Radical Joy for Hard Times

Nipun Mehta's Gift Economy

2012-01-30T11:30:00.000-05:00

One day Nipun Mehta andhis friends were sitting around talking about pranks. What is a prank composedof? “It’s challenging, it’s creative, it’s collaborative,” Nipun reflected inan interview with Richard Whittaker in ParabolaMagazine. “We went through a whole list of motivations for what, at the end ofthe day, is essentially destructive. So we said, how about we reframe this? Weleave all these motivations in, but we make pranks constructive. What if youjust blew somebody away with kindness?”

That was the beginning ofa remarkable organization called Charity Focus, “an experiment in the joy ofgiving.” Charity Focus, which recently changed its name to Service Space,depends entirely on the work of volunteers. It does no fund-raising, but relies upon the generosity of people who are moved to help. Services include website design,collaborations with other organizations, daily emails containingpositive and inspiring messages, and weekly stories about people who have takenan unusual approach to some problem or seen a delightful possibility where mostwould see business as usual.

One surprising result of what Mehta calls the“gift economy” is an upsurge of honesty in the way bills are paid in Indonesiancafés. In the past, widespread corruption meant that customers, especiallyyoung people, would walk out of the café without paying for their meal. Now “honesty cafés” invite customers to determinewhat the meal and the service were worth and to pay that. Some ofthe cafés don’t even have cashiers, just boxes in which people can deposittheir payments.

The gift economy startswith single, selfless acts, says Nipun Mehta. “I’m going to support you justbecause you’re a fellow human being and someone else comes and supports me inthe same way.” In the long run an attitude like that results in “generosityentrepreneurs.”

Repercussions

2012-01-16T13:24:00.000-05:00

The steps of an EarthExchange are simple to describe:

1: Go to a wounded place

2: Sit a while and tellyour stories

3: Spend time on the landand find beauty in surprising ways

4: Make a simple act ofbeauty

However, since weencourage each community to enact these steps in ways that reflect their own placeand people, the events themselves and the ripple effects are very different.Steve Brown, an active member of a conservancy group dedicated to protectingRed Lily Pond in Craigville, Massachusetts, recently described a couple of interestingramifications that their 2011 Global Earth Exchange had for both people and thepond.

One of the participants at the event, Avis Strong Parke, is an artist. Afterthe Global Earth Exchange, she was inspired to invite other local artists tojoin her every Tuesday morning at 10:00 to paint the pond. For several weeks agroup that ranged in size from nearly twenty to about eight regulars set uptheir easels at different sites around the pond and created a variety of watercolors, acrylics, and oil paints. At the conservancy’s annual dinner and auction,one of these works sold for $900, and in total the group raised thousands ofdollars more than they ever had before. (The painting above is by Avis Strong Parke.)

The second surprise came about from an unexpected source. A man who was known to bevocal about his conservative political leanings arrived at the pond for theJune 18 event, but immediately made it clear that he didn’t like the word“radical.” Steve suggested he read the Radical Joy for Hard Times manifestothat was taped to a card table on the dock and that explores our philosophythat damaged places are worthy of attention and beauty. A few minutes later,the man returned to Steve. “Well, I believe those things,” he said. “That’sright up my alley.” He ended up staying for the day’s celebration.

A few weeks later, whenthe development corporation that owns a condominium at one end of the pond putforth a proposal to construct a giant illuminated dock over the water, Steveand other activists were present in force at a State Commission hearing todiscuss the plan. They were surprised when the conservative neighbor walked inthe door, especially since he did not usually get involved in local issues. Theman stood before the commission and announced, “I’m a Republican and I don’tbelieve in regulations, but this pond is too valuable to destroy.”

All kinds of people lovethe beautiful places that they liveamidst. And often we have more in common than we might suppose.

What Do We Do Then?

2012-01-09T11:54:00.001-05:00

You know very well how many dedicated people are working hard to save the Earth. They're fighting Congress to protect the deserts, enforce clean air standards, make corporations disclose the toxic chemicals used to blast deep into gas-rich shale. Talented, passionate people are writing books about climate change and polluted seas, rivers, soils, and air. They take children on hikes and offer to adults wilderness trips in pristine places so people will remember how much the natural world means to them.

And still the forests are being cut, the oceans are being clogged with oil and scarred with plastic. Still mountaintops are being exploded and wetlands filled in. Still wilderness is plowed up to make housing developments and malls. Still poor communities of color are the ones slated for the most toxic projects of incinerators and mineral extraction.

Still, people who are proud to be environmentalists tell themselves they need the latest iPhone and iPad and have to dye their hair and use beauty products to make themselves young. and going on vacations to eco-paradises like the Gallapagos.

Still babies are being born, here, there, and everywhere, and when they grow up they too will want a place of their own and they will believe that they need the newest gadgets to survive. And how will they survive?

It is not going to get better. The places we love are going to continue to disappear.

Then what? Will all the work of the environmental educators and litigators and preservers be for naught? Does their success depend solely on staving off the inevitable?

Or does real ecological activism come from a new kind of realism? Not just realizing the world is changing and "we're to blame," but the realism of being with and attending to the places in our midst that are a part of us still, no matter what has happened to them?

Radical Joy for Hard Times says: When the places we love are damaged, we humans hurt too. And tempting as it is to ignore both damaged places and our own difficult feelings of loss and grief, it is by encountering these places and feelings with openness, compassion, and curiosity that we blaze the way forward. It is by telling the stories of our relationship with the place and above all making beauty there until we fall in love with the place all over again... that we become citizens of the future of Earth, not just surviving, but loving where we live and empowered to live with it with wild, bold creativity and community.

"Wounded Places on Earth Are Like Wounded Places in People"

2012-01-02T11:54:00.000-05:00

“We have physicallycreated wounded places on the Earth, and that is exacerbated by us ignoringthem. Becoming whole in ourselves and in the way we approach existence is thebeginning of healthy, dynamic systems. It’s exactly a parallel to our own innerpsyche. The parts we cut out and don’t want to look at are the ones that causeus the most trouble. And if we look at them and pay attention to them, theyshift.”

This comment by KindeNebeker (standing in the center in the photo above, at her 2011 Global Earth Exchange in Salt Lake City) of Salt Lake City zeroes inon one of the subtle but vitally important aspects of the practice and the paththat is Radical Joy for Hard Times Earth Exchanges: that actually going to wounded places strengthensthe bond between person and place, brings new life to the place, and empowerspeople to act with more energy and more compassion on behalf of what they love.

We all wish, naturally,not to be uncomfortable. Hence we avoid the things that we fear will make ussad or angry or embarrassed or guilty—or any of a host of other emotions we’drather avoid. Avoidance, of course, doesn’t make the shunned thing vanish. It onlymakes it grow and fester there in the dark where we try to hide it. It growsbigger. It pops out of its hiding place when we least expect it, causingproblems and making us even more determined to keep it hidden.

When we decide, once andfor all, to take a look at what’s wriggling there down unseen, we’re oftensurprised to see how mild it is. How, instead of sinking us in despair, theattention we give it actually liberates us. Dealing consciously with what we discoverenables us to bring to the problem new understanding, peace of mind, and creativesolutions.

As Kinde observes, thesame is true about wounded places. When people go to polluted rivers, erodedhills, farms torn up for gas drilling, or abandoned industrial sites like theone Kinde and her friends honored in the 2011 Global Earth Exchange, theydiscover that, far from depressing them, the encounter fills them with a senseof community, creativity, empowerment, and even joy.

Tree of Life Blooms in Palestinian Refugee Camp

2011-12-26T12:07:00.000-05:00

Photo by Teresa Yeh

Lily Yeh founded Barefoot Artists in 2003 to bring the transformativepower of art to people whose communities have been buried in poverty,dilapidation, and despair. In the past twenty-five years she has worked withpeople all over the world, from her native China to Kenya, Ecuador, Italy, andRwanda, to North Philadelphia, where she lives today and where Barefoot Artistswas founded. At Radical Joy for Hard Times we are honored to have Lily Yeh onour Council of Advisor s.

Recently Lily received an invitation from Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, a leader of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, to come to Balata,the largest Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, located near the city ofNablus. Balata is currently home to 23,000 people, all living in an area ofless than one square mile. There are only two schools, the unemployment rate isvery high, and the young people are homesick and without hope.

Lily worked with volunteer artists, members ofthe Balata Women’s Center, students at the Balata Girls’ School, and localparticipants to create art that would reflect their deep pain, their intenselonging to return to their homeland, and their hope for peace betweenPalestinians and Israelis. This mural they made is called “The Palestinian Treeof Life.” It depicts an old and rugged olive tree filled with blooms and upholdingthe sacred Dome of the Rock. Doves, symbol everywhere of peace, fly through astarry sky. Amidst the cramped streets the mural is a sign of creativity,resilience, and yes, even joy.

Cross Bones Graveyard Honors Medieval Prostitutes

2011-12-20T12:02:00.002-05:00

It was desolate patch of ground in South London, long abandoned, its original purpose forgotten, before Transport for London slated it for redevelopment. But poet, author, and local historian John Constable knew the history of the place, and he was determined not only to preserve it, but to shepherd it toward designation as a world heritage sight.

Now, on the 23^rd of each month people gather at the iron gates of Cross Bones, the small plot of land that, from medieval to Victorian times, was an unconsecrated graveyard for prostitutes and paupers. Participants in the monthly ceremony include office workers, prostitutes, artists, and witches. They sing songs, read poems, and tie on the fence offerings of ribbons and the kinds of gaudy baubles a woman of the night might appreciate.

In the Middle Ages the prostitutes in the area were known as “Winchester Geese” for the Bishop of Winchester who granted them license to ply their trade there in the Liberty of the Clink, beyond the jurisdiction of the City of London. When the women died, however, the church wanted nothing more to do with them, and they were buried in unhallowed land.

In 1996 John Constable suddenly received a visitation from what he calls the “spirit of a medieval whore”—or “the Goose,” as she called herself. The result was a long poem written in the voice of this spirit, along with Constable's determination to revivify that forgotten piece of land and the people who once inhabited it.

Hearing about Cross Bones from my friend and colleague Eugene Hughes, who lives in London, was one of the things that inspired me to start this blog in the first place, and the story of Cross Bones was the second piece I wrote for it. Here is a place that for hundreds of years was associated with crime, shame, and immorality and for hundreds of years more was forgotten. Now it has found new life thanks to Constable and the other people who see the beauty of the place not despite but because of what it was. What is particularly important about the re-sacralization of Cross Bones, moreover, is that it lives on not just as a little community park that has been beautified, not even as a series of poems written in the voice of a prostitute from long ago, but through ongoing ceremony, regular community gatherings, and the making of ever new and thoughtful offerings. Cross Bones is an active exchange of stories and gifts.

