07/17/2025
In August 2024, I had the profound honor of visiting my beloved teacher and mentor, Joanna Macy, at her home in Berkeley. I was accompanied by my son, Gabo, to whom I said, “This is my spiritual mother.” We shared a meal, sipped wine, and entered once more into the realm of beauty, wit, and imagination that has always graced my encounters with Joanna since we first met at the Work That Reconnects POC training in 2017.
Joanna has been a guiding light in our journey with Re-Conectando, mentoring us as we supported the Colombian Truth Commission. She rejoiced in knowing that the spiral of the Work That Reconnects was being woven into the sacred task of truth-telling, helping to root the process in the wisdom of deep ecology.
In these recent weeks, Joanna has been meeting the threshold of death with the same courage and love that she brought to every moment of her life. As she prepares to return to the great mystery, I share these words with all of us who have been blessed and transformed by her presence and her work.
Beloved Joanna,
As you lie now in the liminal space between this world and the mystery beyond, I feel the fierce tenderness of your teachings resounding through the marrow of my being. I imagine your breath—each inhale like the tide returning to shore, each exhale an offering back to the Great Turning you have served so beautifully.
You have taught us that death is not an enemy, but an ally. That we must “ripen our death by accepting it in our living.” And now, with the grace of a tree releasing its last golden leaves, you are offering us a final teaching—not in words this time, but in the sacred poetry of your presence in dying.
You reminded us, again and again, that our culture has forgotten how to die, and thus forgotten how to live. And so you gave us Rilke, who prayed, “God, give us each our own death, the dying that proceeds from each of our lives, the way we loved, the meanings we made, our need.” You are living that prayer now. And through you, we see that death, when met with reverence, can become a final act of belonging.
Your life has been a long and luminous act of love—for Earth, for justice, for all beings. And in this final passage, you become what you always were becoming: ancestor, root-system, mycelial elder whispering from the soil of our collective soul.
You once said that in the act of dying, “we are released into our belonging.” May this passage release you fully into the embrace of all that you have loved: the forests and rivers, the songs of whales and children, the poetry of Rilke and the revolution of the heart.
And we, your students, your kin, your beloveds, will carry the torch. We will grieve wildly and love ferociously. We will bow to the Earth and to each other. And we will continue the Great Turning—not as an abstract task, but as the sacred labor of gratitude for the life you gave us.
Thank you, Joanna, for teaching us how to die... and thus, how to live.
With tears, awe, and boundless love,
Hector Aristizabal ReConectando
