Radical Joy Revealed
January 24, 2018
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Radical Joy Revealed is a weekly message of inspiration about finding and making beauty in wounded places. We hope you'll enjoy these doorways into places that are both familiar and surprising, and we welcome your suggestions, stories, and photos. Click here to subscribe. 

Activist ceremony at Monsanto
Activists standing before Monsanto plant in Grinnell, Iowa do an Earth Exchange. 
 Photo courtesy of Linda Sartor (third from right)
While on a march in 2013 to call attention to the dangers of drone warfare, a group of activists paused before the facilities of Monsanto, the giant agri-business manufacturer of genetic seeds to do an Earth Exchange. They planted native Indian corn along the public right-of-way and said prayers for the Earth.

Some other activists, when they hear about the Radical Joy for Hard Times practice of celebrating broken places, respond dismissively. "We don't have time for that," they say. Or, "What does that have to do with stopping a power plant / cleaning up a river / protecting endangered sea turtles?"
 
Everything! Finding and making beauty in a place you're committed to caring for has everything to do with your goal... and with your own involvement in that goal.
 
Taking even half an hour to do one or more of the following simple practices in the course of an activist campaign can make a big difference:
  • Let everyone in the group share their feelings about the place or species they're working on behalf of...
         or
  • While working on site, invite everyone to take a few minutes to sit quietly and simply get to know this place in its new and challenged condition...
         or
  • Make a gift of beauty for the place in some simple way by singing a song, making collaborative art, hugging trees, tossing flowers into a river.
Any of these simple actions can strengthen the bond between the place that activists care about and their own feelings about it. These practices also bring team members together through a physical and emotional experience that reminds them of how vital their work is and how essential is their united effort.
 
Reconnecting with the place you love and are committed to bringing back to life is not a distraction from activist work. It's a deep remembering of why you're doing it.

To discover other stories of inspiring people, stories, photos, and ideas, subscribe to
GLOBAL EARTH EXCHANGE TO EXPAND

This year's  Global Earth Exchange  on June 16 kicks off a whole year of drawing attention to hurt places of all sizes and kinds! Watch this space in Radical Joy Revealed and our social media for unfolding details.

 
It's easy to make beauty anywhere! Here's how!

New from Radical Joy for Hard Times founder
Trebbe Johnson: a book filled with ideas for creating simple, imaginative, collaborative gifts of beauty for hurt places in nature and in your community!
 
   
To order click here.
Radical Joy for Hard Times is a global community of people dedicated to finding and making beauty in wounded places. Reconnecting with these places, sharing our stories of loss, and making acts of beauty there, we transform the land, reconnect people and the places that nourish them, and empower ourselves to make a difference in the way we live on Earth. 
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Each week Radical Joy Revealed comes to you free of charge with inspiring stories and suggestions for living with endangered places in creative, life-affirming ways. It takes thought, imagination, and a sense of timing to uncover and write the stories, choose just the right images to accompany them, and prepare them for distribution, and we could use your financial help. Please show your support of Radical Joy Revealed by making a tax-deductible donation to our non-profit organization.

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