Delight!

2011-12-12T10:15:00.002-05:00

My last post was about the wonderful Beauty Amid Destruction project in Tuscaloosa, which put works of art all along the swath of devastation left by the tornado that devastated the city last April. The post before that was about Juliana Santacruz Herrara's playful "patches" of colorful yarn, which she fitted into the cracks of Paris's sidewalks.

But acts of beauty for wounded places don't have to be big. They don't have to take a lot of time. They don't even have to involve more than one person. And sometimes you get a surprise burst of beauty and delight in the process.

Last month a family in our small village of Thompson, Pennsylvania cut down the three beautiful old catalpa trees that lined their front yard. One of the trees clearly had heartrot, but the others were perfectly healthy, and I was very sad to see them go. Their big heart-shaped leaves and dangling mahogany-colored pods looked very elegant, almost whimsical, on this block of small homes.

After the tree surgeons and their shredding machine had left, I went over to the house with a bag of birdseed and started sprinkling offerings on the stumps for the birds that had lost their home. This was my simple act of "making beauty," which Radical Joy for Hard Times suggests as part of every encounter with a wounded place.

A sudden movement startled me. I looked up and saw nothing. Then the movement flashed again. This time a chipmunk popped up from the tree with the hole in its core. The chipmunk had immediately adjusted to the new situation. Now it had a place to hide, both itself and its store of food. Its appearance was a delight, proof that nature invariably and persistently will find a way to prevail.

The chipmunk would have moved into that hole in the stump anyway, but because I happened to be there attending to the broken trees, I got to witness it... a little joy for hard times.

Beauty Is Healing

2011-12-05T14:43:00.004-05:00

When a tornado tore a swath a mile wide and seven miles long through the city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama last April, killing 239 people and leaving thousands homeless, offers of help poured in from around the country and around the world. People gave freely of blankets, food, clothing, the basic necessities of life, and many generous services. However, as Tuscaloosa resident Jean Mills thought about all these much-needed contributions, it seemed to her that one thing was missing: beauty. People needed some beauty to lift their spirits.

Thus was born Beauty Amid Destruction, a remarkable response to a large-scale calamity. Jean set out to invite artists to contribute digital images of their original work, setting only two criteria for submissions: that the work be beautiful and that it not challenge anyone’s idea of what was appropriate (i.e. no nudes). Photos of original paintings, drawings, sculpture, quilts, metalwork, and photographs began to arrive. With donations from individuals and suppliers and the support of the Tuscaloosa city council, Jean and the other Beauty Amid Destruction team members had the images copied onto vinyl banners measuring 4 by 6 feet. They then hung the banners between poles and placed them free of charge in front of homes, public buildings, and lots whose owners requested them.

The result is a gallery tour unlike any other. Brightly colored art works stand like gateways in front of empty lots, skeletal houses, and on chainlink fences in both residential and business neighborhoods. Right after the tornado, when people drove or walked through the damaged areas it was to stare at the devastation; now they go to admire the art works and the spirit of compassion and generosity that put them there. "Garden Play" by Kevin Irwin is pictured above.

“The main message about putting paintings in front of the destruction is that art can help with recovery,” Jean said recently. “There is the recognition that one’s surroundings impact one’s emotional response and how one feels about life. Putting art out there where the tornado had done such damage was a way to acknowledge that and to try to provide a counter to all the negative stuff that people were being bombarded with.”

Reflecting on the long process of trial-and-error that the Beauty Amid Destruction team went through to find the best way of reproducing the art works and placing them, Jean has volunteered to make the group’s expertise available to any other community wishing to mount a similar project. See BeautyAmidDestruction.org for more information.

Guerrilla Knitting

2011-11-21T14:58:00.004-05:00

Tired of stepping over all the cracks in the sidewalks of Paris, artist Juliana Santacruz Herrera decided to take action. To make her repairs she chose not concrete and asphalt, but a much softer material: yarn. Weaving together brightly colored pieces that fit each of the broken places like their own cozy sweaters, she set to work, embedding the fabric in the cracks and holes. Instantly have become magically transformed.

Whimsy is a gift, and it's relevant and welcome under all kinds of circumstances, including trying and difficult ones. By exaggerating the ubiquitous cracks, Santacruz Herrara actually transforms them into something friendly and delightful. She points to the problem, but without blame or judgment. Her work and that of other street artists bring beauty to the city in an unexpected way.

To see more great street art, visit StreetArtUtopia.com.

The Importance of Shouting NO!

2011-11-11T16:23:00.004-05:00

This is a photo of Benny Zable, an Australian street artist, who has had a visible presence at Occupy Wall Street since almost the first day. Wearing his long dark cloak, which he usually tops with a gas mask that completely covers his head, his hands hidden in white gloves, he stands mutely as passers-by read the dire pronouncements his costume urges on them: WORK — CONSUME — BE SILENT — DIE and I RELY ON YOUR APATHY. Benny’s presence at Liberty Park (its original and far more fitting name than Zucotti Park), in the hub of the American financial industry, brings visible spectacle to the art of saying NO, which Occupy Wall Street is doing so magnificently.

Yet even many people who support the aims of Occupy Wall Street and the rest of the Occupy movement spreading across the United States raise a consistent criticism: Why aren’t the protestors making up a list of demands? Why don’t they have a clear focus? Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times even tries to “help” the protestors by coming up with the agenda he feels they’re lacking. According to this point of view, you don't have a right to protest unless you know exactly how you want things to be different and can express it,

Many great revolutions have been launched with a loud, collective, passionate NO. “No taxation without representation,” shouted citizens of the thirteen American colonies in the 1750s and 60s. NO was the battle cry of the people who gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, because they’d had enough of military rule, high unemployment, police brutality, and low wages. “Dites non!” (say no) is often the call to change that leads demonstrations in France.

Sometimes you have to shout out NO before you can articulate a more clearly defined YES.

And it’s been a long time since Americans have said no with any great conviction, almost forty years, by my count, when protests against the war in Vietnam finally helped bring an end to that conflict. Since then we Americans have mutely submitted to a whole slew of injustices perpetrated by those in power, including a war against Iraq launched wholly upon lies; shenanigans by the mortgage and housing industry that seduced hundreds of thousands of people into believing that they deserved a home they could not afford; a financial system that has brought many people to poverty, joblessness, and despair, while wealthy perpetrators continue to earn obscene amounts of money; and a war policy that defies the Geneva Conventions by permitting the practice of torture.

It is high time we shouted out NO! NO! We will not be victims any longer! NO: We object to being treated like this! NO: You may not carry on as if you the ruling elites represented the “99%” of the rest of us. NO: We will not be silent!

Occupy Wall Street is saying YES in many ways that the news media has ignored. They are being scrupulous about the way they handle financial contributions. They keep the park where they live and protest clean and free of litter. They compost. They drive the generators in their media tent through stationary bicycles that are constantly pedaled by volunteers. They are trying to imagine a better society and to live it. But the fact that the world perceives them as proclaimers of NO is really not a problem. They are speaking for many of us.

“I call attention to the dark side,” said Benny Zable when I spoke with him last week at Liberty Park. People who encounter him are shocked by his physical presence, his cloak weighted with dire messages. “They react,” said Benny. “They have to ask themselves: Where do I stand?”

Seeing the darkness and reacting to it is not a problem with the Occupy movement. It is their great gift to America. Saying no, we invite expanded consciousness of where we are and ask ourselves how we got there. Then we can say YES to something new and better that we will create more equitably together.

A Win for Salmon

2011-11-05T08:39:00.003-04:00

When you think about a big, long, arduous environmental struggle, you are likely to picture legislation, lobbying, education, late nights spent strategizing and stuffing envelopes... but you don't typically think of art, theatre, and children.

Those elements played a big part in the twenty-year struggle of activists in southeastern Washington to get the 100-year-old Condit Dam torn down. When the dam was constructed, it blocked not only the White Salmon River, but also cut off the run of wild salmon and steelhead to their spawning grounds.

And from the start, salmon have been big players in the efforts of the activists, including Daniel Dancer, an artist (and member of the Radical Joy for Hard Times Council of Advisors). Frequently, the group held "Salmon Pageants," where children, carrying large, colorful cut-outs of the fish, would "breach" a wall. Part-ceremony, part-theatre, the pageants kept the vision of an undammed river a reality for the activists.

Repeatedly the officials in charge of the dam insisted that they would not remove it. By 2011, however, they determined that the cost of repairing the century-old structure would be higher than tearing it down, so, thanks to the persuasiveness of economics, the activists and the salmon won.

On October 26, 2011, when the children who enacted the first pageants had become young adults, the dam was exploded. Daniel Dancer has made an engrossing short (18 minutes) film, "The Art of Dam Removal". It includes footage from newscasts of the first protests, interviews with activists along the way, and the exuberant salmon pageants. The pay-off is exhilarating. When the pent-up river bursts through the breach, you can't help feeling it's a wild creature jubilantly bursting out into the world it remembers from long ago and can't wait to get back to. Even the guys in hardhats are exhilarated. "She's free!" one of them exclaims!

"Pilgrims of Place"

2011-10-30T14:54:00.004-04:00

Powers of Place Initiative is a remarkable (and gorgeous) website and cyber-meeting place for those who recognize that places and people have a vital, living, flexible connection with each other. One of the best features of Powers of Place is "The Field," a terrain of the website where you can sign up and be in communication with others doing interesting things to delve more intimately into the question of place... spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and artistically.

A recent article on the site by Maila T. Davenport describes three different ways to be a "pilgrim of place," in this case the Love Creek area of Santa Cruz, California, which underwent a terrible mudslide that killed a child. Davenport joins two other healers, each with a different experience, approach, and perspective. Her story shows how "we live in layers of lived experience and each one operates from a particular kind of intelligence, telling a vital part of a place's Story."

