A writer, speaker, activist, fundraiser, and long-time leader in The Hunger Project, Lynne Twist worked tirelessly for twenty years to end world hunger. Then she was called in a dream to pursue a new direction. Indigenous peoples of the rainforest asked her to help them save their homes and culture. Following the urging of the dream, she connected with the Achuar tribe, an intact people of the Ecuadoran rainforest. Now, with husband Bill Twist, she has founded and leads a new organization, the Pachamama Alliance. Roughly translated, Pachamama means "our own Mother Earth."
Walking the First Path: The Hunger Project
In the mid 1970s, Twist was involved in the human potential movement. As part of that process, she underwent EST training, and when Werner Erhardt announced he was taking responsibility to stop world hunger, she recalls, "Something reverberated in my soul." Despite objections to Erhardt’s announcement by his advisory board, the Hunger Project was born. Joan Holmes was initially named Interim Director and Twist the first staff member.
The "interim" in Holmes’ title soon evaporated. As of 2002, The Hunger Project is twenty-five years old. Controversy dogged the organization in its early days, but by the early 1990s, Twist was mobilizing tens of thousands of people worldwide and turning into a folk hero in the movement. "I loved it and also felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of responsibilities. I knew I needed to step back and let other stars shine," she says. In 1993, Twist arranged a sabbatical, although after living and breathing The Hunger Project for so long, she didn’t think she would be able to stay away. While it took six weeks to let go, she finally settled into spending time with her children, meditating, trekking the Himalayas, and living life outside the Hunger Project.
Upon returning, Twist had difficulty finding her place. "People had risen to the occasion," she notes. Speaking engagements kept her busy, however, and other nonprofits sought her expertise. When she met Bob Graham, whose organization was called Katalysis, and John Perkins, an expert in South American shamanism and environmentalism, Twist made the contacts that would prove to be her second calling.
Seeding New Dreams for Pachamama
Perkins pointed Twist to what she wasn’t embracing in her hunger work, including the environment. Into her dreams came faces from the Amazon rainforest. During one shamanic journey, Twist and her husband Bill felt they became one with the plants of the rainforest. "It wasn’t our plan, but it did seem to be our destiny. We would join the Achuar in hearing the spirit of the forest authentically, letting its voice guide us to preserve their home and the rainforest for us all. We were to find a way for human life to be a sustainable endeavor. From that night, my life began to unfold."
This second calling to a different life path left Twist with a dilemma. The Hunger Project was coming up to its twentieth anniversary, and, she says, "I knew I was done. But for decades, I’d always said,‘I will be here to the end. You can count on me.’ I didn’t know how to live with myself." Tortured by the realization that this was no longer her path, Twist, confused, exhausted, and as it turned out, seriously ill, took a leave of absence. Nine months passed before two strains of malaria were discovered. "The illness was the cataclysm that I needed to actually say,‘I’m complete with the Hunger Project.’"
Meanwhile, the Pachamama Alliance had begun on the strengths of Bill Twist’s efforts. Following a model similar to that of the Hunger Project, Lynn Twist is leading the Pachamama Alliance to co-create projects in partnership with the indigenous tribes of the rainforests. "Our goal is to preserve the rainforests by empowering the indigenous peoples who are its natural custodians," she says. "We are working to create a new global vision of equity and sustainability for all life. We are creating an alloy of consciousness between the indigenous people and the modern world people. We are coming together to learn how to build a sustainable culture for human life." The voice of the rainforest and its indigenous people is another voice in the global dialogue, one that has been missing. The Pachamama Alliance is a vehicle to get these important voices heard.
The Prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor
Twist speaks eloquently of an Amazon prophecy foretold for thousands of years. It is this prophecy that The Pachamama Alliance is designed to bring to fruition. "During the ninth Pachacuti, that started around 500 years ago, the eagle peoples will dominate the Earth. The people of the eagle are those of us of the material world, of the mind and intellect, the modern technological world.
