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When No Thing Works Study Group
Study Group:
A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse
A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse
When No Thing Works is a visionary guide to co-creating new worlds from one in crisis. It asks into the ways we can live well and maintain our wholeness in an era of collective acceleration: the swiftly moving current, fed and shaped by human actions, that sweeps us toward ever uncertain futures.
Grounded in Zen Buddhism, interconnection, and decades of community activism, in "When No Thing Works" Norma Wong explores questions like:
As we stand at a threshold of collective change, what leaps must we make?
How can we push through discord and polarization and meet these critical changepoints collectively?
What practices, strategies, and spiritualities can align to vision a sustainable future for our communities and descendants?
How can we step out of urgency to tend to our crises with wisdom, intention, and care?
Zen master and Indigenous Hawaiian leader Roshi Norma Wong’s meditation holds our collective moment with gravity and tender care. She asks us to not only imagine, but to live into, a story beyond crisis and collapse—one that expands to meet our dreams of what (we hope) comes next while facing with clarity and grace our here and now in the world we share today.
Why This Group? - Bram Moreinis, Resilient Greenfield
Why This Group? - Bram Moreinis, Resilient Greenfield
Whether you've done movement work, community organizing, zen meditation, or intentional communal living, When No Thing Works (https://bit.ly/when-no-thing-works will activate and integrate experiences to offer an actionable context for responding to the climate crisis in your community.
We started Resilient Greenfield to make our local community more able to withstand what we saw coming from the Climate Crisis and other factors in the collapse of what some call "modernity". That collapse has already begun, of course; it is just not evenly distributed. When No Thing Works offers indigenous and Zen perspectives for orienting meaningful effort now and by future generations, informing our practices and organizing towards thriving seven generations hence.
The Zen Downeast community has an EcoSattvas group (see mission below) studying this book. On my first pass with the audiobook I had to replay parts when my attention wandered - it requires deep engagement. After a second pass there is much left to mine, with others in communities near mine to support each other.
I want to support a reading/discussion/practice group around this book, extended to participants throughout the Connecticut River Valley in MA. Meeting in person is best to build shared presence, but hybrid meetings support participation by those with much to contribute from other communities along the river.
I envision a bi-weekly round-robin reading with frequent questions and explorative discussion the first time through this book with a larger group, and then another round by a smaller circle of those who want to put it into practice. But let's see what happens.
Our EcoSattvas DownEast are committed to not turning away, nor sitting on our cushions while expecting others to solve the problem. We recognize that we have a brief window of opportunity to take action, to preserve humanity from imminent disaster, and to assist the survival of the many diverse and beautiful forms of life on Earth.
Future generations, and the other species that share the biosphere with us, have no voice to ask for our compassion, wisdom and leadership. We commit to listen to their silence, be their voice, too, and to act on their behalf.
As a community, we commit to actualizing the Bodhisattva vow and to helping ourselves and others to fully awaken to the truth of an endangered planet. We vow to live as EcoSattvas, and practice compassionate care of the earth.
After decades of discord, Canada and First Nations are working together to build a network of marine protected areas stretching from Vancouver Island to Alaska. ...
Over the past two decades, British Columbia has made strides in recognizing Indigenous sovereignty, and Indigenous-colonial relationships that had long been antagonistic have become more cooperative.
Bram note: see Clearcut movie starring Graham Greene:
Resources and Ideas for Local Application
Resources and Ideas for Local Application
IDEA: We could create a website for folk wisdom, using skills and resources shared on the Emergency Preparedness and Mutual Aid Signal Chat. The Driftless Folk School (https://www.driftlessfolkschool.org) website gave me the idea: "Located in the beautiful rolling hills and valleys of the Driftless bioregion in SW Wisconsin, we offer classes in land stewardship, natural building & woodworking, arts and crafts, organic agriculture, herbalism, wilderness skills, and more. Our aim is to make the skills and knowledge necessary for a sustainable life more widely available to the people of our bioregion and beyond." - Bram
Links and Resources for Background Info
Links and Resources for Background Info
Blind Spots
Blind Spots
I prefer this as a podcast. Nate challenges a lot of sloppy ideas some of us hold about how we get out of this mess. Nothing here contradicts what Gloria Wong writes about, though - and he ends with the Hawaiian Aloha as the relationship with life and Earth to be sought.
Community Sufficiency with Kara Huntermoon
Community Sufficiency with Kara Huntermoon
Here it is as a web page with an audio player. I prefer this as a podcast. Permaculturist and educator, Kara Huntermoon, says the hobbies we pick up now can be skills we pass on to our children. She talks about how relationality, intergenerational solidarity, and hard work support the practice of community sufficiency. This all seems directly in line with Gloria Wong's characterizations of what her community is doing in Hawaii.
Agency & Impact
Agency & Impact
I prefer this as a podcast. Max Wilbert is a long-time activist who spent the past few years defending Thacker Pass, and recently joined CELDF to as part of their new strategy to build out community resilience. It supports the movement organizing side of When No Thing Works.
Living in a time of Dying
Living in a time of Dying
Cries of Grief, Rage, Love and Hope
Cries of Grief, Rage, Love and Hope
MEGHAN ELIZABETH TALK
Meghan is part of our circle, and her book, updated and with an audiobook read by the author, was republished in 2022. It is available from Apple Books (Audio & eReader) as well as Audible/Kindle (Amazon) and others. The chapters alternate between personal anecdotes and reflections by Meghan, and Taoist teachings by her co-author, William Horden.
The opportunity to hear an author read her own work, and to have her in our group, is precious. Reading/listing is the experience of joining her as she recalls her journey; I found it touching, inspiring and integrating, Strongly recommended!
I strongly recommendbooks which also include authors narrating their journey through the stages of grief at the end of Modernity which I also recommend: At Work in the Ruins by Dougald Hine and read by him, and Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Marchado (indigenous scholar), audiobook read by Dougald Hine. - Bram
CHRIS REED AND NINA-MARIE LISTER, 4/24
..The field of ecology has moved away from classical determinism and a reductionist Newtonian concern with stability, certainty and order, in favor of more contemporary understandings of dynamic systemic change and the related phenomena of adaptability, resilience and flexibility.
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