David Hume on Wounded Places

2011-10-26T21:04:00.002-04:00

Today I came across an essay by the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher David Hume, "A Treatise on Human Nature." Turns out that in 1739, Hume was considering how what I call wounded places affect people. Here's what he wrote about the difference between places that have undergone some kind of emergency and those that are just not very attractive:

"A barren or desolate country always seems ugly and disagreeable, and commonly inspires us with contempt for the inhabitants. This deformity, however, proceeds in a great measure from a sympathy with the inhabitants, as has been already observ’d; but it is only a weak one, and reaches no farther than the immediate sensation, which is disagreeable. The view of a city in ashes conveys benevolent sentiments; because we there enter so deep into the interests of the miserable inhabitants, as to wish for their prosperity, as well as feel their adversity."

Now, we can (and should) argue that it is arrogant and insensitive to contempt for those who live in a poor, unlovely place. But what's interesting here is that three hundred years ago Hume was thinking about how nature strikes the mind and heart in different ways, depending on what has happened to it.

How can we move deeper into this question? How can we assess our own responses to a city torn apart by an earthquake... and a city falling into disrepair as a result of poverty? Where is the "environment" in each? Where is "Nature?" Where does our compassion lie in each circumstance?

James Hillman on Beauty

2011-09-03T21:30:00.003-04:00

Here's something from that innovative and opinionated psychologist James Hillman:

"That the world is loveless results directly from the repression of beauty, its beauty and our sensitivity to beauty. For love to return to the world, beauty must first return, else we love the world only as a moral duty: Clean it up, preserve its nature, exploit it less. If love depends on beauty, then beauty comes first, a priority that accords with pagan philosophy rather than Christian. Beauty before love also accords with the all-too-human experience of being driven to love by the allure of beauty" (from "The Practice of Beauty" in Uncontrollable Beauty, ed. Bill Beckley, with David Shapiro).

Hillman goes on to say that what's really repressed in psychology today is not violence, not misogyny, not child abuse: it's beauty and the acceptance of how important beauty is to the well-being of people. Perhaps there wouldn't be so much absenteeism at work, he suggests, perhaps the attention span of school students would improve, if people could spend time in places that were lovely and cared for rather than sterile and ugly.

It's a great essay, worth buying the book for, although there are a lot of other interesting pieces in this collection as well.

A Brief Respite from (Electric) Power

2011-08-31T21:24:00.003-04:00

I arrived home late Monday night after leading a workshop in Puget Sound, Washington, to discover that Hurricane Irene had knocked out the power in our rural community. Yesterday morning I was able to work on my laptop until the battery ran down, then my husband and I drove to Scranton, 35 miles away, and spent a few hours in a coffee shop, recharging our electronics and catching up on email.

We then bought some bags of ice and went home to move the food from the refrigerator into coolers. Even though practically everything on my to-do list involves the internet or the computer, I was looking forward to cooking dinner on the gas stove, then spending the evening reading by kerosene lamp. In late afternoon, however, the power came back on.

What, I wondered, would we as a culture do if the internet really went haywire? Forget the monumental problems that banks, airlines, governments would have keeping their systems running. How would we behave as individuals? I like to think that, despite the shock and initial inconvenience, we’d take some pleasure in the new reality. In the evening people might haul out old board games to play. Couples might sit in front of the fireplace holding hands and talking. Parents might tell stories to their children. Students on college campuses might once again exchange ideas in the student union instead of sitting in isolation over their smart phones. When the power was eventually restored, we would all be relieved. But perhaps we would also feel a tug of regret, as I did yesterday, that something creative, quiet, intimate, and sweet that had briefly touched our lives had now been snatched away.

Where Art Confronts Anxiety

2011-08-21T11:30:00.002-04:00

An article in the Arts & Leisure section of today's New York Times discusses Andrew Moore's photographs of the crumbling grandeur of Detroit: the abandoned Beaux-Arts railroad station (above), the hollow steel skeletons of former assembly rooms in the Ford plant, a moldy carpet in what was once Henry Ford's office. Although some people, particularly residents of Detroit, have criticized Moore's work as "ruin porn" that presents only a negative view of the city, Moore obviously finds a strange beauty in what he sees. He describes Detroit and his photos of it as the place "where art confronts anxiety."

The emergence of art from waste and the grand visions of former times also suffuses the work of photographer Emmet Gowin, who took aerial black-and-white photos of the Hanford Nuclear plant, mining operations in Montana, and the battlefields of Kuwait.

What the work of both these photographers has in common with the philosophy of Radical Joy for Hard Times is a willingness to pause and look more closely at what would seem, on the surface, to be so ugly and obsolete that it requires nothing more than to be ignored. A quick look at the old Detroit train station evokes sadness; one at the Hanford Plant a sense of awe and fear. But Moore and Gowin show that the willingness to simply witness without judgment reveals new beauties.

In the work of Moore and Gowin, however, the human is absent, and the message is that in these places there is no threshold whatsoever over which humans can cross. It is as if all the people who built these places, worked in them, lived in them are as extinct as the activities that went on there. With Radical Joy for Hard Times, one actually enters those deserted places and spends time there. The resulting photographs would zoom out to show not just the place but the people contemplating the place, the people telling their stories about what the place meant and still means to them. Finally they would show the people making an act of beauty from found objects, so that deserted, desolate place acquires, quite simply, new meaning, new purpose, new beauty.

Solastalgia: The Pain People Feel When the Place They Love Is Under Assault

2011-04-25T22:31:00.004-04:00

"Is There an Ecological Unconscious," by Daniel B. Smith was published in the New York Times Magazine more than a year ago, but it's such an important piece that it's worth recirculating. Smith explores the science and psychology in the relationship between humans and nature.

Smith opens the article with the story of Glenn Albrecht, the Australian philosophy professor who coined the term "solastalgia," meaning “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault . . . a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at ‘home.’ ” Albrecht came up with the term after getting calls from people suffering from anxiety, stress, and depression as a result of the massive open-pit coal mining taking place around their homes in Hunter Valley, a formerly lush and beautiful place known as the "Tuscany of the South."

Albrecht has continued to study the effects of ecological damage on people's psyches. This link will take you to his blog, where he pursues the subject from many different angles.

That's Glenn Albrecht in the photo above. It was taken on June 19, 2010, as he and his wife participated in the first annual Radical Joy for Hard Times Global Earth Exchange. He writes: "The location was chosen as it has a commanding view of the desolation of the Hunter Valley by open cut coal mining. My wife Jill and I selected white stones in the immediate area to build an Earth Dove [Radical Joy for Hard Times bird]. The Earth Dove had an olive branch placed in its beak as a peace offering to the earth. The olive branch was taken from the garden of a person in the Hunter Valley whose life has been badly affected by open-cut coal mining. She has had to move from her ancestral home to a new location to avoid mining, but now it too is under threat from an expanding coal mine."

Mockery as Art & Rebellion

2011-04-20T22:22:00.007-04:00

Nicholas Kristof, whose work is always brave and inspiring, wrote in his column in The New York Times on Sunday, April 17 about the creative use of mockery as a tool for rebellion. He described the Serbian youth movement, Otpor (resistance), which started with just a few members and eventually mobilized enough support to spearhead the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic.

Besides practicing non-violence, the young rebels rallied people to their cause by making fun of the despot who was universally feared and hated. One stunt was to put Milosevic's picture on a barrel and roll it down the street, inviting people to hit it with sticks.

After Otpor helped bring about the overthrow of Milosevic, they began holding seminars for other oppressed peoples, including several Egyptians, who went to Serbia to get ideas for their own recent revolution.

The use of humor as an antidote to fear, of wild creativity to fight rigid oppression, of singing and talking in public places to fight the rule of silence—these are important tactics, not just for overthrowing tyrants but for dealing with other regimes (corporate, industrial, political) in which we feel powerless, humiliated, and helpless.

Radical Joy for Hard Times confronts environmental assaults with beauty. This is not elite beauty, beauty made only by the recognizably talented, but beauty re-imagined by ordinary people. Expressing sorrow and compassion for a place in the moment, we use materials found at the wounded place to transform our relationship with the place. It's democratic, empowering, and creative.

I'm very interested in exploring how other Otpor tactics might work for the environment.

Highs and Lows with Dolphins

2011-04-19T12:22:00.003-04:00

Last Sunday, the celebration of Earth Day at the Unitarian-Universalist Congregation of Binghamton, I gave a sermon called "Rebalancing Act," in which I reflected on different ways of thinking about the "balance of nature" under current global conditions. What prompted this subject was a memorable experience of witnessing dolphins swimming in the Gulf of Mexico last fall, just three months after BP capped its leaking well, and how we, the witnesses to their lovely, fluid play, responded.

I had flown to Louisiana for Gulf Coast Rising, a day of making beauty and generosity for the land and people affected by the BP oil spill. The event was sponsored by Radical Joy for Hard Times. A few of us met on the southern shore of Grand Isle, a long, narrow island south of the Louisiana mainland that, because of its vulnerable geography, stretched out from east to west in the Gulf, was particularly hard hit by the flowing oil.

There on the beach we could see rescue teams and vehicles cleaning up other beaches. But it was a beautiful fall day. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, gulls and pelicans flew overhead, and the water looked clean and clear. We made a labyrinth in the sand and filled it with birdseed. We were holding a ceremony just prior to walking the labyrinth for the first time when we noticed that a pod of bottlenose dolphins were swimming very close to the sea wall just a few feet away.

Immediately we left off the ceremony... or rather we went over to be with the dolphins, who seemed to have arrived just in time to participate in the ceremony. There were about ten to twelve of them not more than 15-20 feet out in the water. They were diving, arcing in the sunlit air, leaping and flashing. They were beautiful, and they exemplified playfulness, freedom, and fluid movement.

As we watched them, we were full of joy. And at the same time, we were full of sorrow, for we knew that these animals were living in a dangerous environment. Even though the water looked clean, we knew that the entire food chain, from microorganisms that ingested the oil and the dispersants that BP sprayed to break up the oil, all the way up to the fish and the dolphins themselves were toxic. We knew that the dolphins were at the top of that food chain. Our rapture in the moment was mixed with dread for the dolphins' future.

Joy and sorrow, rapture and dread: we stood in the balance, holding both. Perhaps receiving those two apparently contrary burdens and holding them both gently and mindfully, honoring the utter validity of both, will be our primary responsibility as we encounter ecological crises in the years to come.

(The photo above was taken that day. I didn't try to photograph the dolphins, because their presence at that moment seemed sacred and not to be "captured." However, that's the patch of water they visited. You can see the clean-up equipment in the distance.)

