By Neal Lemery
This brand new book is a delightful and fresh look at our relationship with nature and with ourselves. It explores the idea of a gift economy, rather that the dominant scarcity economy of American society. Kimmerer is the author of the provocative and groundbreaking Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants. She explores ethnobotany and the human condition from both the viewpoints of her native American heritage and her professorship in environmental and forest biology at the State University of New York.
We are in a crisis of a lack of respect for the Earth as a spiritual being, and she urges us to go beyond just consuming. Instead, be thinking of ourselves as being grateful, to be givers and in that practice, receive abundance. She speaks of seeking a culture of reciprocity and gratitude, and to be gift givers of both cultural and ecological value, rather than consumers of material goods.
Giving on a small scale builds community, and a culture of a purpose-driven life, and being grateful.
I found her message to be one of deep hope, of building respect for ourselves, each other, our community and the natural world, of which we are a vital part. We should practice practical relevance. It is a book that refreshed me and gave me excitement and a fresh approach to our community life.
“The prosperity of the community grows from the flow of relationship, not from the accumulation of goods.”
“I want to live in a society where the currency of exchange is gratitude and the infinitely renewable resource of kindness, which multiplies every time it is shared rather than depreciating with use.”
Tbe Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2024)(112 pages) available at Cloud & Leaf in Manzanita
