**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:

<lAs we stand at a threshold of collective change, what leaps must we make?</l<lHow can we push through discord and polarization and meet these critical changepoints collectively?</l<lWhat practices, strategies, and spiritualities can align to vision a sustainable future for our communities and descendents?</l<lHow can we step out of urgency to tend to our crises with wisdom, intention, and care?&nbsp;</l

With wise and witty prose that wanders and turns, guides and reveals, Zen master and Indigenous Hawaiian leader R&#333;shi Norma Wong&rsquo;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&mdash;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.

Autorentext

Norma Wong, a life-long resident of Hawaiʻi, is a descendant of Native Hawaiians and Hakka Chinese immigrants. She has decades of experience in organizing, policy, strategy, and politics in Hawaiʻi, particularly in the area of Native Hawaiian issues, serving in the Hawaii State Legislature and as a policy lead and negotiator for Governor John Waiheʻe, Hawaiʻi’s first Native governor. Norma began her spiritual practice at the same time as her political life unfolded. These days, it is the intertwined application of Zen practice and an indigenous worldview that Norma brings to provoke practical inquiry and redirect work. She is a thought partner, a strategist, and a teacher.

Klappentext

Between falling apart and coming together lies the threshold—step through with a Zen master's invitation to practice hope in chaotic times.

Take a breath. Take a step.

In this time of collective acceleration—when institutions crumble, climate chaos intensifies, and polarization hardens hearts—Zen Rōshi and Native Hawaiian guide Norma Wong offers something different than solutions. She offers a way of being.

Part poetry, part strategy, part spiritual teaching, When No Thing Works reads like sitting with a wise friend who sees both the falling-apartness and what's arising. With stories that spiral and return, with humor that lightens without dismissing, Wong invites us to:

• Lift our gaze from urgent chaos to see the horizon beckoning
• Move from "I" to "we" through breaking bread, sipping tea, sharing stories
• Find the critical juncture (机) where change begins
• Practice the leaps that collective transformation requires—not alone, but as "one and one and one"
  Rather than offering answers, Wong opens doorways—showing us how to be at the threshold between a devolving world and an emergent one, how to hear what cannot be heard, how to move in the slipstream of these times with both urgency and patience.

For those feeling the weight of "too much going much faster," for those seeking a different rhythm, for those ready to cocreate rather than merely resist—this book is invitation and companion.

"What we do with this, matters."