How to Ride the Wave

2011-04-13T14:20:00.003-04:00

How do you ride into the wave in hard times? Reflections on the story of Susumu Sugawara, which I posted yesterday, about the Japanese fisherman who piloted his boat, Sunflower, right into the oncoming tsunami, survived, and ever since has been using the boat to ferry people, medicine, and supplies:

1. Don't attempt to flee. Head right into the thick of it.

2. Even though you're overwhelmed by your opponent, neither fight it nor capitulate to it. Find a rhythm with it and hang on.

3. When the onslaught ends, take a while to get your bearings.

4. Make your way back to familiar shores.

5. Reach out and help others using what you've brought back.

(Image above is "The Great Wave of Kanagawa" by the 18th century Japanese artist, Hokusai)

Heading Into the Tsunami

2011-04-12T11:08:00.004-04:00

Susumu Suguwara was in his fishing boat, Sunflower, when he saw the tsunami racing toward him. Instead of turning back to shore, however, Suguwara did just the opposite. Saying a silent goodbye to fishermen in the other boats he passed and offering his apologies for not being able to save them, Sugawara headed for the wave.

"I talked to my boat and said you've been with me 42 years. If we live or die, then we'll be together, then I pushed on full throttle."

The fisherman was inundated by the thirty-foot wave, but when the water had slipped by him and he saw the shore, he knew he had survived. Four or five more waves followed, but in the end, Suguwara and his Sunflower were intact.

In the weeks since the earthquake and tsunami set off physical, emotional, social, and economic aftershocks in Japan, Susumu Sugawara has been working to transport people, supplies, and medicine to people. He charges no money for his services.

Beauty in London for the People of Japan

2011-04-05T20:52:00.003-04:00

Eugene Hughes, director of People Brands in London, breached the wall of immobility that so many of us feel as we confront both our sorrow and our compassion for the people and the Earth in Japan. He wrote out the following poem by the great 17th century Japanese poet, Basho, and tied it to all the flowering cherry trees in his neighborhood.

Here's the poem:

If you will let me,

I will willingly wipe

Salt tears from your eyes

With these fresh leaves.

Where's the Temple?

2011-04-04T16:14:00.003-04:00

A week ago, a gray, rainy afternoon the day before I left Bali, I impulsively asked my driver. Eka Merta Sedana, to take me to Tanah Lot. I had never been to this temple on the sea, only accessible at low tide, for it is known to be inundated with tourists who come to take photos of the sun setting dramatically behind the open-sided building. But I was curious and needed a lift. I was feeling sad because a Balinese friend is very ill, because the weather in Bali has been so unusually rainy (people blame global warming) that all flowers of the fruits and crops are being knocked off the plants, and because the situation in Japan is so sad and frightening.

What I found at Tanah Lot was not what I expected. The tide was coming in, and people from many places—Java, Japan, Australia, France, Bali, America—were wading out on the rocks to get a photo of the temple, still dramatic under gray skies. But the real drama was elsewhere. As the waves came in and people got splashed, they were shrieking with laughter and delight. It was a scene of joy, childlike play, and a momentary release of all the national differences and personal cares that usually bind us.

When I got back to the car, I was feeling so exhilarated that I babbled to Eka about what I had seen. I showed him the photos I had taken. "Where's the temple?" he asked in surprise.

But I had seen something more wonderful even than the temple: radical joy in hard times.

A Spontaneous Earth Exchange

2010-12-11T15:09:00.004-05:00

Sometimes people tell me apologetically that they would love to do a Radical Joy for Hard Times Earth Exchange for a wounded place, but they just don't have the time.

The following story, which comes from Laura Staman, Director of Outdoor Programs at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, proves that anyone can do an Earth Exchange anytime at anyplace. All you need is a place, your own personal emotional attachment to it, and the willingness to bring those two elements together for a few moments.

I’d like to tell you about something that happened recently. It is related to the ongoing gift of hope and listening to the land that Radical Joy for Hard Times represents. In my neighborhood there is a wonderful section of woods I enjoy hiking through. It is a spot of wild in the city of Lynchburg. Well, when I was walking the other day I discovered that a patch of that woods had been cleared to build a home. Though it is not a terrible thing to build a home, I was shaken by the clearing of the woods and destruction of forest growth. At first I dropped my head, said a prayer and walked by sadly. The hardest feeling sometimes is helplessness.

But then I decided to walk back into the space and sit and listen. It was as if the land just needed to be acknowledged... like it was dissociated or something from the trauma. So I sat and listened. Moved into the space and then just prayed to bless this place and help the earth recover from the hurt and the dramatic change. I blessed the home that would stand there and hoped the Beings there could live in harmony. Then I created the Radical Joy for Hard Times bird out of roots that had been ripped from the earth.... and I felt like I had made a difference somehow to the place, and at least to my consciousness.

Change is inevitable, and sometimes destructive, and this time I felt empowered to acknowledge it and to offer peace. The bird, and the memory of the Global Earth Exchanges, gave me a vehicle for doing something. I felt I had a voice and was connected to something larger than myself, therefore not helpless.

As I think back over this simple act I gave to the land and the future home, I reflect on how it is much like the healing I am doing now from a childhood trauma. Facing it, bringing peace into my life, blessing myself, building art out of its roots, and creating a new home inside myself.

Bioneers by the Bay

2010-10-28T08:40:00.003-04:00

Creativity is all about putting things together and seeing what happens. The Egyptians invented soap by mixing animal fat and alkaline and noticing that the resulting substance cleaned things. Picasso stuck bicycle handlebars to a seat and made a bull's head. And the Marion Institute of Marion, MA does it each year by bringing together a wide variety of dedicated people who are determined to change the way the world works.

October 22-24 was the sixth annual Bioneers by the Bay, a gathering devoted to exploring ideas and action in the areas of health and healing, sustainability, green economics, environmental education, spirituality, and creative and equitable ways of living together on the planet. The event runs in conjunction with the original Bioneers, a large gathering that takes place at roughly the same in San Rafael, CA.

A few of this year's highlights at Bioneers by the Bay:

Diane Wilson, the Gulf Coast shrimper who decided to take on the oil industry that was polluting her homeland, gave a keynote speech that make everyone in the audience feel like they could triumph over injustice!

Steve Brown, Toni Saunders, and Cassandra Saunders, a white man, an Africa-American woman, and a young poet who has cerebral palsy presented a graphic, occasionally uncomfortable, and unforgettable workshop on how power and privilege affect our lives in many ways—most of them subtle and taken for granted.

Young people attended in large numbers, presenting programs, telling their stories, and sharing their visions. If you ever assumed that American youth think only about retreating behind their cyber screens, it's not so! They are planting organic gardens at their high schools, taking a long look at the future and their own parts in it, working to end coal-burning in their states, singing rap songs about justice and inclusivity, and fired with determination to take care of their world.

Antwi Akom, founder of the Wangari Maathai Center for Economic, Educational, and Enviornmental Designn, talked passionately about the need to revolutionize education in America, especially in the inner cities. He is heading numerous project to synthesize green jobs, climate change, and educational equity.

My own workshop on Radical Joy for Hard Times was held in New Bedford's Whaling Museum. We began with everyone in the group talking about some aspect of nature that they're worried about, and then launched into a discussion of how we deal with these difficult feelings of loss, guilt, and anger. I offered a meditation for coping with what often seems like overwhelming despair and discouragement. At the end, for our Act of Beauty, we formed a human snowflake under the giant whale skeletons suspended from the ceiling.

It is estimated that about two thousand people attended the gathering. What invariably happened was that when any two or more of them got together for a few minutes, ideas, partnerships, and possibilities quickly arose.

Heartbreaking

2010-07-09T12:56:00.002-04:00

Call it the click response. The grotesque images we’ve been seeing for the past two months, of sea birds gripped in carapaces of toxic oil and dolphins expelling black muck from their blowholes, are so hard to look at that we want to click immediately to a different website, turn the page of the paper, or switch the channel.

Yet those reactions of horror, revulsion, and pity actually indicate that we have a healthy capacity for compassion. Compassion means, literally, to feel with another. When that other is suffering, the compassion response that arises in us is painful, so we seek relief by turning away. And it’s hard to convince ourselves when we see the effects of BP’s non-stop gusher that those creatures aren’t suffering.

Some relatives of the eleven men who were killed when the Deep Water Horizon rig exploded on April 20 have complained that the media is focusing too much attention on the environmental impact of the accident, while ignoring the human victims. Said L.D. Manuel, the father of one of the men killed, “Everyone talks about the birds and the damage to the Gulf and everything, but they never talk about the guys that got hurt. That really bothers me.”

It is unquestionably tragic that innocent people died while simply doing their jobs; they were the first casualties of this calamity. We feel compassion for their loved ones, as well as for the many residents of the Gulf Coast whose lives and livelihoods may be changed irrevocably as a result of this spill. But we also feel sorrow about the destruction of the animals and fish, the wetlands, and the ocean itself. And that sorrow is not only for the natural world, it is also for our human relationship with it.

Frequently, those who express regret about the loss, or potential loss, of some wild place or species are accused of caring more about nature than about people. Someone who objects that proposed industry or development in a place will adversely affect an owl, a snaildarter, or an ash tree is criticized for “anthropomorphizing.” Afraid of being thought over-sensitive or “soft,” the ecologically incriminated hasten to excuse themselves (as I just did above) and try to temper their concern about the natural world with hearty assurances that, no, no, they really do care about people, too.

It’s time to accept that, as sophisticated beings capable of compassion, we humans are touched and saddened not only by assaults on people but by those on nature as well. It’s time to acknowledge that regretting loss in nature does not mean that we are indifferent to people. It is time, finally, stop apologizing for loving the natural world.

Nature—the rocks, waters, plants, fish, birds, and animals that surround us, or environ us—preceded us humans onto the planet. They are, quite literally, our ancestors and they have been a constant presence throughout our entire evolving existence. The biologist E.O. Wilson speculates that the propensity our prehistoric ancestors developed to get along comfortably in nature eventually evolved into a genetic trait Wilson calls “biophilia,” or “the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life.”

The ways humans love nature are infinite and individual. A hunter sitting in a deer blind on a cold fall morning, a skier skimming down powdery slopes, a biologist peering at microbes through a microscope, and a backpacker trekking through remote Alaskan wilderness are all absorbed in and by that partly familiar, yet always somewhat unknowable presence we call nature. Nature inspires us with its resilience, gives us solace when we’re sad, mirrors our joy, and lifts our hearts in unexpected and surprising ways, when, for example, we look up from work into a blazing sunset or hear a robin singing in the pre-dawn darkness. Nature fascinates, in our own backyard, at the far side of a scenic overlook on the highway, and as we imagine it in remote places. An estimated 100 million Americans watched the eleven-part TV documentary, "Planet Earth" last year. Nature gets along fine without us humans, yet it is often in trouble because of us.

