Thinking Citizen Blog — “Braiding Sweetgrass” (Kimmerer) And “Journey Of The Universe (Swimme/Tucker)
Thinking Citizen Blog: Wednesday is Climate Change, the Environment, and Sustainability Day
Today’s Topic: “Braiding Sweetgrass” (Kimmerer) and “Journey of the Universe (Swimme/Tucker)
What are your favorite books related to the environment, climate change, and sustainability?
How about favorite articles? paragraphs? sentences?
Today excerpts from two books highly recommended by an old friend and Adams House What Matters Table veteran, Brady Stevens. Thanks, Brady!
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
BRAIDING SWEETGRASS (2013) — Robin Wall Kimmerer (1953 — ), “a Potawatomi botanist, author, and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF)
1. “In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top — the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation — and plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as “the younger brothers of Creation.” We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn — we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They’ve been on earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out.”
2. “To be native to a place we must learn to speak its language. Just as you can pick out the voice of a loved one in the tumult of a noisy room, or spot your child’s smile in a sea of faces, intimate connection allow recognition in an all-too-often anonymous world. This sense of connection arises from a special kind of discrimination, a search image that comes from a long time spent looking and listening. Intimacy gives us a different way of seeing, when visual acuity is not enough.”
3. “Sometimes I wish I could photosynthesize so that just by being, just by shimmering at the meadow’s edge or floating lazily on a pond, I could be doing the work of the world while standing in the sun.”
NB: “In some Native languages the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us. 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.”
JOURNEY OF THE UNIVERSE (2011) by Brian Swimme (1950 — ) PhD in mathematics from the University of Oregon, and Mary Evelyn Tucker (1949 — ) PhD in Asian Religion from Columbia — from the miracle of creativity: exuberant life
1. “Because we know that life is an adventure involving both chaos and order we sometimes want desperately to control things. And whenever our fear grows too strong we become vulnerable to simplistic promises concerning the future. But no one knows what the future holds — all of that is hidden in the darkest night. The future is being created by all of us, and it is a messy and confusing process. What is needed is the courage to live in the midst of the ambiguities of this moment without drawing back into fear and a compulsion to control.”
2. “Are there guarantees? No. None. But there are reasons for confidence. When the universe was just quarks and leptons, could anyone have known that it was in the process of bringing forth stars and galaxies? Or later, when the earth emerged, and life existed in the form of tiny jiggling cells, could anyone have seen in them the possibilities of the bluefin tuna or a vast temperate rain forest? We find ourselves inside an amazing drama filled with danger and risk but also stunning creativity. This has happened many times in the past. Two billion years ago, when the atmosphere became so filled with oxygen, all of life was deteriorating. The only way for life of that time to survive was to burrow deep into the mud at the bottom of the oceans. The future of Earth seemed bleak. And, yet, in the midst of a crisis a new kind of life emerged, one that was not destroyed by oxygen, but was in fact energized by it. Because of the miracle of creativity, life exploded with an exuberatnce never seen before.”
3. “It is in the nature of the universe to move forward between gret tensions, between dynamic opposing forces. If the creative energies in the heart of the universe succeeded so brilliantly in the past, we have reaons to hope that such creativity will inspire us and guide us into the future. In this way our own generativity becomes woven into the vibrant communities that constitute the vast symphony of the universe.”
THREE MORE QUOTES BY BRIAN SWIMME
1. “In a culture in which cosmology is alive, children are taught by the Sun and the Moon, by the rainfall and the starlight, by the salmon run and the germinating seed.”
2. “The earth was once molten rock and now sings opera.”
3. “This is the greatest discovery of the scientific enterprise: You take hydrogen gas, and you leave it alone, and it turns into rosebushes, giraffes, and humans.”
Braiding Sweetgrass — Wikipedia
Robin Wall Kimmerer — Wikipedia
Citizen Potawatomi Nation — Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Evelyn_Tucker
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
A LINK TO THE LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED BY THEME:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IP5ATbqCWPv0WKC4dCDgAiidbFVOaqR_?usp=share_link
ATTACHMENT BELOW -
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to climate change or the environment.
Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to climate change that the rest of us may have missed. Your favorite chart or table perhaps…
This is your chance to make some one’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart.
