everyone.