And so our hearts break when we see these Gulf Coast birds and animals dying of oil, because we know that an ineffable source of meaning, beauty, and inspiration is being destroyed in us as well. That is heartbreaking. Knowing and accepting so makes us human.

Seven Continents!

2010-06-24T07:54:00.003-04:00

On June 19, 2010, about sixty groups, on every one of the seven continents of the planet, met at ecologically wounded places for the first annual Global Earth Exchange, sponsored by the non-profit organization Radical Joy for Hard Times.

They gathered at polluted rivers, clear-cut forests, and the sites of abandoned factories. They went to coal mines and the sites of gas drilling. They honored endangered bats, dolphins, and wild horses. In Antarctica a scientist focused on the glacier that is retreating farther and farther each year rom the window of the research station. In New South Wales, Australia, Glenn Albrecht, the philosopher who coined the term solastalgia, meaning "the pain one feels on recognizing that the land one loves is under assault," did an Earth Exchange on the hill above Hunter Valley, where open pit coal mining has wreaked constant noise, light, and pollution on a community.

The size of the groups ranged from one to 36. In Boulder, Colorado a woman had private a Earth Exchange at a house she bought that had been a meth lab and where a murder had taken place. In southwest Washington, a group (pictured above) gathered at the site of a forest that had been cleared. And three people met at dawn to drum on the beautiful white-sand beach at Navarre, Florida, where the first oily globs from BP's broken rig have begun washing ashore. When a passerby asked if they were members of a band rehearsing for a show, one member of the Earth Exchange responded, "Oh no, we're not a band. We just came to be with a sick friend." There was a pause, and then the man who had asked the question said, "Thank you for doing this."

At each location, people talked about or reflected on their feelings about the destruction of lands and animals and spent time sitting or walking on the land, bearing witness to it in its present condition.

Each Earth Exchange concluded with an "Act of Beauty," something given back to the place or species that has given much to humans. In most cases this act included the construction of a stylized bird, the Radical Joy for Hard Times symbol, made of found materials.

Said one woman who participated in the San Antonio River Earth Exchange in Texas, "I will remember this day for the rest of my life."

Barry Lopez to Join Global Earth Exchange

2010-05-19T14:49:00.005-04:00

Barry Lopez, the acclaimed author of many books, including the Arctic Dreams, which won the National Book Award; Of Wolves and Men; and the recent anthology, The Future of Nature, will participate in the Global Earth Exchange sponsored by Radical Joy for Hard Times.

On that day, people around the world will gather at ecologically wounded places to share their stories about what the place means to them... spend time sitting, walking, and "listening" to the land... and give back an Act of Beauty (a song, a dance, a prayer, a sculpture, etc.).

Lopez, who last month was the featured guest on the very last show of Bill Moyers's forty-year career, will participate privately in rural Oregon, where he lives.

Here's what he wrote about the Global Earth Exchange: "It's wonderful of you, and important, to sponsor and encourage this work."

What Is Nature Anyway?

2010-05-13T12:17:00.004-04:00

A person who calls him- or herself an environmentalist is presumed to love nature. More than that, you could say that an environmentalist is someone who perceives a threat to nature (e.g. extinction, pollution, clearcutting) and wants to alter circumstances that are creating that threat.

But what is nature anyway? The dictionary defines nature as the physical or material world and its phenomena, in other words, that which is not created by humans. Most of us think of nature as the world of plants, rocks, hills, seas and beaches, and animals, entities that “surround” (environ means to "surround") human beings and exist independently of them. The Norwegian ecologist, Fern Wickson writes that, if “nature” is a place that is uninfluenced by humankind, then, really, there is no nature on the planet at all. “However, even if one sees nature as including humanity, the concept becomes so all-encompassing as to be practically useless…. An atom bomb becomes as ‘natural’ as an anthill.”

Culturally, we live with two contrary depictions of nature. On one hand nature is a fragile, tender thing that needs protecting from large, brutal forces that would destroy it. This is nature as the cute baby seal on the rock, imminent victim of cruel hunters with harpoons.

On the other hand, nature itself is the brutal force. This is the version Hollywood favors. This nature can—and will—get out of control and wreak havoc. People are going about their ordinary lives, rather like the seal on the rock, when relentless nature swoops down upon them in a terrible and deadly form: volcano, tornado, plague of insects, forest fire.

Nature is like that famous image that tests your ability to perceive dualities: look at it one way and it’s a vase, rearrange your gaze and see it as two profiles regarding each other. Nature swings back and forth: victim/villain, victim/villain. Cute and cuddy/ugly, terrifying, and out of control. What the current ecological crisis presents us with is an image of nature that is both these visions at once: Nature about to go amok and destroy the world because of climate change, and nature victimized and killed because of climate change. Nature is the perpetrator of disaster and nature is the victim of the disaster.

What do you think nature is?

Barry Lopez Reflects on Nature, Horror, and Beauty with Bill Moyers

2010-05-12T15:34:00.006-04:00

As he prepared to retire after four decades in broadcast journalism, Bill Moyers thought long and hard about whom to invite as his guest on the last broadcast of his Bill Moyers Journal. In the end, he decided that the honor should go to author Barry Lopez, whom he described as "someone whose curiosity about the world, and pursuit of it, have set the gold standard for all of us whose work it is to explain those things we don't understand."

During the thirty-five-minute interview Lopez, the award-winning author of many books of fiction and non-fiction, spoke eloquently about nature as what he called "the full expression of life," the whole picture of the earth and its inhabitants, not simply a collection of majestic landscapes like those that appear on the pages of calendars.

Despite the fact that the phenomena of the natural world play the starring role in all his books, Lopez insisted that "I'm not writing about nature. I'm writing about humanity. And if I have a subject, it is justice. And the rediscovery of the manifold way in which our lives can be shaped by the recovery of a sense of reverence for life."

Moyers and Lopez also talked about the relationship of beauty and horror. Lopez began by saying that, even though he has lived for forty years in the Oregon wilderness, he loves New York City, especially when the sky is a particular shade of blue, as it was on this April day in 2010 when Moyers was conducting the interview.

Moyers replied that the sky in New York was that very color on the morning of September 11, 2001, when the two airliners were crashed into the World Trade Towers. What does that do to any idea of beauty? Moyers asked his guest.

Lopez responded: "Real beauty is so deep you have to move into darkness in order to understand what beauty is.... What you must do is build a system of civilization that is as aware of darkness as it is of beauty."

Click here to watch the complete broadcast of Bill Moyers's interview with Barry Lopez.

Humans Don't Desire Like Bettongs Desire

2009-12-23T09:21:00.004-05:00

One of the most fascinating sessions I attended at the Parliament of the World’s Religions was called “Enabling Response: Contributions of the Ecological Humanities toward an Environmental Culture.” Freya Mathews, Associate Professor in the Philosophy Program at Melbourne’s La Trobe University and author of several books, including one I particularly admire, The Ecological Self, talked about the problem environmentalists run into when they try to persuade people to rein in their desires for the sake of a sustainable planet.

“We have to want what the biosphere needs us to want,” Mathews said. Unfortunately, humans have the capacity to want in much bigger, more creative ways than their biology demands. Unlike the bettong, for example, a small Australian mammal also known as the rat kangaroo, “which only wants to eat truffles,” humans have very complicated desires, desires that are fed by fantasy, ego, envy, and many other enticements. “Can we imagine a synergy between humans and nature?” Mathews queried.

In my book, The World Is a Waiting Lover, I unfold an arc of desire from raw, potent physical attraction to the longing to transcend and become intimately united with the great mystery of being. The force I explore is the archetypal Beloved, the inner flame of passion that allures us all our lives to connect with the people, ideas, and acts that will bring out our higher self. This path can be a joyful one and very rewarding, but it is basically solitary.

We all have an inner Beloved, but how can we get those Beloveds together on behalf of the Earth?

Mathews discussed the need for activities that would create meaning for people through what she calls onto-poetics (ontos is the Greek word for being), since “the language of the world is the language of poetics and symbol.” Examples would be festivals, pilgrimages, invocations expressed in language that plumbs below the surface and stirs what a colleague of mine calls the indigenous-mind.

The outcome of such practices? “We are sure to be ravished,” Mathews concluded.

Street Arts for the Earth

2009-12-13T20:20:00.003-05:00

The Balinese barong has been described as a cross between a lion and a caterpillar. With a carved wooden head worn by one dancer and a long body made of raffia or palm fiber, the far end of which is worn by another dancer, the barong is a benevolent creature that appears at Balinese sacred dance performances to bring peace and well-being.

On Sunday, December 6, at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne, Australia, a different kind of barong came to life, and in a way that well suited this particular gathering, whose theme is “Hearing Each Other, Healing the Earth.”

The World Peace Barong was conceived in 2003 at an international gathering called "Sharing Art & Religiosity," held in the vicinity of the temple Pura Samuan Tiga in Bedulu, Bali. Painter I Wayan Sudiarta from the village of Peliatan got the idea of creating a barong made of materials offered by people from any culture and faith. The mask of the barong was carved by Tjok Alit, a maskmaker in Singapadu, Bali. Elements that arrived from twenty-three other lands to adorn it included prayer bells from Japan, cow bells from Switzerland, feathers from India, and fabric from Assisi, Italy.

As the barong prepared to journey to Australia, parliament officials became concerned that its many natural materials would prevent it from clearing customs smoothly. As a result the World Peace Barong traveled with new black velvet garments. Garuda Airlines designated it executive class. At Melbourne's airport, customs officials greeted it graciously, charmed by its gentle, smiling face. But once the seventeen-kilo barong arrived at the Melbourne convention center, there was no place to put it. The sacred barong actually spent one night in the kitchen convention center, laughed Suprato Suyodarmo, Indonesian movement artist and founder of the Padepokan Lemah Putih school in Solo, Central Java.

The barong danced "Tri Yoni Saraswati" with eight artists from Bali and South Sulawesi for the International Plenary of sacred music. Although it was scheduled for an interactive session with parliament participants in one of the meeting rooms of the convention center, Suprato conceived of another idea.

