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.

New Year's Revolution

RadJoy Bird on the gate of Bellows Air Force Base, Waimanolo, Hawaii, Global Earth Exchange 2015. Photo by Lizabeth Kashinsky

Happy New Year, Radical Joy Revealed readers!

The subject of finding and making beauty in wounded places has many meanings and possibilities for adaptation, as we hope you discover each week in this message of inspiration.

The mission of Radical Joy for Hard Times, the non-profit organization and global community behind Radical Joy Revealed, is to bring a new consciousness to the places where we live and that we love that have been damaged. And, in the process, to awaken vitality and joy in ourselves.

All of us, to some extent, face the dilemma of how to live with wounded places: beloved old neighborhoods torn down to make a mall, favorite trees in our own yards killed by insects and blight, the disappearance of honeybees and bats, rivers polluted by industry.

The tendency is to turn our backs for fear that acknowledging our sadness about the loss of place will pull us into helplessness. To the contrary, when we truly gaze at the reality of the world around us--and our own feelings about that reality--we discover energy, possibilities for collaboration with others, empowerment, and even joy.

Beginning in 2016, may we all start a New Year's Revolution in loving our places on Earth, splendid and spoiled! We can do it by boldly paying attention to the places that tug our hearts. We can do it by pausing, then, to take in our feelings about them. And we can do it by making a simple act of beauty for them right then and there: a bow, a song, a prayer, a work of art made of materials on the ground before us, a dance.

Let us transform the world by loving it more actively.

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Radical Joy Revealed.

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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