Palestinian children playing in rubble caused by an Israeli bomb.
Photo by Mahmud Hams
|
There are many ways to get reacquainted with–and even fall back in love with–a wounded place: vigil, music, art, prayer. And play.
Playing is a way to get intimate with a place, even a wounded one. For children, even disaster offers opportunities to imagine the world anew and quickly enter into it. The photograph above shows Palestinian children playing amidst the rubble of a building destroyed by an Israeli bomb. An adult might see that pile of concrete and stone and think: someone’s home, might think: avoid this out of respect or remembrance or possible danger. For the children it was just an opportunity for climbing, hiding, pretending, exploring–for being in magical relationship with the world.
To play in a wounded place is not at all to forget the reality of what is before you. When we allow ourselves to be immersed in the world before us without trying to make anything in particular happen… without having to learn, clean, repair, or improve, then a sense of intimacy with our surroundings springs up. Boundaries between us and the world dissolve. Try it. After all, you haven’t forgotten how.
|
|
To discover other stories of inspiring people, stories, photos, and ideas, subscribe to
|
Trebbe is the author of The World Is a Waiting Lover and 101 Ways to Make Guerrilla Beauty. Her new book, Radical Joy for Hard Times: Finding Meaning and Making Beauty, will be published in Fall 2018 by North Atlantic Books. Her articles about people’s emotional and spiritual relationship with nature have appeared in Orion, Sierra, Ecopsychology, The Ecologist, The Nation, Harper’s and other magazines. She lives with her husband, Andrew Gardner, in rural northeastern Pennsylvania, a region currently under exploitation by natural gas companies.
MORE RADICAL JOY REVEALED
“Left a bottle of water in the mailbox”
"On a really hot day, left a bottle of water in the mailbox for the mail carrier." That was the message left by a woman on the ServiceSpace website in the section called "Stories of Kindness from [...]
This Is Not Myself
The first time I made beauty for a hurt place was in the Utah Canyonlands. I was hiking along a narrow canyon, following the wash that had cut through the fox-red rock, when I came upon [...]
Warrior Woman for the Missing
This week's story comes from a woman called Thyme Eternity, who lives in British Columbia. Her heartbreak over the ongoing crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls took a newly personal turn two [...]
JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER
Radical Joy Revealed is a weekly message of inspiration about finding and making beauty in wounded places.