He had noticed a strange figure, dressed in black and bearing a dire warning, who stood all day every day at the entrance to the convention center. Benny Zable, of Nimbun, New South Wales, and Woodstock, New York, wore a gas mask and a long black cloak on which were painted the words, FOSSIL FOOLS and THERE ARE NO JOBS ON A DEAD PLANET. Day after day he stood there, his hands rising and falling in mute supplication or despair. A few people stopped to look at him, but most rushed past.

Because Suprato Suryodarmo is interested in the relationship of sacred theatre and the natural environment, he asked Zable if the World Peace Barong could join him on the plaza. Late on the afternoon of the 6th, when most of the parliament participants were attending sessions inside the convention center, Suryodarmo and Diane Butler, an American dancer who has lived and danced in Bali for many years, carried the barong out to the front of the convention center and arranged it with offerings on the pavement. After sitting on the ground and praying softly, Suryodarmo rose and began to dance. His feet moved with slow-motion precision, turning in perfect balance. His hands and long fingers created mudras, formal patterns of meaning. Then Benny Zable began to move in response. Both the Indonesian dancer and the Australian street artist moved in harmony, their movements reflected in the tall plate glass windows of the convention center as the barong stared benignly out at the passing crowd.

One dancer brought a message of peace through the form of a figure from an ancient religious tradition; the other delivered a message of environmental urgency through artistic improvisation. One was dressed in traditional ceremonial clothing, one in a hand-made costume. Together they wove a message that religious leaders of many faiths were attempting to spread inside the convention center all week: in matters of environmental stewardship and peace among nations, it is only through creative collaboration, the willingness to listen to others, and the invention of new forms of expression that change can occur.

World Religions Get Down to Earth

2009-12-07T01:02:00.003-05:00

"Welcome to country" is how the Aboriginal Australians greet visitors, and it was the greeting of "Aunty" Joy Murphy Wandin, a senior Aboriginal leader of the Wurundgeri people, to participants in the Parliament of the World's Religions, currently being held in Melbourne, Australia. The theme of the parliament, which was first held in 1893, is the environment: "Hearing Each Other, Healing the Earth."

It would be hard to find one of the world's religions NOT represented at this gathering. The Aboriginal people of Australia are here, of course, as are other indigenous people from Scandinavia, America, Africa, and other lands; Christians of different denominations; Jews; Hindus; Muslims; Buddhists; Zoroastrians; Sikhs; Pagans. What is even more extraordinary than the diversity, however, is the willingness of people of different faiths to listen to and learn from one another. Those who have attended previous parliaments claim that there is an openness and honesty here that has not been seen before, from the native Australians' expressions of sorrow and distress over the failure of the government to recognize them to the admission of several religious leaders that they have not always been mindful of holding the earth in respect.

My own particular interest is in finding ways to reconcile people and wounded places, and I'm curious how people of different religious traditions view that challenge. A few responses:

Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin: "My people know that the pavement all over Melbourne is not the real surface of the Earth. It's a covering over the hills, the rivers. There is a cemetery that now has buildings over it. But we remember what is really here."

John Grim, Senior Lecturer and Scholar, Yale University (at a panel on the work of Thomas Berry): "Thomas was very concerned about the degradation of the environment, but then as he got older, he wanted to turn away from a negative view. He wanted to be more hopeful, especially for the sake of the younger generations."

Leo Killsback, Northern Cheyenne: "They said that the killing at Virginia Tech was the worst mass murder ever in the U.S. The [1864] massacre at Sand Creek that killed 250 of my people was even worse."

Vidya Sarveswaran, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Deep Ecologist: "We must work to heal what is broken on the inside, as we heal what is broken on the outside."

H.H. Swami Sandeep Chaitanya, Hindu, founder of the School of the Bhagavad Gita, India: "Become a vegetarian. Meditate. You cannot change what is already done. You can only improve yourself."

Chris Peters, Yurok, director of the Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development, Arcata, CA: "It's a good question. Indian people never used to have to worry about this. If the forest burned, you knew it would grow back."

Freya Mathews, Associate Professor, LaTrobe University, Melbourne, and author of The Ecological Self and other books: "That's what the Kingfisher Festival is all about. It's finding revelation in the midst of a fallen state."

The concept of "wounded places" obviously has a lot of different connotations for people. Religious people have the capacity for awe, which means they can see the beauty of the Earth and be transported, can see the Earth either as sacred or as a manifestation of the sacred that is the Creator. However, many religions also tend to focus on teaching people to live today in ways that will make the next life (or after-life) better. Can both these perspectives be merged to help us solve the problems of living on our wounded and ailing planet today?

In My Back Yard

2009-11-28T09:06:00.002-05:00

For many years I have been searching for some way to bring attention, personal stories, and beauty to ecologically damaged places. In a way, I think this way of approaching life and death, joy and sorrow, and the strange beauty that can be found when we gaze at that which we least want to look at has been pursuing me all my life.

Over the years I've held small gatherings and longer programs in several wounded places, from a clearcut forest in British Columbia to Ground Zero in New York City to a coal-fired power plant for 350: the International Day of Climate Action last month. When I founded Radical Joy for Hard Times, I joined others who shared the vision of finding and creating beauty in wounded places.

And now, by strange fate or synchronicity, this long search is becoming very personal.

The Marcellus shale beneath the earth in Susquehanna County in northeastern Pennsylvania, where I live, has been found to have one of the largest reserves of natural gas anywhere in the world. In the past two years, the momentum has been building to tap this source of energy with new technology. Unlike more affluent counties in New York, just north of us, where people are fighting this encroachment, here in rural, low-income Pennsylvania, poor farmers are eagerly leasing their lands... and many are already regretting it.

The problems, not surprisingly, have begun: polluted wells; damage to the hilly, winding, rural roads by heavy trucks; and even the recent discovery that the water that has been used to shatter, or "frack," the shale thousands of feet in the Earth, may be radioactive after it is pumped back out.

Two months ago, to my surprise, my husband and I were offered $5,700 an acre for our five and a half acres, plus 20% royalties for a portion of a larger consolidated leasing area.

For weeks Andy and I were immersed in long, tearful discussions together and with friends about our options. Neither of us has much money, and we have lost much of what we did have in the current recession. If we leased, we would not only get a settlement up front, but a regular income. For me, however, there was never any dilemma. I knew I could not live with myself if I were to condone, and even profit from, the exploitation of the Earth.

We finally have reached a decision. As my husband said, "You founded Radical Joy for Hard Times to bring beauty to wounded places, and now the wounded place is coming to your own backyard." So we will be staying, at least for now, and we will not be signing a lease.

Some people we know, including a good friend, think we have made a very foolish choice. And as I look at the rolling hills, the long expanses of woods and fields near my home, my heart aches for the ugliness and scarring that is probably inevitable. But I also am seeing new opportunities for exercising the principles of Radical Joy for Hard Times—the main goal of which is to reconcile people and wounded places through storytelling, bearing witness, and creating beauty. As seekers have known for millennia, you never have to go far from home to find the revelation you so long for.

On Monday I leave for Melbourne, Australia to attend the Parliament of World Religions. Watch for more blogs from there.

Message to a Power Plant: 350!

2009-10-26T10:11:00.003-04:00

On October 24, Radical Joy for Hard Times chose to take part in 350: The International Day of Climate Action in a very direct way. We went right to a power plant to present our message.

Nine people braved heavy rain to gather in front of AES Westover, a coal-fired power plant in Johnson City, NY and a major supplier of the electricity in our area. The message we conveyed to them and to coal-fired power plants around the world: We demand a planet where 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the absolute maximum!

The 350 event was organized over the internet by Bill McKibben, the environmental activist and author of The End of Nature and other books. 350 is the parts per million of carbon dioxide that climate scientists have determined to be the maximum level for a healthy environment. Currently, levels are at 389 ppm. McKibben urged people around the world gather together to demand that policy makers take drastic steps to bring carbon levels to 350 ppm. All people had to do was somehow depict the number 350, take a photo, and send it to the website.

As of this posting, two days later, it is estimated that more than 5,400 events were held in 181 countries around the world. Looking at the 350.org website or at the photo stream on Flickr is an amazing and moving experience. Soldiers in Iraq, children in an orphanage in Bali, large groups of people forming the magic number with their bodies and being photographed from a height, small groups with hand-painted signs, people in front of historic buildings, ancient temples, glaciers, and mountains.

Radical Joy for Hard Times chose to take the message right to the source of the problem: the coal-fired power plant. Although AES Westover recently installed $50 million of new equipment to reduce emissions, “power plants are the nation’s biggest producer of toxic waste, surpassing industries like plastics and paint manufacturing and chemicals,” according to a recent report in The New York Times.

What we had in mind, however, was not protesting or blaming, but simply giving people the opportunity to reflect, up close, on the source of power that, as much as we want to hate it, we are all complicit in using.

I had called the plant a couple of weeks earlier to ask their permission for a small group to sit in front of the gate for two hours. I also invited Westover employees to join us. However, plant manager Jim Mulligan denied my request.

Nine of us showed up anyway. After we had introduced ourselves, Dick Rehberg, a member of the Radical Joy for Hard Times board, gave an introduction to coal and coal use. Coal provides 22% of energy use, and 91% of coal goes into firing power plants. Among the toxins emitted by coal plants are sulphur dioxide, arsenic, aluminum, and mercury.

Before long, a young security guard, on his first day on the job, approached us and told us we had to leave. We simply went across the street and stood under a bridge—after first snapping a photo with our 350 sign (made by local school students and recycled to other 350 events during the day). Under the bridge, we still had a good view of the power plant, and we were out of the rain as well. Over our heads, a steady stream of invisible traffic provided an audio accompaniment to our reflections on energy use.

Then, as is the practice on all our Earth Exchanges, each person took some time to be alone and reflect on the power plant, on energy use, coal, and whatever else in that immediate environment struck their attention—while also paying attention to how what they noticed sparked emotions, memories, thoughts, and ideas.

Here are some of the fascinating comments, each reflecting a completely different sensibility, experience, and perspective that people made as we sat under the bridge only half an hour later:

“While I was standing across the street looking at the power plant, I was struck by how, from this perspective, this maple tree towers over the smokestacks. It affirmed for me that nature will prevail.”

“Until recently I didn’t pay that much attention to global warming. Now I feel I’ve lost my innocence. Part of me wants to go back to that innocence, climb that tree like a little kid and pretend everything is all right. But I know I can’t do that.”

“I was standing at the entrance staring at the plant, and the guard saw me. For a moment our eyes met. He seemed like a nice young man. I wondered what he is making of all this.”

