An environmentalist friend wrote to me feeling depressed and overwhelmed with all of the bad news, especially after seeing my photographs of birds filled with plastic. Her sentence that broke my heart was: "I think it's generally difficult once you know how hopeless things seem."

In this regard, the importance of connecting with beauty cannot be overstated. If we are going to face and acknowledge the darkness--as we must--then let us also face and integrate the light: the immense, astonishing miracle we are all part of. In every moment, at every scale from the microscopic to the cosmic, our world and our own lives are impossibly magnificent and complex artworks, or mandalas, or waveforms, or whatever the right word is-- being created in realtime by an unknowable artist. Our very existence, right here and now, is a mystery beyond all mysteries, beyond what any words could express. The gift of consciousness is the most magical and valuable thing imaginable, and in that way every one of us has won the lottery of the Universe.

When we can contain these experiences in balance: all of the bad news, the destruction, loss, suffering, etc., AND the vast beauty of our world and our own selves, then we become whole. And in that place we stand in our full creative power to shine our light, to shift the energetic field, to change the stories that will shape the future. 

--Chris Jordan