Radical Joy Revealed
May 27, 2015
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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.


Where Is Joy on the Pyramid of Needs?

People dusted with color, Holi Festival
The festival of Holi in India, when people dust themselves with color. Photo by Rajesh_India via Flickr

Blogger Ingrid Fetell points out that on Abraham Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs, the kind of self-fulfillment that leads to joy is stationed high up on the pyramid, a quality that can apparently be realized only after one's basic needs, like food and shelter, have been met. But in India, where poverty is the miasma that hangs over millions, many religious festivals prepare the ground for joy. Holi, occurring around the time of the spring equinox, has its roots in the story of the lovers Radha and Krishna. Krishna's skin had turned blue when a demon nursemaid poisoned her breast milk; later Radha painted her own face out of love for him. Love and color are synonymous at Holi, when people of all ages, friends and strangers dust one another with colored powder and tinted water. Everyone goes visiting to share snacks and colors, and musicians troop the streets. It is also a time to retint the attitude, to forgive others and oneself. "Joy," says Fetell, "reminds us we are human and gives us something to live for."

 

 

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  Make Beauty!
Pass It  On!

On Saturday, June 20 RadJoy's annual Global Earth Exchange soars to a whole new dimension.

Besides making visiting and making the RadJoy bird at a wounded place you love, you can you'll have the opportunity to "link" your RadJoy Bird with two others: one that sends beauty and wholeness to your place, another to whom you'll send these gifts!


For more information and to register visit our website.
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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