Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

The World As We Would Have It Be: Collective Thriving in the Timeplace of Collapse

Norma Kawelokū Wong (Collective Acceleration), Native Hawaiian and Hakka writer/teacher, 86th generation Zen master, and political strategist

“We know the story of the collapse. We have much less imagination of the timeplace of the other side. Thus, the far horizon story should always take place beyond the apocalyptic time when everything completely fell apart and the skies were dark for so long no one knew lightness nor blueness. It is there and then we need to practice into.” –Norma Kawelokū Wong

We are living at a moment of rapid systemic breakdown in which chaos dominates our present condition and directs our future. Instability is no longer a failure of power but its primary technique, governing through exhaustion, fear, and confusion. Against this unpredictable, disorienting, and exhaustive background, who are we, who do we evolve to become, and how do we show up in this time of collapse? How do we relate to one another and what collectives do we build? Lastly, how do we interdependently grow and lead in times of uncertainty? In this conversation between Zen Master Norma Kawelokū Wong (Collective Acceleration) and Charles A. Dana Professor David L. McMahan (Franklin and Marshall College), we will examine how we move forward in togetherness and analyze the collective potential of our humanity. Their conversation will unwind where we’ve been and imagine where we are going, individually and collectively, by engaging Wong’s much-acclaimed publications Who We Are Becoming Matters: The Courage, Wisdom, and Aloha We Need in a Timeplace of Collapse (2026) and When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse (2024). Their discussion will center on Zen and Indigenous wisdom, teachings, storytelling, strategy, and practice to help us leap beyond this fraught societal moment.

Biography (from the speaker’s website)

Norma Wong (Norma Ryuko Kawelokū Wong Roshi) is a Native Hawaiian and Hakka life-long resident of Hawaiʻi. She is the abbot of Anko-in, an independent branch temple of Daihonzan Chozen-ji and serves practice communities in Hawai‘i, across the continental U.S., and in Toronto, Canada. She is an 86th generation Zen Master, having trained at Chozen-ji for over 40 years.

In earlier years, Wong served as a Hawai‘i state legislator, on the policy and strategy team for Governor John Waihee with federal and Native Hawaiian portfolios. She led teams to negotiate agreements on the munitions cleanup of Kahoʻolawe Island, ceded land revenue for Native Hawaiians, and the return of lands and settlement of land issues for Hawaiian Home Lands. She was active in electoral politics for over thirty years.

In recent years, Wong has been called back into service to facilitate breaking the impasse and transforming policy and governance on issues of seeming contradiction.  In the conflict between native culture/science and western discovery science posing as a dispute over the construction of a telescope on Mauna Kea, Wong was a team member narrating and facilitating a path forward through mutual stewardship. She currently serves as a community advisor on issues such as the protection of the aquifer from fuel contamination at Red Hill and the long-term response to the Lahaina wildfires.

Norma has spent many years in the applied space – the direct application of indigenous and Zen ways, values and practices to living and transformational change critical to our times. Norma is part of the Collective Acceleration community of practice.