Sermon given by Joanna Fortna, July 24, 2022.
If you looked in the arts section of the Globe this morning you would see the list of Top 10 nonfiction bestsellers and the book, Braiding Sweetgrass is listed there at the top, as it has been consistently for several months now. Books about nature rarely make it to the bestseller’s list and if they do they don’t stay long, so what is it about the book Braiding Sweetgrass, a book that was published in 2013, that has staying power? Why is it a book that resonates with so many people? Why now? I admit, I was one of the people who read this book when it was first was published, enjoyed it and then it sat on my bookshelf as “book friend” where occasionally I would pull it off the shelf and leaf through it in search of ideas or inspiration. This year when I had the opportunity to facilitate a small group of fellow church members in a 6- week exploration of this book, I read it again with the attention one gives as a discussion leader. I thought I might tire of it, but what I found was that my connection with book was enlivened by the collective wisdom of our group and I am ready to lead another group in the future.
The book’s many threads focus on indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. We learn lessons from the plants, the strawberries, the maples, the moss and the lichen, the sweet grass. We learn about indigenous wisdom in contrast to the often damaging values and destructive actions of our consumer-oriented economy and culture. We learn about reciprocity, gratitude and the ways that science and indigenous wisdom complement each other rather than exclude or compete. We were reminded of the importance of ritual, like the Thanksgiving Address and our own Sunday morning worship each week, even on this very hot day.
So much of what I learned by exploring Braiding Sweetgrass, particularly in conversation with a group is the realization that there are many of the subjects covered in this book were things that I already knew, but the trajectory of my life had pushed me away from the natural world, so much so that my fascination and love for plants was something I remembered with nostalgia. I have memories of a young me, sitting on the lawn and looking at the blades of grass and of plantain and violets, the clumps of flowering clover and imagining a world of miniature people who lived there. I remember sitting there and looking at the hollyhocks along the fence line and hiding under the voluminous skirt of the forsythia. I remember looking for four leaf clovers and crying when my father mowed the lawn in the spring because the dandelions and violets would be mowed down along with the grass. In high school my senior project was for an ecology class where I spent much of the year researching edible wild plants and then trying to prepare them for my sheepish family to eat as part of my project. I was passionate about finding ways for the forest to feed my family and living in the Pocono mountains made it easy for me seek out new ideas. I still love the natural world but I admit that I am at least one step removed from where I used to be, and I am more willing to distance myself behind a window glass or to rush through a patch of woods instead of pausing to take in all the beauty and the animacy of the natural world around me.
One evening as our book discussion progressed, I noticed that the group had drifted away from the agenda for the evening and the discussion was taking on a life of its own. We began to share our own wisdom about plants and our own particular knowledge of the plant and animal world. Instead of just sharing stories of human relations, about ourselves and our families, we were sharing stories about plants or rare turtles. We were sharing our collective wisdom and connecting to the natural world as a group in a way I had not experienced in a long time. It turns out that we all have plants and animals that we admired or that we had harvested on our back decks, elders who taught us about plants. I really enjoyed getting to know my church friends through the plant and animal world, sharing different stories. I now know to check in with Sarina about the spring migration of turtles in her backyard and maybe ask Jessa about that patch of Sweetgrass on her property so I can go and smell the grass that is supposed to be so beautiful. Or maybe I will walk the labyrinth in Tom and Patrick’s yard. I am very grateful for our chance to share our collective wisdom about plants.
Few among us would argue that expressing gratitude is not a good thing, yet why is it not a priority in our culture. Robin Wall Kimmerer states that without a sense of scarcity and emptiness our consumer driven culture we would lose the strong motivator to need more because we would know that we had more than enough to be grateful for each day.
Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you say your entire life is ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.” The older I get, the more I agree with this. After going through cancer treatment almost ten years ago I started a new spiritual practice. Every morning I would awaken and express my gratitude with these words: thank you for life, thank you for love, thank you for hope or sometimes more quickly, thank you for life, love and hope. Being a survivor of a life threatening illness opened me to the understanding that I had every reason to be grateful for being alive. Even when I am feeling rushed or preoccupied, I make every effort to pause and repeat these words to open my heart to a new day and the spaciousness of gratitude. So when Kimmerer, included a chapter titled, “Allegiance to Gratitude” I was immediately drawn to it. In this chapter she describes hearing the Thanksgiving Address that we heard this morning, at a tribal school in upstate New York, where the students recite it each day. As you heard the words of the thanksgiving Address, she was sharing a cultural tradition from the Haudenosaunee people of reciting a long invocation of gratitude to the natural world. This practice of gratitude teaches us to pay attention to all the aspects of the ecology, and when recited, provide a foundation for thinking about starting a new day or sometimes a business meeting with a grateful heart. Its length forces us to stay with this focus for almost 8 minutes, a commitment to bringing the attention away from our soundbite society.
