Our Responsibility to Reconnect honouring Joanna Macy with Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland

Today I'm delighted to welcome back Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland who previously joined me to share her amazing wisdom and some of her soulful poetry from her incredible book Daring To Hope at the Cliff’s Edge in Episode 35. 

Elizabeth is currently on a UK and Europe tour with her composer husband Beverly Glenn-Copeland, if you have the opportunity to see them live then I highly recommend it. They also have a beautiful new album Laughter in Summer which is available for Pre-order: https://beverlyglenncopeland.com

Today we honour the incredible legacy of one of Elizabeth’s cherished mentors Joanna Macy environmental activist, author and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology who transitioned from this world in July 2025. 

Elizabeth guides us with poetry and gentle compassion to explore some of the principles of The Work That Reconnects, which Joanna created as the ground-breaking framework for personal and social change that helps people take the despair and apathy we feel and transform it into constructive, collaborative action. From gratitude and honouring the pain we witness in ourselves and the world around us, to finding a new story and vision to hold as we move forward and write the future for the earth and humanity that we want to bring into being. 

Remember Hope is a verb, it is meant to be active not passive, it is a practice that we must tend daily to cultivate the change we want to see in our world.

Learn more about  Elizabeth

Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland is a writer, theatre maker and arts educator whose career over the last forty years has evolved at the intersection of arts and activism. She has long had a passion for communicating with the animate world that began in childhood high up in the arms of an old weeping willow. Fast forward sixty years -- Elizabeth is offered a writing residency at the Joggins Fossil Institute, a UNESCO World Heritage site on the mighty Bay of Fundy. She jumps at the chance to connect/converse with 300 million-year-old-rock, to go to Stone as supplicant, to fully engage with sea and sand and sky and winged helpers to deepen her connection to the living world. What emerged was a narrative of the odyssey in poetic form, “Daring to Hope at the Cliff’s Edge: Pangea’s Dream Remembered”.

Music journalist, Nick Storring says of the this work:

“Lyrical, bewildering, heartening, and unsettling, this work sees an individual voice reckoning with the overwhelming complexity of our present moment.”

Elizabeth lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her composer husband, Beverly Glenn-Copeland.

Purchase ‘Daring to Hope…’: https://chapelstreeteditions.com/book-catagories/poetry/daring-to-hope-at-the-cliffs-edge/

Instagram: @beverlyglenncopeland

Discover the work of Joanna Macy: https://www.joannamacy.net/

The Work That Reconnects: https://workthatreconnects.org/

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