THE THREE TYPES OF ACTION

So much is changing.

In some ways it always has.

 

But the change of our age is now perceptible and powerful.

And it is up to each one of us to decide how we wish to play a part in The Great Turning.

The Great Turning was a phrase coined by one of my all-time heroines – Joanna Macy.

 

Now an elder, she has spent her life in service to ‘the work that reconnects’ people back into the living, breathing ecosystem of Earth.

 

Our home.

Our Mother.

Our sacred responsibility.

 

In the times of the Great Turning, each of us has a vital role to play.

The trick is finding our path and then establishing how, when and who we wish to take positive actions to create a more beautiful and life sustaining world.

 

Joanna talks about the three kinds of action needed for the momentum of the Great Turning to take hold.

 

The first type of sacred action.

Activism – stop the destruction

There are those amazing people who are the sacred warriors in the world. The people who stand up on behalf of all and protect life, balance, and fairness. These are the people that we are seeing rising all over the world and protesting in every major city (whether the mainstream media tell you about it or not, it is happening). We need these courageous people to ensure that the old systems and power structures cannot run rampant in the world. They are the vital front line in any transformation.

 

The second type of sacred action.

Creation – design and birth new systems and structures

Yet once the destruction is halted or at least slowed down, we need new cultural, economic, and environmental systems and structures that people can flow into. Buckminster Fuller famously said “You can never change things by just fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”. This is the role of our innovators, entrepreneurs, and visionaries. These people in every sector who are envisioning a new world that is based on new values such as equity, fairness, true justice, and diversity. We honour our sacred inventors and pioneers without whom we would have no evolution.

 

The third type of sacred action.

Mythology – a new meta narrative of unity

The third type of sacred action is the provenance of the storytellers, mythologists, and cosmologists. It is the realm of meaning-making and metaphor. For whilst we live within the story of separation, individualism, and competition, the previous two actions will never have a fertile psychological & spiritual soil within which to take root and grow. This is the foundation for all that comes for until we have a global narrative of unity, equity and collective good, we will never truly believe that a more beautiful world is possible. We must reimagine who we are as stewards and guardians of the Earth, interconnected with all other life here before we have a chance of embedding new systems, structures and ways of life.

 

The truth is that most of us will partake in all three kinds of action at different stages of our lives. Some of us will participate in all three simultaneously.

 

Indeed, they are all inextricably linked.

One cannot be successful without all the others being in operation.

 

So, we can honour our life path and the variety of forms that our path of action takes.

Sometimes we will be activists, at others – designers.

Yet we are all story makers – all the time.

 

Every word we speak, creates our reality.

Every thought we think, creates our mythology.

 

We are the living story.

So, what will you choose?

 

 

 

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