by Joanna Macy
When you act on behalf
of something greater than yourself,
you begin
to feel it acting through you
with a power that is greater than your own.This is grace.
Today, as we take risks
for the sake of something greater
than our separate, individual lives,
we are feeling graced
by other beings and by Earth itself.Those with whom and on whose behalf we act
give us strength
and eloquence
and staying power
we didn't know we had.We just need to practice knowing that
and remembering that we are sustained
by each other
in the web of life.
Our true power comes as a gift, like grace,
because in truth it is sustained by others.If we practice drawing on the wisdom
and beauty
and strengths
of our fellow humans
and our fellow species
we can go into any situation
and trust
that the courage and intelligence required
will be supplied.
-- Joanna Macy
(Edited into verse by Tom Atlee
from an interview in YES! magazine
http://www.futurenet.org/13newstories/macy.html
and approved as a poem by Joanna Macy.)