This week, at work I finished a four-part book discussion on “Braiding Sweetgrass,” and among other things, we all came away believing we need more gratitude in our lives. So: I am grateful for time away, my wonderful family, the crocuses that came up in my yard while I was traveling, and you.
Yes, this book has made some folks think otherwise than provenance, manifest destiny, and dominion. Another nice book is “My Grandmother’s Hands.” It seems a lost ideal that animals are worthy of compassion and respect, at least in the CAFO industries and cruel caging practices and Amish Puppy Mills, etc. My chiropractor is Baptist, and, at least according to him, animals have no soul, ugh! He’s a fabulous person who shines a healer’s light, but after a certain prez was elected and the religious-right fervor was heating up, he brought his “religious right-leaning and dominance over women” into his business practice and risked his reputation in town. We still chat, but it’s so truncated and shallow now. His healing light still shines, but, it’s a stained relationship now.
We intuitively believe that we need connection not just with other people but with the soil, plants, etc. But if we romanticize Biblical texts and traditional values, we might lose this connection permanently.
Mar 24, 2023·edited Mar 24, 2023Liked by Susan Campbell
Here in our winter residence the Gullah people carry on their culture which includes braiding sweet grass. While driving you may pass road side stands that offer hand woven products. The history is rich and interesting. Not far from here in Georgetown, SC is the Gullah Museum which is on our list for places to visit. Oh and here is a fact learned from our time here. Rice was a huge cash crop for the plantation owners who enjoyed reaping profits as slaves provided free and excellent service in the mosquito infested rice fields - Africans were genetically immune to yellow fever making them more valuable than ever to their “masters” none of whom could have lasted a minute in the rice fields!
One of my favorite pieces of writing, right up there with the great Annie Dillard. Last June, as I lugged a suitcase up the sidewalk outside of Logan, I came across a young man sitting on a bench with a well-loved copy of the book open on his lap. As I passed I said, "Great book." He smiled and called after me, "This is the third time I have read it!" That says it all, I think.
I worry a bit about leading with gratitude, since we Euro-types are so accustomed to individualistic commodification that gratitude can simply find a place in our tractional mindsets rather than oversetting them.
I suspect that Robin Wall Kimmerer's approach of following through the interconnections of biological systems, with humans in them, and doing so with wonder may be more promising. I don't know, though. I flop about between the glory and hope of how our world's entities talk with each other, on the one hand, and despair about how typically US humans reject thinking about systems on the grounds that donwanna.
(I suspect some influence from the think-it-to-manifest-it and not-stuck-in-the-reality-economy crowds.)
And maybe part of the rejection is that all that interconnection means that what we humans do changes the world, for good ***or*** for ill, a promise and a terror. (So use the seven-generations guideline, for Pete's sake!)
I'm reading it now. Beautiful book. It is a great tragedy of world history that instead of learning gratitude for the abundance of the lands they were colonizing in North America, the Europeans brought and imposed their own mean, stingy, greedy attitudes of scarcity.
Yes, this book has made some folks think otherwise than provenance, manifest destiny, and dominion. Another nice book is “My Grandmother’s Hands.” It seems a lost ideal that animals are worthy of compassion and respect, at least in the CAFO industries and cruel caging practices and Amish Puppy Mills, etc. My chiropractor is Baptist, and, at least according to him, animals have no soul, ugh! He’s a fabulous person who shines a healer’s light, but after a certain prez was elected and the religious-right fervor was heating up, he brought his “religious right-leaning and dominance over women” into his business practice and risked his reputation in town. We still chat, but it’s so truncated and shallow now. His healing light still shines, but, it’s a stained relationship now.
We intuitively believe that we need connection not just with other people but with the soil, plants, etc. But if we romanticize Biblical texts and traditional values, we might lose this connection permanently.
Here in our winter residence the Gullah people carry on their culture which includes braiding sweet grass. While driving you may pass road side stands that offer hand woven products. The history is rich and interesting. Not far from here in Georgetown, SC is the Gullah Museum which is on our list for places to visit. Oh and here is a fact learned from our time here. Rice was a huge cash crop for the plantation owners who enjoyed reaping profits as slaves provided free and excellent service in the mosquito infested rice fields - Africans were genetically immune to yellow fever making them more valuable than ever to their “masters” none of whom could have lasted a minute in the rice fields!
One of my favorite pieces of writing, right up there with the great Annie Dillard. Last June, as I lugged a suitcase up the sidewalk outside of Logan, I came across a young man sitting on a bench with a well-loved copy of the book open on his lap. As I passed I said, "Great book." He smiled and called after me, "This is the third time I have read it!" That says it all, I think.
I worry a bit about leading with gratitude, since we Euro-types are so accustomed to individualistic commodification that gratitude can simply find a place in our tractional mindsets rather than oversetting them.
I suspect that Robin Wall Kimmerer's approach of following through the interconnections of biological systems, with humans in them, and doing so with wonder may be more promising. I don't know, though. I flop about between the glory and hope of how our world's entities talk with each other, on the one hand, and despair about how typically US humans reject thinking about systems on the grounds that donwanna.
(I suspect some influence from the think-it-to-manifest-it and not-stuck-in-the-reality-economy crowds.)
And maybe part of the rejection is that all that interconnection means that what we humans do changes the world, for good ***or*** for ill, a promise and a terror. (So use the seven-generations guideline, for Pete's sake!)
I'm reading it now. Beautiful book. It is a great tragedy of world history that instead of learning gratitude for the abundance of the lands they were colonizing in North America, the Europeans brought and imposed their own mean, stingy, greedy attitudes of scarcity.