Uplook: The RadJoy Newsletter |
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2020: Working Together to Respond to Crisis
We've all been struggling during the past year to adapt to the restrictions imposed on us by the pandemic, while mindfully doing what we can to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe. It hasn't been easy for anyone—or for any organization. In 2020, RadJoy experienced some real challenges—and came up with some very creative responses as a result.
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• In early February, Trebbe was part of a multinational interfaith delegation to the Holy Land—Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. During a long delay for document checks on the Jordanian-Palestinian border, she did an impromptu Earth Exchange for that wounded place, which has seen many decades of stress, fear, and violence. As night fell, the RadJoy Bird flew there on the east bank of the Jordan River.
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In September we rolled out RadJoy Community, fulfilling our longtime vision of an online hub, where members of our network can meet to exchange ideas, stories, photos, poems, concerns, and RadJoy Practices. An early version, launched in June, had many problems and frustrated a lot of people. We changed platforms to the user-friendly Mighty Networks and in a few days everything was up and smoothly running. RadJoy Community now has 79 members. Click here if you would like to be one!
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In 2020 our 11th annual Global Earth Exchange both expanded and contracted. The contraction happened in the way physical connections occurred between people and place. Because social distancing made gatherings at wounded places unsafe, we invited people to observe the event in small, private ways instead. The expansion was the length of the event, which we extended from one day to one week. Every day we suggested a simple practice that people could do to find and make beauty close to home. We also partnered with Unity Earth’s Week of Unity and throughout the week offered online interviews, videos, an Earth Exchange, and other programs.
- In October we were able to hire an executive assistant to help out in the office. Katie Case lives in Atlanta, and the office is in northeastern Pennsylvania, but thanks to Zoom, this new collaboration has worked brilliantly. Katie is media savvy, self-motivated, thorough, and bold. We could not have accomplished the Global Day of Mourning, also described in this newsletter, without her help.
We are looking ahead to 2021, even though we've all learned from the past twelve months how little about the future we can take for granted! A project we're very excited about is a global event around the time of the Winter Solstice that will present stories from around the world that have been lost or erased, sharing them for the first time with the world. We'll be working with indigenous communities and those who were forced to carve out new lives under difficult conditions in foreign places. Please contact us if you belong to or know of a community that would like to be included.
Another ongoing project is our development of plan to assure that Radical Joy for Hard Times remains relevant and financially stable in years to come, while maintaining its essential “personality.”
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Upcoming Events
January 18 and 25, February 1 and 8:
Radical Joy for Hard Times Earth Ambassadors Harriet Sams and Sasha Daucus are leading a collaborative project with the innovative climate change group, Deep Adaptation, to explore ways of relating to wounded places and, in the process, deepen awareness of our own relationship to place. The program is full, but if you’re interested, let us know, and the facilitators may offer another one.
Global Earth Exchange
June: Our 12th annual Global Earth Exchange will take place this year! We don’t yet know the exact date—it will either be the 19th or 26th—or what form it will take, but we will definitely be uniting around the world once again to honor wounded and endangered places and celebrate our love of them.
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