- Audio Podcast
This episode of the Turning Season podcast includes an excerpt from the audiobook of Widening Circles, the memoir of Joanna Macy. It also includes a telling of how the audiobook project came to fruition from narrator and podcast host, Leilani Navar.
In this excerpt about Joanna’s year in Sri Lanka, you’ll hear how she participated in and studied the Sarvodaya Shramadana Sangamaya movement in 1979, when she was at 50 years old.
Her memoir reads like a novel, and this chapter has so much of what Leilani loves about it – her adventurousness, her passion, the breadth and depth of her thinking, her moments of spiritual insight and awakening, her openness to love and friendship, her lyrical writing, and the chance to learn about another time, place, and response to social and ecological need. Her adventurous, passionate life interwove with major events and ideas of the 20th century – which mattered to her in a deeply personal way.
Joanna Macy was a beloved teacher, mentor, elder, and friend to so many. She was a scholar and an activist whose work continues to touch countless people around the world and help us find clarity, agency, belonging, and love of life in a world in crisis.