Throughout history, those who have understood the marriage of spirit and action have offered us guidance.

+

Howard Zinn

“Politics is pointless if it does nothing to enhance the beauty of our lives,” declared author and activist Howard Zinn.

Our interpretation: Political work disconnected from beauty becomes merely mechanical; it’s a grim duty that drains the soul.

But when activism is infused with artistry, when protests are vivifying performances and organizing is creative expression, then politics becomes a life-giving practice.

Zinn’s insight ensures that sacred activism never degenerates into joyless obligation. The revolution must be beautiful, or it’s not worth having.

PS: Emma Goldman was a charismatic activist whose writing and speeches had a big impact on leftist politics in the first half of the 20th century. She championed a kind of liberation that celebrated beauty and joy. “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution,” she is alleged to have told a sourpuss colleague.

+

Huston Smith

“Such power as I possess for working in the political field has derived from my experiments in the spiritual field,” wrote religious scholar Huston Smith.

This statement responds to those who doubt the efficacy of contemplative practice in a world demanding immediate action. Smith testifies that his capacity for sustained political engagement—his stamina, clarity, courage—all originated in spiritual disciplines.

We conduct our own experiments, discovering firsthand how meditation sharpens strategic thinking. We know that prayer fortifies resolve, and contemplation reveals leverage points for change. The spiritual field becomes the training ground for political effectiveness.



Desmond Tutu

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor,” declared theologian and activist Desmond Tutu. “If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

This teaching destroys the delusion of spiritual bypass: the notion that we can somehow remain “above” worldly conflicts while pursuing personal enlightenment.

Neutrality is not noble detachment but active complicity. In the face of injustice, there is no Switzerland of the soul. We are either resisting oppression or enabling it. Silence is a choice. Inaction is an action.

+

Joanna Macy

Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy offers us a potent antidote to despair: “If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear.”

This teaching liberates us from the paralysis of imagining that world-healing is the province of saints, heroes, or specially anointed beings. Macy reminds us that the transformation our world needs will come from regular humans—flawed, frightened, imperfect—who nonetheless choose love as their organizing principle.

We don’t have to be fearless. We just have to love more than we fear. We don’t need all the answers. We simply have to care enough to keep trying.

Macy’s work on what she calls “Active Hope” tells us that hope isn’t a feeling we wait to experience but a practice we engage in regardless of how we feel. It’s the decision to participate in healing even when outcomes are uncertain. We make a commitment to act from love even when fear screams at us to retreat.

+

Alan Watts

Alan Watts’s counsel is beloved: “Our best efforts for civil rights, international peace, conservation of natural resources, and assistance to the starving of the earth—urgent as they are—will destroy rather than help if made in the present spirit.

“Peace can be made only by those who are peaceful, and love can be shown only by those who love. No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.”

To that end, our activism is grounded in presence exercises. We might savor a ripe persimmon as attentively as we read a holy text. The lesson is that joy and pleasure are renewable energy sources for revolution. We party so the gods remember why the world is worth saving. The revolution fails if we forget to exult.

Other activists may mobilize through outrage, and we honor that. But we ourselves mobilize through ecstasy. It’s not escapism. It’s a refusal to let despair monopolize realism. Watts’s injunction to live now in delight becomes our tactic of resistance: presence as defiance, embodiment as activism, pleasure as proof of life.



Martha Gellhorn

If Alan Watts offers the sensual foundation of our rebellion and Andrew Harvey supplies our mystical fire, Martha Gellhorn provides the grounding: a mandate for civic wakefulness.

Gellhorn wrote, “People often say, with pride, ‘I’m not interested in politics.’ They might as well say, ‘I’m not interested in my rights or my future.’”

We take that line as scripture. We study not only mythology but legislation, not only astrology and Qabalah but economics. We seek to translate visionary insights into real-world policy proposals. To withdraw from politics is to abandon the collective body of the world.

So we have fun experimenting with channeling archetypes into city ordinances. We might draft proposals for river protection inspired by the Yoruban Goddess Yemaya, or urban gardens modeled after the Hindu Goddess Annapurna’s kitchens. Our activism is poetic but pragmatic, equal parts symbol and system.

Gellhorn’s realism ensures that as dreamers, we remain fully incarnate, our spiritual yearnings tethered to earth by social consequence.

+

Where the Streams Converge: Integration as Revolution

How do the teachings of all the sacred activists intertwine?

Harvey teaches us why the heart must burn. Watts shows us how to stay lit without choking on smoke. Gellhorn reminds us to carry the flame into city hall. Gandhi reveals how to make the flame contagious. Hillman and Ventura push us out of the therapy room and into the streets where another kind of healing happens.

Macy shows us that healing the earth and being healed by the earth are the same reciprocal motion. She also reminds us that ordinary people with extraordinary love are agents of transformation. Halifax demonstrates how to actualize the bodhisattva spirit in direct practical response to injustice.

For us, activism without mysticism is mechanical, and mysticism without activism is narcissistic. The integration births what Harvey calls the holy force: the power of wisdom and love in action.

This integration is not a compromise between opposites but a recognition of their essential unity. The mystic who doesn’t act on behalf of justice has not truly seen the interconnection of all beings. Activists who don’t cultivate inner peace will burn out and become what they oppose.

Starhawk, the author and ecofeminist who founded the neopagan Reclaiming tradition, articulates this integration with precision: “Our magical tools and insights, our awareness of energies and allies on many planes, can deepen and inform our activism. And our activism can deepen our magic, by encouraging us to create ritual that speaks to the real challenges we face in the world, offers the healing and renewal we need to continue working, and a community that understands that spirit and action are one.”

This is the synthesis we want: where contemplation sharpens strategy and action deepens wisdom, where ritual addresses real-world suffering and real-world work becomes sacred practice. The spiritual and political aren’t merely compatible but mutually reinforcing dimensions of a single integrated life.

The streams converge in us. We are the meeting place where inner cultivation and outer transformation become one holy force. Mysticism synergizes with activism, prayer with protest.

+

8. Vows

Our pledges:

• To become instruments of luminous justice in our own communities

• To make ecstasy politically useful

• To treat every heartbreak as a rehearsal for compassion

• To refuse the false choice between inner work and outer work

• To practice enlightenment as intimacy with all things

• To honor Gandhi’s truth that spirituality and politics are one

• To carry beauty into the battlegrounds and battle into the beautiful

• To preserve in our hearts those qualities that acquiescence would destroy

• To never be neutral in the face of injustice

• To stay lit without choking on smoke