Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World

Joanna Macy, Molly Young Brown

New Society Publishers, 1998 - Nature - 223 pages

Many of us feel called to respond to the ecological destruction of our planet, yet we feel overwhelmed, immobilized, and unable to deal realistically with the threats to life on Earth. Noted spiritual and environmental thinkers Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown contend that this crippling response to world crisis is a psychological defense mechanism that has been endemic since the years of the Cold War arms race, when we had to adapt within a single generation to the horrific possibility of nuclear holocaust.

Since its publication in 1983, Joanna Macy's book, Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age has sold nearly 30,000 copies and has been the primary resource for groups of men and women confronting the challenging realities of our time without succumbing to paralysis or panic. Coming Back to Life provides a much needed update and expansion of this pioneering work. At the interface between spiritual breakthrough and social action, Coming Back to Life is eloquent and compelling as well as being an inspiring and practical guide. The first third of the book discusses with extraordinary insight the angst of our era, and the pain, fear, guilt and inaction it has engendered; it then points forward to the way out of apathy, tio "the work that reconnects". The rest of the book offers both personal counsel and easy-to-use methods for working with groups in a number of ways to profoundly affect peoples' outlook and ability to act in the world.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Mathew Fox
1. To Choose Life
2. The Greatest Danger: Apatheia, The Deadening of Mind & Heart
3. The Basic Miracle: Our True Nature & Power
4. The Work that Reconnects
5. Guiding Group Work
6. Affirmation: Coming from Gratitude
7. Despair Work: Owning & Honoring Our Pain for the World
8. The Shift: Seeing with New Eyes
9. Deep Time: Drawing on Past & Future Generations
10. The Council of All Beings: Rejoining the Natural World
11. Going Forth
12. Meditations for Coming Back to Life


Joanna Macy has developed an international following over the course of 40 years as a speaker and workshop leader on Buddhist philosophy and the deep ecology movement

What people are saying

Review: Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World

User Review  - Suzy - Goodreads

An awakening book that provides a plethora of suggestions, experiences, and exercises that promise to be helpful if you are interested in leading workshops focusing on deep ecology, or interpersonal bonding.

Review: Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World

User Review  - Carolyn Boyd - Goodreads

Another wonderful and important book from one of my favorite authors!

About the author

Molly Young Brown teaches at the Graduate School of Holistic Studies at John F. Kennedy University.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World
• Authors: Joanna Macy, Molly Young Brown
• Publisher: New Society Publishers, 1998
• ISBN: 086571391X, 9780865713918
• Length: 223 pages
• Subjects: Nature / Ecology; Nature / Environmental Conservation & Protection; Nature / General; Political Science / Public Policy / Environmental Policy; Self-Help / General; Self-Help / Motivational & Inspirational