Ten days from today, June 17, is RadJoy’s Global Earth Exchange. Dozens of people around the world have signed up to participate in this beloved annual ceremony of going to hurt places and giving them attention and beauty.
Like many ventures into the unknown and unfamiliar, the Global Earth Exchange often has a mysteriously profound affect on the people who engage in it.
- They discover that they are braver than they’d thought they were about facing unpleasant situations.
- They find resilience, determination, and vitality where they’d expected only brokenness.
- They fall in love with a place they had been avoiding.
When we launched the Global Earth Exchange in 2010, we wondered if the invitation to “go to a wounded place and make a gift of beauty for it” might be so odd that people would feel unqualified to join in. So we got together and had fun making a list of:
10 Ways You Can’t Do It Wrong
- All you have to do is show up.
- You don’t need training.
- Anything you do will make a difference (to you as well as your place).
- It’s okay if it’s just you and a friend—or just you and the Earth.
- Everything you need to have the experience is already there.
- A place is a wounded place if it feels damaged to you.
- If you think you don’t know how to listen to the land, you do. Just be present and look around. Let yourself be surprised by something.
- All your feelings are appropriate.
- Sharing stories? You noticed something in this place. What was it? How did you feel about it?
- Your Act of Beauty is perfect! The place is more beautiful because of it, whether you: Create the Radical Joy for Hard Times bird out of found materials, sing, dance, say a prayer, jump, sit, cry, shout, laugh, make a sculpture out of trash, make a circle, make a mudpie, hug a friend, hug a tree, drum, chant, walk in circle, make a human pyramid, do a cartwheel, make a mandala, write a poem, play, make prayer flags, make music…