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Radical Joy Revealed
May 3, 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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A little girl appears over the top of a dune as friends make a playful garden. Global Earth Exchange 2013,Cape Town, South Africa. Photo courtesy of di Koch.
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Seven friends did their Global Earth Exchange for a South Africa beach with a troubled history--and then the present leaped into the past.
When Di Koch and her
friends met at Alive Café in Muizenburg, a suburb of Cape Town, and made their way to the beach, they knew they were setting out to make beauty for a seriously wounded place.
In the 18th century, Muizenburg was a battleground between Dutch and French forces over which country would colonize the Cape. Decades later, apartheid laws permitted people to enjoy the beach only with those of their own color. Now the place suffered from ecological problems. Nearby communities pumped sewage directly into the ocean, and broken glass littered the sand. Worst, the year before, the bodies of two children had been found in the dunes.
At the vlei, the wetlands where the estuary meets the sea, the friends set out to create a whimsical new landscape that would mirror their hope that "the place be safe and healthy for all forms of life". They made a RadJoy bird of shells and kelp and a fanciful garden of seaweed and driftwood. At the water's edge they fashioned sea creatures that the tide could playfully reclaim. On a dune they etched stick figures of children holding hands.
As often happens when one pays attention to a wounded place, the place responded. As the friends were outlining the sand-children with seaweed, so they'd stand out on the dune, a real little girl, wearing pink boots and carrying a Teddy Bear, ran over the dune and jumped into the picture.
As one of the participants later remarked, "The event meant so much for me and awoke in me again that spirit of being alive to the earth's calling."
Join the world in Sharing Love of Place in this year's Global Earth Exchange. Details below.
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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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Just in time for the Global Earth Exchange!
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!
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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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