When I make a gift to a place, whether it’s aural, visual, prayerful, or musical, I am only the first artist. Wind, waves, rain, sun, animals, traffic, or other humans will take over where I leave off. This gift is not meant for posterity or to boost my career. It is not about making something perfect, taking credit, signing my name, or restoring the place to its original state. It is a way, as Galway Kinnell puts it in one of his poems, to “reteach a thing its loveliness.”
The practice of giving a gift of beauty to a wounded place subtly, yet fundamentally, changes my relationship with the place. How could such a seemingly simple act make such a difference? For one thing, I have tested the mettle of my own courage and found it to be strong. I have realized that not only am I not dragged down into some loathsome circumstance from which I cannot escape, but that just the reverse occurs: I see the place transform, like a character in a fairy tale, from a deficient and debilitated thing to a presence that impels an expression of love that I myself am uniquely qualified to give. I discover that everything surrounding me is a potential component of the gift I’ll make. I feel empowered to act and know my act needs approval from no higher authority. I discover a sense of purpose and beauty under difficult circumstances. I cease to be an observer and become absorbed in what is before me. I choose to get involved.
It is when I’ve given beauty to another that I move past what keeps me separate. To give beauty is to marry the world, outside and within.
May you give and receive much beauty
and generosity in the coming year.
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.
Image Credit:
- Medina 2012: Ana Maria Medina
MORE RADICAL JOY REVEALED
A New Coat for a Venerable Tree
A beautiful 140-year-old hemlock at the artist Frederic Church’s estate and museum, Olana, in Hudson, New York, died a few months ago of natural causes. Jean Shin, a sculptor who specializes in using cast-off objects [...]
The Beauty of Wounded Places
When we say a place is wounded, we mean it can no longer do what it once did. It is disabled. It’s a force of life that has fallen on hard times and is struggling [...]
If Mother Earth Isn’t Feeling So Well
“If Mother Earth isn’t feeling well, you can cheer her up by doing something nice for her,” said Annie Hess, whose son Elan started participating in the Global Earth Exchange when he was eight years [...]