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.

On Not Saving the World

Photo by Jamie K. Reaser

After a lifetime of caring about the Earth, author, ecologist, and rites of passage guide Jamie K. Reaser finally decided to stop trying to save the world. In this excerpt from her article in The Wayfarer, she compares her decision to her earlier realization that she could help her terminally ill mother not by saving her life but only by loving her.

I didn't stop loving my mother when I learned that she was dying. To the contrary, I took actions to express my love for her. When she was diagnosed with cancer, I was four months away from finishing college. I gave up my plans to go straight to graduate school and, instead, moved home to help her through her treatments. I chose to love her despite a sense of impending loss, despite the pain that was sure to come. l chose to honor our relationship and be in service of something greater than myself.

I have decided to stop trying to save the world. Instead, I have decided to actively love this world while being fully aware of its temporal limitations, its mortality. Loving this world has not guaranteed my life, but it has given me inspiration to live. Loving this world enables me to more fully express my human soul-my humanity. This is what I can save, and this is how I can best serve our Mother in her time of need. To read the full article, click here.

As part of the Radical Joy Revealed community we acknowledge our sorrow about the damage and threats to the places we love. We know we can do little to save them. But we can do a great deal to rescue and transform the relationship between these beloved places and us through acceptance, compassion, and acts of beauty.

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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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