“This abundance of berries feels like a pure gift from the land. I have not earned, paid for, nor labored for them. There is no mathematics of worthiness that reckons I deserve them in any way. And yet here they are—along with the sun and the air and the birds and the rain, gathering in the towers of cumulonimbi. You could call them natural resources or ecosystem services, but the Robins and I know them as gifts. We both sing gratitude with our mouths full.
“…To name the world as gift is to feel one’s membership in the web of reciprocity. It makes you happy—and it makes you accountable. Conceiving of something as a gift changes your relationship to it in a profound way, even though the physical makeup of the “thing” has not changed.
“You might rightly observe that we no longer live in small, insular societies, where generosity and mutual esteem structure our relations. But we could. It is within our power to create such webs of interdependence, quite outside the market economy. …The real human needs that such arrangements address are exactly what we long for yet cannot ever purchase: being valued for your own unique gifts, earning the regard of your neighbors for the quality of your character, not the quantity of your possessions; what you give, not what you have.“
Excerpts from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essay “The Serviceberry” in Emergence Magazine which is just so good and worthy of a long read or listen this weekend of all weekends.
2 Comments
Beautiful
Have been listening to Braiding Sweetgrass, and reading several Native American women writers at the moment. Robin is brilliant, as are the other writers, sharing simple, yet profound wisdom. The words comfort me, give me some hope, and also fill me with a longing for all that we have lost via the arrogance of our colonist forebears. ♥️
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