Every Thursday afternoon, Iranian people go to visit the graves of their loved ones. In this film, which is just under two minutes long, an elderly couple recites poetry to each other as they drive to their own “Thursday Appointment.”
The events that unfold, and the way the two people meet them, eloquently express how a spontaneous, heartfelt act of generosity, compassion, and beauty can make a great difference in painful circumstances. The film won a prize at Luxor Film Festival.
Radical Joy for Hard Times is dedicated to a path of becoming more empowered and more joyful humans through the making of beauty for hurt places on the Earth. Through gift-giving and beauty-making to the places we love, we grow ever more fully into awareness of how our actions, even in the midst of our own suffering, can bring light to darkness, joy to suffering, and beauty to ugliness.
May you be on the lookout for hurt places in 2020, that you may give and receive much beauty in your encounters with them.
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.
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