When No Thing Works

Spiritual and community lessons for embracing collective care, co-creating sustainable worlds, and responsibly meeting uncertain futures—a Zen and Indigenous take on building better, more balanced ways of being

For readers of Hospicing Modernity, When Things Fall Apart, and Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet

Talking story, weaving poetry, and offering wisdom at the intersections of strategy, politics, and spiritual activism, When No Thing Works is a visionary guide to co-creating new worlds from one in crisis. It asks into the ways we can live well and maintain our wholeness in an era of collective acceleration: the swiftly moving current, fed and shaped by human actions, that sweeps us toward ever uncertain futures. Grounded in Zen Buddhism, interconnection, and decades of community activism, When No Thing Works explores questions like:

As we stand at a threshold of collective change, what leaps must we make? How can we push through discord and polarization and meet these critical changepoints collectively? What practices, strategies, and spiritualities can align to vision a sustainable future for our communities and descendents? How can we step out of urgency to tend to our crises with wisdom, intention, and care?

With wise and witty prose that wanders and turns, guides and reveals, Zen master and Indigenous Hawaiian leader Rōshi Norma Wong’s meditation holds our collective moment with gravity and tender care. She asks us to not only imagine but to live into a story beyond crisis and collapse—one that expands to meet our dreams of what (we hope) comes next, while facing with clarity and grace our here and now in the world we share today.