Hey there, I am sharing something special with you this week. It's an episode of No Small

Endeavor, a podcast that explores hope in challenging times. So these days, our culture is marked by

political unrest, polarization, and anxiety. Beauty and art feel like a luxury or even a distraction.

In a special series, no small endeavor is asking,

what if art, beauty, and poetry are exactly what we need to face the crisis at hand?

Can poetry help us, protest, pray, lament, and even hope?

Host Lisi Camp talks to poets like Hale Liza Gafori, a poet musician and acclaimed translator

of the Persian poet Rumi, and Padra Gautuma,

poet theologian and host of poetry on bound. Their conversations evoke thoughtfulness

about how to fight for beauty in the current climate and how to make it through the fires of

our times together. In this episode, Lee talks to Joy Harjo, a musician, author, and three-term U.S. Poet Laureate. Camp and Harjo really explore how poetry can act as a form of justice, a practice of self-development, and a tiny experiment in healing. The episode asks what it means to live a good life in an age of crisis, climate change, technological upheaval, and cultural fracture. Poetry, Harjo reminds us,

is a way of being human, an act of authentic human flourishing, even in the hardest times.

Okay, here comes the episode. You can listen to this series and more on No Small Endeavor,

wherever you get podcasts.

I'm Lee C. Camp, and this is No no small endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life.

Poetry, it's ceremonial language that taps on your heart and says, okay, let's pay attention here.

That's three-term U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo on this, the first in our three-part poetry

series.

So my work came about out of a need for healing.

I mean, justice is part of that.

We discussed the native poets who inspired her, the importance of history and place in her writing and her new book, Girl Warrior.

That's some of the most subtle kindness, perhaps, is to look at somebody and see them.

...