So much of this book challenges the reader to go beyond our culture’s human centric thinking, When I was saying my prayer of thanks I was focusing on the people who helped me and the hope for continued health and that is good, but I wasn’t’ thinking about all the other forces that are keeping me alive every day. Like so many things in her book she reminds to pay attention to things I already know, but are generally not the focus of my day. Why wouldn’t I be grateful for all the things in the natural world beyond humans, the air, our water, the earth, the plants and animals all of which are responsible for keeping all of us alive each day on this earth. This reminds us that we need all living things to exist, even those things we might be annoyed by like the bees and the mosquitoes.
As we heard with the reading of the Thanksgiving address, the Haudenosaunee people invite us think hear this “river of words” and to let them pour over us with reminders that every day, I am grateful for many things, but I must remember, and why shouldn’t I, that I would not be alive without the air I breathe, the water I drink, the earth I walk upon, the plants that do their spectacular photosynthesis, that feed us and the animals, the animals that populate the earth, the sun and the moon. These area not trite things to be grateful, these are things that ensure our existence and their existence as well. I might be stirred to protect them as well.
As we endure this prolonged heat wave along with others across the country, there is no denying that our planet is in trouble. The consequences of our culture’s indifference to the natural world and the need for living in balance and harmony is not just a quaint idea. A shared gratitude for the natural world may seem a bit late now, but the imperative to listen has never been more necessary. Having intentional conversation with the other aspects of our lives beyond the human, making it a priority to preserve and love all living beings, bringing into constant focus the need be in proximity to nature instead of viewing through the window or on the screen.
In these times, I have been envisioning a practice of gratitude that extends beyond the personal to the broader world, that reminds me of my eternal “debt of gratitude” that Robin Wall kimmerer refers to in her chapter, Allegiance to Gratitude. A type of gratitude I am naming as a very real and necessary gratitude. How do you perceive the world and what do we learn by listening to the thanksgiving address? Do we hear an echo ourselves and a deeper knowledge that gratitude should extend beyond humans and the relationships I have with people, all very important but extending to all the creatures that are amongst us and that we depend upon all the time? Western culture had so detached itself from other living beings that it was only in 2012 that an international consortium of scientists signed the Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness, that all animals actually possess and consciousness that should be considered in ethical decisions. How far we had all removed ourselves from nature to justify our taking, our mining, our overconsumption, our polluting.
As she points out in her chapter, “learning the grammar of animacy,” she, as a scientist and professor takes her students into the woods not only to study and learn the Latin names and the scientific processes of botany, she encourages them to hear the language of the woods, that the world is peopled with trees and animals, and that rocks, and mountains and water are animate too. That to use the language of family for the natural world brings us humans into relationship and conversation with the natural world. She speaks of the arrogance of English with its grammar structured to make only humans animate and worthy of more or ethical concern. Our fear of and disdain for anthropomorphism is quite foolish.
How do we listen to the plants and other parts of the natural world? And if you’re like me, how do I intentionally remember what I already knew but had forgotten? Listen to the natural world, not in some silly way, but in a profound way. Pay attention to what really is happening in the world around and what is really happening in the ecologies even on the hottest of days. The earth is alive and as a child I knew it. The animals and plants do tell their stories by what they do. Our proximity and attention to nature is not a whim but an imperative, the off shoot of which is our joy of returning. We should know their names, and relate.
Expressing gratitude does create a shift inside us. And despite all the ways that Kimmerer, a native American herself, could be negative or cynical she remains remarkably optimistic in her view of the world. There is a compelling reason that her book is number one on the bestsellers list in this consumer culture. She challenges her readers to live into their gratitude. She says, “while expressing gratitude seems innocent enough, it is a revolutionary idea, you can’t listen to the Thanksgiving Address without feeling wealthy.”
As the beginning of the Thanksgiving address states: Today we have gathered and when we look upon the faces around us we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things” Let us be grateful for “this river of words” we heard this morning. Let us be grateful for the Haudenosaunee people for wanting us to hear their sacred words and may we honor and respect them by knowing they are a part of their culture and we are here to learn the lessons and create our own rituals. Let us be grateful for this community of beloved congregants who are willing to learn from others, let us imagine teaching our children that expressing gratitude is a high priority, a very real and necessary ritual. Let us be grateful for our open hearts and our open minds. Let us be grateful for this day.