Radical Joy Revealed
October 29, 2014
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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.

A Tender, Unpredictable Relationship
a 
Grief

 

What's our response when we read the news that half the creatures of the land and waters have become extinct over the past 40 years? asks Joe Confino writing for The Guardian of London. "We read this and perhaps shake our heads in dismay, and then consume the next news story. The question we should all be asking is why aren't we on the floor doubled up in pain at our capacity for industrial scale genocide of the world's species."

 

The author goes on to recommend getting in touch with grief, both by sharing feelings and doing ceremony. The point is "not to get stuck in anger and hopelessness, but to transcend them through the power of compassion and forgiveness."

 

The path of Radical Joy for Hard Times, as expressed in our very name, is that we acknowledge that grief and joy have a very tender, yet unpredictable relationship. It is when we allow ourselves to feel the depths of our sorrow that astonishing shafts of joy can pierce through. And it is in moments of joy that we are often achingly aware of the fragility and preciousness of life.

 

Thanks to Harriet Lock for pointing out this article to us.

 

  
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See How the World Made Beauty
for the Earth

On June 21 people around the world went to wounded places, shared their stories of what the places mean to them, spent time getting to know the places as they are now, and made a simple act of beauty there. To see the photos of the 5th annual Global Earth Exchange, visit our website. To read the stories click on the little "pins" on our world map.
Radical Joy for Hard Times is a global community dedicated to finding and making beauty in wounded places. Reconnecting with these places, sharing our stories of loss and despair, 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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