DORCAS CHENG-TOZUN, author of Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul (Broadleaf), wanted to be an “unceasing voice” for social justice. “And while I was busy saving the world,” she writes, “I would also be the kind of person who’d happily sacrifice anything for a good cause.” But 10 months after Cheng-Tozun moved from the U.S. to China to set up an operations office for her spouse’s solar business, thrilled at the possibility of providing affordable electricity to billions of people, she experienced the “worst and longest panic attack” of her life. For more than a year, she could do “little more than sleep and cry and journal.” A crucial, difficult question arose: “Why can’t I handle what everyone else seems to be managing perfectly well?”
For Trish O’Kane, author of Birding to Change the World (Ecco), the breaking point was Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed her New Orleans home and neighborhood. “After a disaster,” O’Kane reflects, “you just can’t do as much. Nor should you. You need time to think, to ponder ... I needed a great slowing down.” She took up knitting, spent long hours outdoors on the ground “watching the clouds change shape and bumblebees loading their back legs with pollen and the yard birds going about their business.”
Like Cheng-Tozun’s year of sleeping, crying, and journaling, these months surfaced life-changing questions for O’Kane. “I could feel my question changing,” O’Kane writes, “from What should I do? to How should I be?”
In their respective books, Cheng-Tozun and O’Kane write from the other side of activist burnout — something Cheng-Tozun experienced after working for multiple social justice organizations, and O’Kane after working in human rights journalism in conflict areas, both for many years. Both writers ponder how to change, heal, and move forward. Birdwatching was the gateway for O’Kane, while Cheng-Tozun found herself reflecting on sensitivity, introversion, and the many ways people are wired with different gifts to offer. They have different backgrounds and stories — Cheng-Tozun is now a writer and consultant who most recently worked for a Christian nonprofit that equips BIPOC contemplative activists; O’Kane is an environmental educator who created the “Birding to Change the World” program at University of Wisconsin-Madison — but both authors offer a similar invitation to those who yearn to make a difference: Learn to embody gentler, more sustainable ways of doing so.
Isn’t this what we need in the times we live in? Genocide endures, longstanding sexual abuse continues to be revealed, and police violence against Black and brown people persists. The need for change is urgent. As Cheng-Tozun puts it, “[I]n the work of social justice, the stakes couldn’t be higher; the outcome couldn’t be more important; the opposing forces couldn’t be more entrenched.” And yet, if we approach activism with nothing but urgency, we tend to burn out quickly. Especially for sensitive souls who, in Cheng-Tozun’s words, “carry the burden of pushing for social change in our muscles and veins.”
Perhaps counterintuitively, there are times when the best thing we can do for both ourselves and our world is to slow down. I think of Jesus, whose life — as brief and urgent as it was — balanced contemplation and action, each informing and feeding the other. He fell asleep on a boat in the middle of a storm, was often silent when expected to speak, and spent time in nature praying alone when people wanted him to preach and heal. If there is an idealized activist mold of constant productivity, Jesus did not fit.
When O’Kane moved to Madison, Wis., to start a doctoral program in environmental science, she spent hours in Warner Park observing the natural world and meeting others who were doing the same. She reflects, “My new park buddies moved slowly and sat still a lot because of their various illnesses. This was why they noticed things most of us never see — the tiny things that hold the planet together.” There was something about sitting in a particular place that proved profoundly healing for all sorts of people — something about watching the birds. As O’Kane explains, “trees and natural green spaces calm the parasympathetic nervous system, boost the immune system by reducing stress hormones, lower blood pressure, reduce glucose levels among diabetics, and relieve depression.”
I’m struck by an image, from O’Kane, of geese flying in their chevron shapes. As they fly, they rotate who takes the lead — a more difficult role — while the other birds follow along, enjoying an easier flight as they ride the draft of those in front of them. O’Kane contrasts this with what she has often noticed in activist organizations she’s been a part of: Leaders take on too much, burn out, and have to leave entirely. Cheng-Tozun has seen the same thing. “We cannot create lasting change if we keep breaking ourselves and one another down,” Cheng-Tozun reflects. “Those who have been doing this work for decades understand this; it’s the only way they’ve been able to continue their efforts.”
As we seek more sustainable ways of working for social change, we can learn from the birds, and we can learn from the people who have engaged in activist work their whole lives. We can learn how to support and care for ourselves, and for one another. We can learn to take breaks, share leadership, and rotate roles like geese. We can build a “culture of abundance and generosity among activists that counters the culture of expected self-sacrifice and self-martyrdom,” Cheng-Tozun writes.
This generous, abundant vision for social justice activism isn’t just more sustainable; it’s also more joyful. O’Kane speaks of joy as a neural rewiring. “Bird by bird,” she writes, “every chickadee, nuthatch, catbird, wren, and owl forged a new neural pathway in my brain, a joyful pathway.”
Joy, it turns out, is essential to the work of justice. As Cheng-Tozun writes, “It is in health, in groundedness, in authenticity, in gratitude, and, yes, even in joy, that we can be the most effective agent for positive social change.”
For people of faith pursuing social change, the issues of injustice loom large; joy can seem frivolous, and rest can feel like a lack of dedication. The pull to be always on the move can feel strong. Criticisms of not doing enough, or not doing the right things, can arise from every side.
Perhaps we have been taught to believe that God will sustain us in our tireless striving toward justice — but the details of what that sustenance looks like are fuzzy. We need practical ways to care about and advocate for our diverse communities without depleting our souls in the process. Ultimately, this is what both Cheng-Tozun and O’Kane offer. They invite us to nourish ourselves by taking in the sustenance of nature, paying attention to birds, learning how we’re wired, and discovering what we need to thrive for the long haul. They invite us onto a more restorative activist path, one that resonates deeply with the road Jesus walked.
Liz Cooledge Jenkins is the Seattle-based author of Nice Churchy Patriarchy, and she blogs at growingintokinship.substack.com.
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