154 quotes
If the Sun is the source of flow in the economy of nature, what is the "Sun" of a human gift economy, the source that constantly replenishes the flow of gifts? Maybe it is love.
The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (2024)
A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. And its power goes far beyond the garden gate—once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself.
Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.
Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
Being a good mother doesn't end with creating a home where just my children can flourish. A good mother grows into a richly eutrophic old woman, knowing that her work doesn't end until she creates a home where all of life's beings can flourish.
Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
We are showered every day with gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and the exhale of our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put out into the universe will always come back.
Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
There is no formula complex enough to hold the birthplace of stories.
The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (2024)
You'd think that biologists, of all people, would have words for life. But in scientific language our terminology is used to define the boundaries of our knowing. What lies beyond our grasp remains unnamed.
Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
Tahawus is the Algonquin name for Mount Marcy, the highest peak in the Adirondacks. It’s called Mount Marcy to commemorate a governor who never set foot on those wild slopes. Tahawus, "the Cloud Splitter," is its true name, invoking its essential nature.
Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
We are all related, woven together in webs of reciprocal connection, where what happens to one happens to all.
The land is a sharp reflection of the worldview of the peoples who care for it, or don't.
In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition.
I wonder if much that ails our society stems from the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be cut off from that love of, and from, the land. It is medicine for broken land and empty hearts.
Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
Why is the world so beautiful? is a question that we all ought to be embracing.
On Being podcast (2022)
Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness.
Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
The world is more than your thoughtless commute. We, the collateral, are your wealth, your teachers, your security, your family. Your strange hunger for ease should not mean a death sentence for the rest of Creation.
Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
The earth, that first among good mothers, gives us the gift that we cannot provide ourselves.
This is what we field biologists live for: the chance to be outside in the vital presence of other species, who are generally way more interesting than we are. We get to sit at their feet and listen.
Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
There is an ancient conversation going on between mosses and rocks, poetry to be sure. About light and shadow and the drift of continents.
Gathering Moss (2003)
Losing a plant can threaten a culture in much the same way as losing a language. [...] The history of the plants is inextricably tied up with the history of the people, with the forces of destruction and creation.
Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don’t yet know. But what we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together.
Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)