“I’m a nurse. I take care of people with deep wounds. I feel I’m now being called to take care of the wounds of the Earth as well.”

“I was thinking about the shrubbery in front of the plant. When I was young and growing up in Chicago, you never thought twice about power plants. Now, with this shrubbery, it’s like they’re trying to hide what they are, what they do, to make it seem more ‘natural.’”

Besides calling attention to the urgency of bringing CO2 levels down to 350, our group had a personal encounter with the predominant force that suffuses the air with this planet-altering chemical. We all have a more personal understanding of what we’re dealing with and how, in matters of the environment, we are all deeply and personally involved in countless ways.

Message to Coal: 350!

2009-10-26T08:41:00.002-04:00

Saturday October 24 was designated 350: The International Day of Climate Action. As of this posting, two days later, it is estimated that more than 5,400 events were held in 181 countries around the world to call attention to the urgency of attaining this number.

350 is the parts per million of carbon dioxide that climate scientists have determined to be the maximum level for a healthy environment. Currently, levels are at 389 ppm. The United States Congress, considering legislation on energy efficiency that won't

Seeking Pearls in the Waste

2009-08-28T19:35:00.004-04:00

Old Persian legends relate the trials of Majnun, a man who devotes his life to searching for his beloved Layla. Majnun wanders endlessly in the desert. His clothes are ragged, his hair matted and filthy, and he becomes so exiled physically and spiritually from the niceties of human society that finally it is the wild animals who become his companions. Humans shun him and laugh at him, even though many of them recognize deep down that his search, dedicated to love, oblivious to external concerns, has actually brought him closer to the divine.

One day, a man noted for his piety came upon Majnun sifting through dirt in the middle of the road. “You claim such devotion to your beloved,” the holy man scoffed. “How can you say that and then grovel here, searching for such a pearl in the midst of all this rubbish?”

“Ah,” Majnun explained, “I seek Layla everywhere, so that one day I may find her somewhere.”

In his tireless search for his beloved, Majnun has discovered something extraordinary: the effort to become closer to what we love takes us to many places and puts us through many tasks, and in this process each encounter and event becomes beloved as well. Some events that sweep us up may be difficult, painful, and hard to bear. Yet, far from degrading our search, and especially the object of our search, they actually ennoble them. When the heart is filled with passion, with conviction that what it loves is wholly worth loving, protecting, and engaging ourselves with, then we see that every place that the search takes us to is part of that esteemed quest as well. Searching for what we love and abandoning judgment about what is good and bad and worthy and unworthy, we find worth and beauty in abundance. Even what has been used up and tossed out is valuable, since our hands and hearts sort through it mindfully and compassionately.

Radical Joy for Hard Times finds much to admire in Manjun. We are aim to seek out the lost, clearcut, damaged places, the endangered species, the waste places, and approach them with curiosity, community, and creativity, that we may find treasure there.

And so we do.

Magic Phragic Wands

2009-08-15T08:56:00.004-04:00

In my blog for July 18, I described the Radical Joy for Hard Times retreat I led at the World Healing Institute at Cobb Island Station, Virginia on June 19-21. We spent one day considering the invasive common reed, phragmites, from different perspectives, the most startling and personal of which were the ones that emerged after each of us spent an hour sitting alone with the plant without any expectations or judgments about its place in the biosphere. As a result of what we gleaned from that exercise, we created a meandering path through the tall grasses as a way of interacting in a more personal way with their rampant, stubborn beauty.

A few days ago I had an email from Annie Hess, the WHI administrator. She wrote that they had held a program for children a couple of weeks after the Radical Joy for Hard Times event. In one project the children made magic fairy wands out of the dried phragmites stalks. They called them phragic wands.

This is how we can remake the world we live in: by having the willingness to enter into relationship with it, listen to what it has to tell us, and respond with creative acts that come from the heart. And we can invite our children and grandchildren to explore with us, and perhaps teach us a whole new way of perceiving beauty—and even magic—in what we have formerly considered waste.

Touch the Monster

2009-07-25T15:07:00.003-04:00

At first the prospect of confronting a place that has been damaged by toxic waste, clearcutting, urban sprawl, industry or some other cause can seem daunting. Why would we deliberately choose to engage with some awful situation we would much rather turn our backs on? Because sometimes it is necessary to touch the monster we fear and hate.

Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, the United Nations representative in Rwanda during the genocide that took place in that country in 1994, writes in his book of a meeting he had with leaders of Interahamwe, the death squad organization that would ultimately be responsible for the death of more than 800,000 people. At that meeting Dallaire was introduced to, and shook hands with, a man whose arm and white shirt were spattered with dried blood. “I felt I had shaken hands with the devil,” Dallaire wrote, noting that afterwards he felt disgusted with himself for having automatically used that customary form of greeting with a genocidal murderer.

Dallaire fought for the people of Rwanda even when no one else in the world would come to their aid. So what did it mean that he shook hands with a man he equated with the devil? Perhaps, on some level, he had to find out who this devil of an enemy really was. The man with the bloody hand and shirt, an agent of torture, rape, and murder, may have seemed like a force of pure evil, but when Dallaire shook his hand, that hand turned out to be simply human flesh. Perhaps by shaking that hand and then freeing himself from the grip, Dallaire realized on some level that the perpetrators of the grotesque war he was fighting were indeed human and perhaps in that instant, too, he recognized an even stronger reason to keep fighting: because there was something to fight, and it was human and tangible, and human enemies can and must be resisted.

The great contemporary scholar of myth, Roberto Calasso, has remarked that the big mistake Oedipus makes is that he fights the Sphinx with words alone. He doesn’t get down and dirty with her. “The monster can pardon the hero who has killed him,” writes Calasso in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. “But he will never pardon the hero who would not deign to touch him.” Touching a piece of the monster in Rwanda and finding in his grasp the shape of a human hand may have empowered Dallaire to keep up the fight.

Similarly, because those of us who love the earth know in our deepest hearts and most compassionate souls that we must confront the reality of the Earth’s degradation, we decide that we will shake hands with the monster: we will confront the reality of what has already degraded and endangered lands and species that matter to us, so that we may gain strength to love what remains to us and fight it for its survival.

Life Lessons from a Pest Plant

2009-07-18T10:22:00.005-04:00

Guests at the World Healing Institute at Cobb Island Station, on Virginia's beautiful eastern shore helped launch the first-ever Radical Joy for Hard Times retreat on June 19-21. It was a particularly diverse and inquisitive group, composed of two Methodist ministers, an architect, a biologist, an artist, and WHI center coordinator Annie Hess.

Plans for the weekend included a walk on Sunday with a biologist to visit and perhaps do ceremony on a stretch of endangered beach. However, on Saturday our attention was repeatedly drawn to an environmental problem closer at hand. This was the common reed that grew abundantly between the institute's front lawn and the bay. Phragmites (frag might eez) has become a reviled plant along the eastern shore, even though it grows on spoils, such as dredged land, where no other plants can survive. The Nature Conservancy, which owns the land at WHI, has tried repeatedly to poison it, but it keeps coming stubbornly back.

The mission of Radical Joy for Hard Times is to bring attention and beauty to wounded places. Gradually our group came to realize that phragmites itself is one of nature's wounded. We discussed the plant at length, getting the facts about how it grows and where, then each person spent an hour sitting alone among these tall grasses with their round stalks and sandpapery leaves. Afterwards, everyone came together to tell the story of what had happened. All the comments were striking in their individuality and in the precision of the way observations of the plant all around had dovetailed with inner experiences and reflections. I was particularly moved by what one of the ministers had to say:

"I was thinking about inclusivity and exclusivity. There's a movement in our church these days to exclude gay people from worship services. I think this is wrong. Everyone should have a right to worship God and His creation. And every plant should have a right to grow, because it, too is a part of creation."

As in any Radical Joy for Hard Times event, we ended this excursion with an Act of Beauty. This one had two parts. First we all made a path through a long stretch of phragmites, a kind of meandering ramble that might serve as a counterpart to the beautiful Chartres-style labyrinth cut into the grass between the building and the (phragmite-lined) bay. Finally, when the path was complete, we cut stalks of phragmites, arranged them in a glass vase, and placed them on our dinner table.

Parallel Pilgrimages

2009-05-02T13:25:00.002-04:00

On April 25, from 10:00 to 11:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time, eleven people from western California to London, England went to places that had been ecologically damaged and did a short vigil there.

The point of this pilgrimage was simply to be present in a place that is usually avoided: those waste places or generators of waste, those hidden places under bridges or behind industrial sites. Where we chose to go ranged from a coal plant in Colorado to a quarry in upstate New York, from a beach in California to a bay filled with lovely, bobbing boats in Annapolis, Maryland.

A few days later, we checked in with one another via a telephone conference call. The woman who visited the coal plant said she was surprised by her own reaction. She had expected to feel despair as she contemplated how this gigantic generator of energy was poisoning the land and air. Instead, considering the town’s recycling plant, which is situated right across the street, she was struck by the ways that we humans are at least making an effort to clean up our messes and change our ways. The man who visited the California beach with three of his friends said that by the end of the hour, the place had become so personalized to each of them that they didn’t want to leave.

I myself sat by the Susquehanna River, nine miles from my home in northeastern Pennsylvania. In 2005 the Susquehanna was designated the Most Endangered River in America. Where I live, about fifty miles from the river’s source in Cooperstown, NY, it is relatively clear. Mallards were swimming peaceably, and several Canada geese came in for a landing. But, like so much of the wounded environment all over the world, the damage remains largely hidden. As the Susquehanna continues along its path, past Binghamton, Scranton, and Harrisburg, it picks up industrial, farm, and domestic waste and pollutants and is filled with toxins by the time it empties into Chesapeake Bay.

At the end of the hour, I made an altar to the Susquehanna using trash washed up in one area. The altar was inspired by a small cloth doll covered in sand and mud and that happened to be made of eco-green felt. It now stands on a piece of driftwood: the beaming Guardian of the Susquehanna River.

When we step outside the boundaries of the familiar, we are amazed at what we encounter. As one of the pilgrims said of her experience the other day, “Now I want to visit more wounded places to see what they have to tell me.”

Playing In Traffic

2009-04-06T14:22:00.004-04:00

A friend of mine who lives in Boulder, Colorado recently bought a small house in a new neighborhood. Shortly after Mary and her two daughters moved in, they had a rude awakening. It turns out they are much closer to the freeway than Mary had realized when she was first looking at the house, and now she can hear the distant hum of the traffic all the time.

