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Acts of Kindness from Strangers

Bring Comfort in a Hard Time

Snake charmers in Jemaa El Fna, the fantastical, colorful square in the Medina of Marrakech, visible from the police station. Photo from http://www.31best-riad-marrakesh.com/photography-in-marrakesh/

On her last day in Morocco last week, after co-guiding the Lead Like a River program in the Atlas Mountains, RadJoy founder/director Trebbe Johnson found her plans and equanimity thrown into chaos when her purse, with wallet and passport, were snatched by a man on a motorcycle.

However, as she describes it, "the horror was truly outweighed by the kindness of strangers."

In a series of brief but meaningful encounters with strangers, Trebbe received gifts of beauty and generosity at a hard time: "the Moroccan woman who stepped out into the street and started hailing cars to chase the thief, the young man who drove me on his motorcycle to the police station and waited around for an hour to be sure I was okay, the police officer who assured me that all would be well and my husband would take me in his arms when I got home, the people at the American Embassy in Casablanca who got me a new passport in just two hours, United Airlines reps who rebooked my flights home without charging me a change fee, and even the guy from the State Department who found me in the Frankfurt airport and checked to be sure I was really me. And now I am home at last... with my husband who did, as the policeman promised, take me in his arms at the airport."

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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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