Praise the Place You Love: Radical Joy Revealed

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.

Praise the Place You Love

Jazz pianist and Qi Gong teacher Kazzrie Jaxen practicing Earth Beauty Qi Gong on the Delaware River, Global Earth Exchange 2014. Photo courtesy of Kazzrie Jaxen

Radical Joy for Hard Times is devoted to finding and making beauty in wounded places. Yet there are many places among us that aren't damaged yet... though they are endangered.

Is there an endangered place near you?

Maybe it's a historic building slated to be torn down... a meadow about to be gouged by gas fracking... farm animals treated as mere commodities for consumerism... an ash or hemlock tree under threat by insect pests.

Martín Prechtel, the First Nations writer and teacher, urges us to offer liberal and heartfelt praise to the places and people we love and whose departure we grieve. Grief and praise are two very related concepts, he says. "If we do not grieve what we miss, we are not praising what we love."

This week, find a place you care about that is (or may be) under threat and praise it. Go there and sit with it. Tell it about its beauty. Tell it what you love about it. Be specific. Be personal. Tell it how concerned you are about it. Speak out loud, so the place and all its beings can hear you!

Expressing sorrow opens us up to the reality of what fades away. Praising makes beauty flower in the midst of loss. This week, praise a place you love and grieve.

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Radical Joy Revealed.

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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