"At the beginning of the tenth Pachacuti, the people of the eagle will have reached a zenith in creating technologies. They will have material wealth beyond imagination. With that will come a spiritual impoverishment that puts their very survival at risk. The people of the condor live through the heart and the senses. They will have a profound and developed relationship with the natural world, with spirits. They will be flooded with spiritual power, but will be materially impoverished to their peril. They are especially impoverished in their dealings with the eagle people."
According to the prophecy, "At the beginning of the tenth Pachacuti, the eagle and condor will remember that they come from one place. They will fly together in the same sky, wing to wing. In other words, mind and heart will rejoin. Intellect and senses will reconnect. The world will come into balance in a miraculous way, but not before Pachamama herself will humble all creatures to remember their rightful role in relation to her." The Great Mother, according to the prophecy, will tremble and shake, create great climate change, floods. Continues Twist, "The people of the Amazon see in their dream that they will prevail, yet they realize they must play their role, they must participate completely in producing the outcome. We each need what the other has."
Getting to Enough
What we do not need is the oil under the rainforest or more grazing land or more products made from rainforest woods. In the South, projects from the Pachamama Alliance are designed to build a coalition of tribes and NGOs to create an economic alternative to destruction in the rainforests. "We must make the forests more valuable as the living lungs of the planet than razed for products or mutilated for oil. We are bringing the best thinking of the modern world, the macroeconomic thinking, to reshape how the world economic system sees the Amazon, as a different kind of value."
As the Pachamama Alliance works on projects in the forests, its connections in the North are creating commitments for members to live more sustainably. Each New Moon, in traditional cultures a time for reflection and renewal, Pachamama Alliance members commit to take one action to live more lightly on the land or reconnect to nature. Month in and month out, members grow in consciousness to take daily actions and lighten their footprint on the earth. In the daily gestures of renewal, Twist points out, "These are things that count twice. First, people stop doing damage. Second, the resources they would have spent driving the destruction of the rainforests in some way, are redirected to preservation and sustainability."
What Twist wants people to discover is the idea of sufficiency. "In a culture of the‘runaway more,’ richer, thinner, smarter, better, there is no way to be satisfied. We have lost the meaning of‘enough’ — from businesses, societies and communities, to the dinner table. The‘more is better’ mentality is becoming the nightmare that is killing the planet. We need a new relationship with‘enough.’ In the culture of scarcity that is generated in our consumer culture, there is no moment of sufficiency. We have to help people reclaim that."
Turning the Tide
Some are stepping out of the cycle, realizing the perfection of the moment when they can say, "Enough." Twist has gathered twelve leaders of social innovator organizations to maintain that conversation, to uncover what is needed for social and cultural transformation. Calling it the Turning Tide Coalition, Twist observes, "If we can see and say the tide is turning, in all kinds of arenas we all care about, that galvanizes people to participate in turning the tide faster. We have to be bold and courageous and take a stand that, by God, the tide is turning and you can be part of it. The goal of the Turning Tide Coalition is to take that stand, to herald the turning tide, and to ignite a conversation for people’s participation."
For indigenous peoples, dreams are important. This is something that many in the "eagle" culture must learn. For us, the "dream" is often projected into TV, films, the popular culture. Looking at such dreams, we face nightmare futures no one wants to live in. Twist points out that if we are watering and fertilizing such nightmares with our attention, it may be time to wake up while we still can. "Attention is precious. What we attend to, what we appreciate, does grow and flourish. If we put our attention in what is dark, unless we are engaging with the darkness to turn it around, then it will be toxic. The world is as we dream it. This can be our tool, the place where we can put our hands on the levers and dials for creating a dream that is worthy of the human family, that is worthy of all life."
Making connections
The Pachamama Alliance is at www.pachamama.org
Connect at www.katalysis.org for information on a North-South microcredit partnership.
Check out www.turningtide.com for dialogues and projects to bring the energy of transformation to create a thriving, just and sustainable way of life.
Visit www.thp.org/ for information about The Hunger Project.
Bobbye Middendorf is a writer living lightly on the earth in Chicago. Contact her at jasbjm@earthlink.net.