When No Thing Works - by Norma Wong (Paperback)

About the Book

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

Book Synopsis

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."

Review Quotes

"This slender volume is a bountiful exhortation of the human spirit's potential to unwind intractable challenges of our 'collective acceleration, ' and a sharp knife that slices through wishful, lazy, or destructive machinations to get there.

Wong Rōshi's unique confluence of locations, lineages, and experience are honed into a wisdom lens we can peer through to couple our Why and our Way. Like all great teachers, she imparts story and strategy with equal measures of humility, reminding us that how we be matters to how we become.

Lyrical, sure, and threaded with the deft insight and forgiving humor of a guide who knows how flawed we can be, Wong Rōshi offers not so much a map, but a strategic pointing to the constellation of choices and practices we can and must navigate to enter a slipstream into an ever-possible future, together.

This work is a triumph, and you can feel the thunderous dance of ancestors'--past and future--approval."
--Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Rōshi, coauthor of Radical Dharma

"Norma Wong has been a compelling teacher in the realm of transformation for years--when I met her she was somehow one with the floor as several grownups tried with zero success to lift her up. I wanted to learn everything about that grounding. In this tight, engaging work, Norma is walking us through current events and possibilities, pointing out the actual currents, the questions, the timeplaces and emergent worldviews that most matter. This is deep, no-nonsense grounding, taught lightly, with invitation and humor and curiosity. Profound and embodied in each line . . . I know I will return to this text over and over. I join Norma on the path toward 'interdependent thriving, ' toward a visionary spacetime that grows from the seeds of our practice in the here and now."
--adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy

"Norma Ryuko Kawelokū Wong explores the essence of a twenty-first-century Indigenous worldview in When No Thing Works. She relies on knowing that all things, past and future, are in relationship. What we imagine and how we walk in the present determines the future. As Norma signals, our walk must include leaps that take us into unknowns, but we will not be alone. Norma gives us wise counsel for this difficult moment on Mother Earth. One culture, one belief system, one community alone is unable to fulfill our ancestors' collective hopes for all of our descendants. As Norma's ancestors said, 'O ka ehu kakahiaka . . . The red dawn of our people became the red dawn of many peoples.' Hawwih (thank you in Caddo), Norma, your family, and your people!"
--Judith LeBlanc, citizen of the Caddo Nation, ekah (grandmother), and executive director of the Native Organizers Alliance

"This is no ordinary book--it is more of a koan, a dreamspace poem, a love letter to future descendants. It lives at the intersections of reflective political analysis about the pivotal, cleaving moment we are currently experiencing and future stories of 'the world as we would have it be.' With an expansive understanding of emergent worldview, strategy and practice, the author weaves a web of mutuality that inspires a more interconnected version of the future and ourselves."
--Tessa Hicks Peterson, associate professor of urban studies and coauthor of Practicing Liberation

"As we stand at the threshold of collapsing systems and broken hearts, there is an opening. In When No Thing Works, Rōshi Norma Wong gives us a compass for how to navigate the space in between where we are coming from and where we are going. This book is an invitation to practice who we need to be to meet this moment and shape a future of possibility and potential."
--Kerri Kelly, author of American Detox

"So many colleagues and friends have benefited from the teachings of Norma Wong--and now more of us can see why. In a time in which our movements are grappling with the balance between soul and strategy--between the bonding warmth of mutual connection and the steely strength of political solidarity--this book lands as both a provocation and an invitation. It forces you to think, encourages you to feel, and slows you down enough to realize that the urgency of now must be tempered by a sense of timeless purpose. Breathe deep--another world is indeed possible if we dream, align, and act."
--Manuel Pastor, distinguished professor of sociology, American studies, and ethnicity at USC

"My copy of this book will have its pages with corners worn, its margins filled with scribbled notes, and its passages highlighted in different colors. Every time I pick up this book, I will have countless 'aha' moments. How do I know? From years of studying with Norma. From years of taking notes from Norma's talks. From years of looking back at my notes and seeing the words that I need to see in that moment. In the words of Anaïs Nin, 'We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are.' We see Norma's words as we are. As we are ready. As we arise."
--Jennifer Ito, research director at USC Equity Research Institute

"Navigating us with ease and grace, When No Thing Works is a compelling narrative on how we might actually get it right if we align our actions with what these times require of us. From re-humanizing and healing ourselves and our communities to shifting habits that no longer serve us, Norma Wong reminds us that a future of mutual stewardship and thriving for all living things is possible. Deeply aware of the complex systems accelerating before us all, she outlines hopeful actions: breathing deeply and slowly, seeing and defining our collective purpose, and making clear choices that reveal our interdependence as a core value. These are just glimpses of the deeply wise guidance that Wong Rōshi beautifully articulates. This is a book I will return to often for the many insights that live throughout this clear and delightful expression of aloha."
--Pam Omidyar, cofounder of the Omidyar Group