She has thought a lot about how to deal with this situation. In moments of extreme frustration, she has considered moving. Yet she likes the house and the neighborhood, and she finally has enough space for a garden. She’s shared her concern with her neighbors. One woman told her that she tries to ignore the noise and pretend it’s the sound of the sea, and she advised my friend to do the same. “But this is Colorado!” Mary exclaimed. “The sea is nowhere near here.”

Instead she has chosen a third alternative: she is exploring ways to live with the situation. When she gets distressed by that relentless assault on her stillness, she adjusts her thinking and considers what the noise says about the society we live in—how insistent we Americans are on our right to be mobile, how constant is the outpouring of carbon gases into the atmosphere.

Consequently, she is also adapting her behavior. She has started riding a bike wherever she goes, so she herself does not contribute to the problem. As she works in her small yard, she focuses on paying mindful attention to the beauty there instead of feeling that it is sullied by the noise.

Mary’s approach to living peacefully with the stream of traffic is a model for how we can live in a mindful, soulful way with many of the environmental problems that surround, challenge, and frustrate us. We can’t fix everything. Sometimes we must learn to co-exist. One way of doing so is simply to acknowledge what is happening and refuse either to turn our backs on it in denial or confront it in rage. We can love the nature that is before us and allow ourselves to be captivated by its persistent thriving. We can devote attention and discussion to determining how we want to be in relation to our changing Earth. And wherever we go we can look for—and find—beauty on that Earth.

The Uninvited Fairy

2009-03-25T14:55:00.007-04:00

Remember the thirteenth fairy in the story of Sleeping Beauty? At the christening of the baby princess, Brier Rose, twelve gold plates were set out for twelve fairies in the realm, but the queen and king forgot to invite the thirteenth fairy. The forgotten fairy showed up anyway and proclaimed a vengeful promise: before the girl’s sixteenth birthday, she would prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. Horrified, one of the other fairies lightened the curse: the girl would fall asleep until a prince came to kiss her awake.

That thirteenth fairy refused to be forgotten. She would have her say. She would make sure she received her due honor, just like the other fairies.

The damaged places of the Earth are like that uninvited fairy. We try to forget them, but we can’t. Our hearts ache when we hear about animals dying because they can no longer find food. Our sense of beauty is assaulted when we confront clearcut forests. Outrage floods us when we read about toxic debris from mountaintop mining cascading down hillsides to clog valleys and streams and turn people out of their homes. Because the state of the planet pains us, many of us just try to ignore it.

But those places keep hovering in our awareness, just like that forgotten fairy. They remind us that all is not well in the land. They force us to consider what kind of world we’ll be leaving to our grandchildren. And they remain a part of us. We loved them once and we cannot now forget them, even though they are damaged.

After Brier Rose pricked her finger on the spindle she fell asleep, along with all the people in the realm. During the scores of years of collective unconsciousness that followed, many princes tried to make their way through the thickets that surrounded the palace to rescue her. Yet it was not until one particular prince, motivated by love, determined and persistent, managed the difficult journey and kissed her gently that Sleeping Beauty awoke.

Radical Joy for Hard Times recognizes that our neglected lands, waters, and communities are part of the whole living Earth. They demand restitution—not just with projects to restore them in measurable ways, but also with acts and attitudes that acknowledge that they are part of the whole community of the living Earth. In other words, the future of global ecology requires a kiss! We must forgive one another for our previous neglect of the earth, and we must reawaken those damaged places with acceptance, love, and beauty.

Then no part of the Earth will be left out of the story.

Prayers for Beauty in Hard Times

2009-03-17T09:07:00.003-04:00

When I was a child growing up in the Episcopal church, I never understood the iconography of Jesus dying on the cross. To me it was a morbid image, and I stopped going to church in my early teens.

As an adult pondering the intersection between despair and beauty, however, I have come to see that this dominant image of Christianity does what Radical Joy for Hard Times does: it invites us to ponder for a while what is painful and sorrowful, that our hearts may be opened to love and compassion.

Therefore, when my friend Liz Maxwell, a rector at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Apostles in New York City, invited me to lead a Radical Joy for Hard Times program for Lent, I accepted eagerly. Last Saturday, March 14, a small group of participants gathered in a little chapel just off the main sanctuary of this church, which is transformed five days a week into soup kitchen that has been operating for thirty years and now serves meals to 1,200 guests a day. Today, we sat in a circle as sun wafted through the stained glass windows and people talked about personal concerns in their own lives and about their wider concerns for oppressed peoples, damaged places, sick friends, and the ravages of the economic crisis.

Grief opens us up to compassion. As the Sufis, the mystical sect of Islam say, when your heart is broken, there is space for God to move through the cracks. The liturgical season of Lent, when Jesus died, precedes Easter, the springtime celebration of new life and shared joy. Suffering heightens our perception, too. In a state of sorrow, we perceive beauty with extra clarity, whether it is the beauty of nature determined to thrive or the generous act of another person— friend or stranger.

Our group witnessed beauty thriving when we went outside to the church’s small garden, right at the intersection of two busy streets in Chelsea. Crocus and daffodil buds struggled up through the hard soil, despite scraps of litter that had blown in during the winter. Birds sang in the trees, their songs muffling the noise of traffic. We concluded the gathering by writing prayers on white ribbons and tying them to the tree in the garden.

Many people are afraid to tap the well of sorrow that pervades life on earth. Why bother, we ask? What can any one individual do? And yet, merely by willing to see what is true and, even better, then to share that with others, we touch the reality of humanity. That simple act can infuse us with the determination to see more beauty and to act with more compassion.

Cross Bones Graveyard

2009-03-09T17:32:00.003-04:00

The goal of Radical Joy for Hard Times is to bring beauty to orphaned places, that they may once again become part of the cycle of life. The story of Cross Bones Graveyard in southeast London is a remarkable example of how giving that kind of attention to a place and its people satisfies a deep human need to sooth old injuries.

Near a London Underground station a metal gate in the midst of a brick wall is adorned with ivy, colorful ribbons, some with prayers written on them, flowers, feathers, bundles of dried grass, and other gifts. Inside the enclosure a small garden features a heart-shaped topiary and carefully tended flower beds.

This is Cross Bones, a graveyard where prostitutes were buried for hundreds of years beginning in medieval times. The women, known as “Winchester Geese” because they were licensed by the Bishop of Winchester to work in legalized brothels, could not be buried in hallowed ground.

The land was sold as a building site in the 1880s, but nothing was erected there until more than a hundred years later when the London Underground built a power sub-station on the land in 1990. It was when they began excavating that they unearthed a few of the old skeletons, which they estimated to total approximately 15,000.

Since then this place of anonymity and ignominy has been beautified and commemorated inside and out, informally and formally, through gardening and ceremony and simply through respectful attention.

John Constable, author of a series of poems and plays, The Southwark Mysteries, based on the imagined life of one of the women, writes:

“We've conducted many rituals and community events at the graveyard. The rituals are simple, inclusive and non-dogmatic, emphasising respect for ‘the Ancestors’, and honouring the spirit of this particular place. The Halloween of Cross Bones has been observed every Halloween night since 1998, with hundreds of people making the candlelit procession to the site, to honour 'the outcast dead' with candles, incense, songs and offerings.”

Members of the community pick up trash and replenish the impromptu shrine on the gate with fresh flowers. They are currently working to get permission to dedicate at least part of the burial ground as a memorial garden.

What is most remarkable about the attention and care given to Cross Bones is that it is ongoing. Because people in the community have cared for a wasteland and for forgotten women in simple, beautiful ways, the place has become what it never was in the past: hallowed ground.

THE ORPHANED PLACES

2009-01-27T19:01:00.003-05:00

In 1987, when I was living in New York, writing scripts and producing soundtracks for multimedia productions, I read an article about an Oneida Indian engineer, David Powless, who had received a National Foundation grant to research and develop a process for recycling hazardous waste from steel mills. Along with a small group of co-colleagues I made a short video about David, funded by IBM and later shown to international IBM employees at a conference in Miami Beach. (The photo at the left was taken at that event.) The video explored David’s work, both as an engineer and as an Oneida man dedicated to fostering the traditional ways of his people. While we were working together, he told this story:

When he learned that he had received the grant, David said, he drove out to an enormous mound of steel waste and scrambled to the top. Triumphantly, he declared, “I’m going to conquer you!” Almost immediately, however, he knew that this approach was all wrong. “I realized that the waste was an orphan,” he said. “It had been lost from the cycle of life. My job was to bring it back to the cycle of life.”

I never forgot this story, which seemed to me to offer a new perspective on ecological crisis: a way loving parts of the earth that were, by most standards, unlovable, and even unlivable.

Ten years later, in 1997, I was guiding a vision quest in the Utah Canyonlands with Bill Plotkin when I had a vision of my own. That day the questers had come back to base camp after their three-day solo. In council they had told the stories of their journey, and in the morning we would hike out of the canyon and head back to Durango.

All that night, I remained suspended in a chaotic, uneasy state of half-sleep/half-wakefulness. As I lay in my sleeping bag under the stars I kept hearing someone walking around me, perhaps twenty or thirty feet away. Surprisingly, this constant movement in the dark did not worry me. I felt only a vague curiosity about it.

Toward dawn I became alert enough to ask, “Who’s there?” In that instant I had a vision of a young Anasazi man. He paused, approached, and said to me, in effect, that my task was to take people to the wounded places on the earth and give them beauty and compassion.

I was deeply touched by this vision, and for years afterwards tried to figure out how I might carry it out. I led a weeklong vigil in a clearcut forest in British Columbia; worked with a small group to make a mandala out of trash on a Pensacola, Florida beach; and presented a ceremony at New York’s Ground Zero shortly after September 11. However, I found that most people weren’t interested in going to troubled places; they preferred to visit pristine, beautiful nature. I often grieved that I could not enact the task that had been given to me. Then, over the past eight or nine years, I became very involved in writing and teaching about the path of the inner lover, the Beloved, and put the vision of troubled places temporarily aside.

Recently, however, it has become clear to me that the time is now right to bring forth a new way of looking at and being in the company of the troubled places on earth, what David Powless called “the orphans from the cycle of life.” With serious attention now being devoted to global climate change and other ecological challenges, and a new willingness on the part of so many people to examine their behavior on and toward the earth, it feels as if what I now Radical Joy for Hard Times is ready to unfold.