94 NATURE-BASED EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY
to the healing of the world. She explains that this is a place of holy
truth-telling. She invites us to step into the mandala one at a time,
to take a symbol in our hands and to speak aloud the truth of our
own experience. Afterwards she explains that the ground of the
mandala is hope, that this ritual honors truth-telling as a way out of
our confusion and numbness. Then she speaks of the flip side of each
quadrant. She holds the stone and explains that courage to speak
about fear is evidence of trust. She holds the leaves and tells the
group that speaking of grief is evidence of love because we mourn
what we care deeply for. She raises the stick in her hand as she says
that anger springs from passion for justice. Gently holding the empty
bowl, she says that to be empty means there is openness for the new.
Macy developed this and other ritual exercises to offer a structure for
owning our pain for the world and for owning the authority to act
from it. People now perform this ritual around the world.Summary
Stories from the field of ecophilosophy tell us that we live within a
communion of subjects rather than a collection of objects and that
we as humans interact with every living being including the air. We
recognize that we live within a long and ancient story of the Earth
and the cosmos, a story in which we are only a recent part. Our
climate symptoms tell us not only about the state of the Earth, but
also about the status of our own souls. If we pay attention, we realize
our current way of life in the industrial growth society of the West
is not sustainable and that grief and unease are a normal response
to an unsustainable way of living. Stories of ecophilosophy suggest
epistemologies of intimacy grounded in the senses and the sacred.
These stories call us to awaken from denial and disconnection and
to transform grief and anger into action. This is a call for an ethic of
care and character to embrace attitudes of wildness and wonder.