Climate consequences bring destruction, desperation, death, and despair, terrible suffering told and untold, injustice upon injustice.
That is why when we begin this journey there is a truth we must live into, and we cannot let despair rob us of this truth.
In the climate action space where we beat back the darkness with the light we can begin to see that beauty is all around us; beauty is everywhere.
There is and will be relational beauty, intellectual beauty, spiritual beauty, emotional beauty, and physical beauty.
In joining together with others in climate action there is beauty.
In every idea that moves us forward there is beauty.
In our relation to what is greater than ourselves as we inhabit the climate action space there is beauty.
In the love and passion that moves us to action there is beauty.
In this space, what delights our senses — seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting — there is beauty.
Overcoming climate change, creating a just and prosperous sustainability, enhancing wellbeing for everyone and everything — each effort towards their creation is beautiful. Stopping bad stuff, setting wrong right, making things better — beautiful. Creating the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world — beautiful.
We must awaken to all of this beauty. We must experience it in its fullness and let it move and inspire us. We must cherish and nourish and protect it. We must share it. We must never forsake or ignore it.
In our climate action journey beauty is everywhere; it is all around us; it is within us, it is behind us and in front of us; beauty is in our past, present, and future.
Because living in a beautiful world is what we hope for, beauty creates hope, and all hope is beautiful. Beauty and hope are a symbiosis, each one nurturing the other towards the fullness of one another and their union. When we make hope happen we create beauty. We are hope-makers and beauty-creators.
Beauty will help keep us moving forward as we make our future come faster.
But however needful we are for its inspiration — and to inspire is part of beauty’s calling — beauty is so much more. Our communion with beauty is part of the fulfillment of our humanity. You and me and all of us are made to be beauty-creators.
In climate action space and time, where in freedom we have chosen to offer precious seconds, minutes, days, and years of our finite existence on this Earth to create a better world, there is beauty within us and all around us and between us and before us.
In climate action space and time, beauty is everywhere.
To begin to see the beauty all around us and before us is to open ourselves to seeing everything else in a new light — and such sight is how we will change the world. For the world we strive to make is beautiful. And that gives us hope.
Make sure to check out the preceding posts in this Introductory Series.