In this summer of 2018, torrential rains swamp the northeastern states of America, and fires rage in the west. Heat scorches Europe, and the rainy season in Bali has lasted for almost a year. Few can deny any longer that global climate change is a reality.
There are many practical things each of us can do to reduce our carbon footprint. But we must also refresh and renew how we live with the places that sustain us, even when they are under threat.
We must give love and attention to these places. What happens to them will happen to us as well, and the challenges could range from extreme weather to an influx of refugees to water shortages. Remembering to find fresh examples of beauty in our places every day, no matter what has happened to them, we open ourselves to the gifts that are always available, even in darkness. Sharing our stories of the challenges confronting our places, we discover the deep roots we have in common, despite our religious, political, or ethnic differences. Making beauty for our places, we celebrate the inherent worth beneath the scars. Making beauty we find beauty.
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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Radical Joy Revealed is a weekly message of inspiration about finding and making beauty in wounded places.