Radical Joy Revealed
April 12, 2017
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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. 


   
Christmas came--or, rather came back--to Homewood, Alabama , a Birmingham suburb, after an elderly man received a rebuke from an anonymous neighbor about what she saw as his failure to comply with seasonal protocol.
After chiding the man, identified only as "Mr. Frank," for leaving his Christmas decorations up, the letter writer told him he should clean up his yard. The note ended, "It might be in your best interest to consider selling your home so the yard can be properly landscaped and the house torn down (so a new one can be built that is more fitting with the other homes on the street). Thank you."
Shocked and hurt, Mr. Frank showed the letter to his neighbor, Kris Griffin. Her reaction was outrage. "If Christmas lights bother them," she asserted, "we're going to show them some Christmas lights."
So she hauled her own decorations out of the attic and put them up again. And within days, the entire community was winking with Christmas cheer.
Another Homewood resident, Lindsay Rhodes, spoke of the neighbors' spontaneous, creative support of Mr. Franks. "The country as a whole has some bullying issues. And by showing our support in this small way... I think we can try to move past that feeling like we are helpless."
Radical Joy for Hard Times is dedicated to finding and making beauty in and for wounded places. Sometimes those places are our own neighborhoods, and the "wounds" are personal and emotional. We can always find ways to bring beauty to sorrow, distress, and injustice.

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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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