The big news for me personally in 2009 was that I founded Radical Joy for Hard Times, a non-profit organization devoted to finding and making beauty in wounded places. Next summer, we are planning an international launch, events taking place at wounded places all over the planet! Stay tuned for details and information about how you can participate!

So far Radical Joy for Hard Times has been composed of a wonderful Board (familiarly known as "Band") of Directors, eight talented people from California to London. By mid-December, we had also assembled an extraordinary Council of Advisors, six pioneers in their fields, women and men whose work has dovetailed with and inspired ours. You can click to read more about our Council of Advisors. Here's a brief introduction:

David Powless: New Mexico; Oneida tribe; engineer, who created a means of recycling steel waste; leader in founding and supporting Native American businesses; creator and teacher of the Rainbow Way Visioning Meditation. The story David told me about how he came to regard the steel waste that he had received a grant to recycle planted a seed that, twenty years later, grew into Radical Joy for Hard Times.

Daniel Dancer: Oregon; environmental artist and activist who makes beauty in and of waste places; creator of Sky Art, images composed of people and photographed from the sky; author of  Shards and Circles: Artistic Adventures in Spirit and Ecology and Desperate Prayers: A Quest for Sense in a Senseless Time; singer and songwriter.

Susan Griffin: California; award-winning author whose work is a deep search for the meaning behind violence, yearning, and discrimination. Her books include Woman and Nature, A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War, and most recently Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy: The Autobiography of an American Citizen.

Larry Hobbs: Washington; marine biologist and wilderness guide; leader of ecotours to Antarctica; creator of Washington State 4-H Challenge Program; teacher, author, and explorer of marine mammal behavior and systems; winner of 2008 Horace Mann Award.

Meredith Little: California; creator, with her husband Steven Foster, of the contemporary wilderness rite of passage movement; co-founder of The School of Lost Borders; director of The Practice of Living and Dying, Lost Borders International, and Lost Borders Press; co-author of The Book of the Vision Questand other books.

Lily Yeh: Pennsylvania; internationally acclaimed artist who brings inner and outer beauty to wounded communities; founder of Village of Arts and Humanities and Barefoot Artists, Inc.; creator of the Rwanda Healing Project; received a standing ovation after her talk at the 2009 Bioneers Conference.

We are honored and excited to have the support and guidance of these wonderful people on our Council of Advisors. In 2010 we look forward to expanding our network exponentially as we begin to work with many people around the world who love the natural world and are saddened by its neglected, wounded places.

Central photo above "Wheel for Toxic Man" by Daniel Dancer

 
Reflections on the Parliament of the World's Religions--six days spent among six thousand people of many diverse religious and spiritual traditions old and new, from all around the Earth:

How gratifying it is to hear and see, increasingly throughout the week, so much acknowledgment that the beautiful city of Melbourne, on the banks of the Yarra River, is the ancestral homeland of the aboriginal Wurundjeri people.

Unfurled on the floor of the convention center lobby, a brown paper scroll on which we are invited to write messages to leaders at the United Nations Climate Change Conference who will meet later in the week in Copenhagen. I am so touched by the intimate quality of what people are writing. These messages of love for the Earth and sorrow for what is likely to befall it come right from the heart.

Conversation with Ven. Jin-wol Lee, Buddhist monk and Dharmic teacher from Korea:

Jin-wol: You are a seeker.

Trebbe: Don't you think everyone here is a seeker?

J: God-centered people seek God.

T: What do Buddhists seek?

J: Reality!

Norm Habel, editor of the five-volume Earth Bible on "green" (Earth-friendly) and "gray" (anthropocentric, hostile to nature) texts in the Bible: "When the flood came, the giraffe would be saying, 'What did I do?!'"

I share a small table at lunch with a Balinese Hindu woman, a Jewish rabbi from Israel, and an Islamic imam. The imam and the rabbi exchange business cards.

At a panel called "Men Who Love the Goddess," four men discuss their relationship with the divine feminine.

Hindu leaders from around the world release their Hindu Declaration on Climate Change. Significantly, they acknowledge that the consequences of global warming may be inevitable: Thus, in the spirit of vasudhaiva kutumbakam, "the whole world is one family," Hindus encourage the world to be prepared to respond with compassion to such calamitous challenges as population displacement, food and water shortage, catastrophic weather and rampant disease.

In front of the convention center, before only a few witnesses, a Balinese Hindu and an Australian street artist enact a spontaneous collaboration to bless a barong, a traditional Balinese figure of peace and well-being, this one made of materials from around the world. (See my Radical Joy for Hard Times blog for the full story.) Sacred activism!

A Sikh prayer ceremony: a young woman steps gracefully among worshippers sitting on the floor of a convention meeting room, handing out strips of orange cloth that non-Sikhs can use to cover our heads.

At a session of music by Zain Bhikha and three other South Africans of different faiths, a young Maori woman rises from her seat and tearfully thanks "my South African brothers" for having succeeded in achieving the freedoms other indigenous people are fighting for.

The Dalai Lama at the closing plenary, after congratulating participants for engaging in such good talks all week: "But maybe you need to take a little more action!"