"Are you committed to a just and beautiful world and community, but find yourself losing hope and feeling overwhelmed? This is a timely book for navigating the convergence of crises, increasing division, and times of shift that we find ourselves in as a human family. Norma Wong deftly weaves Zen wisdom, Indigenous teachings, gifted storytelling, nature patterns, quantum physics, poetry, sharp analysis, strategy, and practice to help us understand how we can create a different way forward. Her book reminds us that our choices, actions, relationships, and practices in this time have the power to create and shape the future, not only for ourselves, but for the Earth and for the next seven generations. This book is an emergent call to action for our times, to practice and imagine, to arise together, and energetically draw a different future and worldview to us."
--Brenda Salgado, speaker, spiritual teacher, curandera, toltec energy healer, and author of Real World Mindfulness for Beginners

"When No Thing Works defies literary categorization. It is speculative nonfiction. It is historical current events. It is the math of science + spirit + imagination. It is humanities (as in humanity plural). Every page contains a focal point for future-casting. Whether you read the pages in order, or wander randomly through the chapters, the learning and wonder will remain constant. Collectively--as readers, students, and friends all--we can, indeed we must, animate the text. Life on Earth requires nothing less."
--Nan Stoops, former director and strategic advisor for the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence

"Having had the honor of learning from Norma Wong over the past several years as a student of her movement-building work, reading the book was like sitting in the room listening to her tell stories filled with wisdom and humor that always bring levity during a time that often feels so heavy. She has somehow captured the spirit of hope in this timeplace of collapse, and has encouraged us to go beyond the current frames of our worldview and enter into a worldview of emergence and interdependence. Norma has written us a book of brilliant strategy illustrated through beautiful stories told in a way only a Zen master could do. She has gifted us a treasure map on how to leap toward the horizon and cocreate the world we are reimagining for the descendants of our descendants. We are excited to integrate this book into our work at the Beloved Communities Network. As we work to embody the vision of transitioning to a world of love, resilience, and regeneration, this book unlocks the simple truth that it will require both consciousness action and the sharp discipline of choice."
--Leila McCabe, director of the Beloved Communities Network

"If you want to understand how things can come together, you have to honor and understand the ways and the why of how they are falling apart. When 'nothing works, ' it can help us to pivot and return to deeper ancestral understandings of what 'working' truly is. Who are we and why are we here? What is the meaning of our existence, connection, and creativity? What are our sacred responsibilities to our ancestors, future generations, and all living beings? Kawelokū's book invites us into the practice of these questions. And in living through these questions together, 'a way forward' emerges out of our collective practice of love and care. Out of many ways and from many people, Norma shines light on a way forward together that is only possible if each of us bring all of who we are, wholeheartedly, to each step, each breath, and each bold act of collective courage and action. Rōshi Norma is helping us to create the path by walking it together with us."
--Taj James, founder of the Movement Strategy Center and Full Spectrum Capital

"Hand-wringing, hair-pulling, growing anxiety, trepidation, polarization, and despair are all too common and personally familiar responses to the current state of the world around us. It is tempting to become caught up in these collective responses and there are even times when it seems like there is no path available to a more hopeful future. When No Thing Works, however, beautifully and courageously lays out a path for the ready, willing, and open to choose another way.

For those of us who will dare to believe in the collective potential of our humanity and who choose to evolve, to imagine, to leap toward the unknown together, this book is the gift of a roadmap that we can begin to follow today. Here Norma Ryūkō Kawelokū Wong Rōshi combines and documents, with clarity and simplicity, the wisdom she has cultivated through deep cultural rootedness, applied Zen, and strategy in one place--a compelling invitation into what we can do, even in these troubling times, to create the lasting, transformative impact made possible with others driven by big purpose. Get ready to reconnect to hopefulness about what is possible, not by wishing on the stars, but by realizing the potential within us all, together, to be the stuff of starlight to a decaying world that, more than ever, needs us to be awake and take big leaps toward a horizon in which our descendants and our planet thrive."
--Alexis Flanagan, coexecutive director of the Resonance Network

"This is a must-read infused with invitation to (re)imagine our future selves sipping tea in order to dream at rhythms that defy description. When our descendents come across this book in a library, they will sip tea made with clean water, weave stories of wholeness and kuleana while reminding themselves to continue to water the soil of storytelling as they too have learned from us the power of the critical juncture.

This book invites the warrior poet in us. It deftly asks us to dream even as we question our worthiness. Norma infuses humor amidst the brackish waters of our realities while imploring us to lean into what 'reflective discernment' means to us, but to do that discerning across two-leggeds, four-leggeds, wingeds and more; across centuries of humanity with integrity and love. This means we need to clear our decks, breathe deeply, and dream into being a newer fruitful emergence of interdependent thriving.

Norma's book weaves a path for us to leap, aim, and act at a rhythm that is invited by the Earth's drumbeat. The prosiest of phrases and more lyrical of verses ask us to examine the devastating landscapes, but more importantly remind us that our habits unexamined can and will be the end of us--and by us she means humanity, not individualism. She invites us to a deeper practice than we have ever attempted. And she is right."
--Dr. Shadiin Garcia, cohost of the Dive-In Justice podcast and principal of Shoreline Consulting

About the Author

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.