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Radical Joy Revealed
April 26, 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.
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You're Only the First Artist
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Michelle Czolba's little boy helps create the RadJoy Bird. Global Earth Exchange
2011, Pittsburgh, PA. Photo courtesy of Michelle Czolba
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When we make beauty for a wounded place, we do it collectively. Every member of the group, whether that's two people or a hundred, young or old, able or disabled, contributes to this gift we give to a place that's given so much to us.
It can be challenging to make a work of art with a whole group of people! Some may be artists, while others are not. Some are confident, others hold back. In the making of a bird (typically the gift that people make for our annual Global Earth Exchange events), one person may carefully place a pine bough or bottle cap on the emerging avian form, only to see someone else remove it a moment later and put it somewhere else.
A little shyness and insecurity in this process is perfectly normal! After all, gathering pine boughs, bottle caps, and other materials the place offers and making a collaborative work of art out of them is not an ordinary activity!
It may help to remember that, when we make a gift to a place, we are only the first artists. Wind, waves, rain, sun, animals, traffic, or other humans will take over where we leave off. This gift is not meant for posterity or to boost a career. It's not about making something perfect, taking credit, signing our names, or restoring the place to its original state. It is, as poet Galway Kinnell has written, to "reteach a thing its loveliness."
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To discover other stories of inspiring people, stories, photos, and ideas, subscribe to
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The 9th annual
Global Earth Exchange is Saturday, June 17! On this day people all over the world go to damaged places they care about, share their stories, and make a simple gift of beauty for the place. Our theme this year is...
Sharing Love of Place
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For more information and to register, see our
website.
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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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Donate to help Radical Joy
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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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