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I stood behind the storm door and waved handfuls of dollars to the ten-year-olds wearing aqua T-shirts, touting the message, Children ‘r’ For Us, against the backdrop of the St. Louis Arch, also stenciled in white—evidence of the kids’ week-long camp.
The milky sky seemed to energize their antics, grouped around their lemonade stand and waving down the few passing cars. Whatever their cause, they were solidly behind it.
It took a while before they noticed my opened door, and a black boy took the lead, his smile deepening the closer he came to my porch. Others grinned, hurried to keep up, curious, no doubt, of the amount in my hand. To my surprise, the black boy bowed from the waist, tented his palms, and said, “Namaste.” Other thanks followed. Someone even said, “God bless you.” Smiling eyes knew, somehow, yet, only a few of the kids were known to me.
Over the years, I’d contributed to other lemonade stands set up on the corner upon which my bungalow sits, but never received such gratitude like this afternoon’s. Whatever was going on, the parents of these kids knew what was essential: love, and they taught it well to their children, its surprise shimmering of an Unknown Presence.
During meditation, fragrant balm from this text soothed my psyche and enlarged the sense of my destiny:
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth…the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
From the book of Revelation 21: 1 –5.
Only willingness is necessary to participate in this vision.
For decades, walks on wooded trails pleasured me with intense beauty, but simultaneously left me aching to articulate the experience. I did not have exact words to name trees, wild grasses, birds, flowers—indeed the seasonal world around me, Creator God’s continuous gift.
Then, a friend alerted me to Braiding Sweetgrass—Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants (2013), written by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a SUNY professor of botany, a researcher, an author, an ecologist, and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. This collection of essays is not book to finish but to savor as antidote for the global ills that sap our humanness.
Critical to this process is Kimmerer’s ability to intuit stories of healing in the natural world, as did her ancestors, who left rich legacies to supplant the wash-out technologies that imperil our world even further.
The sacredness of the land is also central. With its accompanying mindset of gift, gratitude, and generosity, braided within stories of her tribe, her students, and her ongoing ecological research, the author enlivens fresh hope in her readers who continue buying her book. Indeed, all of life contains modalities for this restoration and embellishment, if sought after.
I wonder what would have happened if the Native Americans had colonized the European settlers to the New World, rather than what occurred.
Braiding Sweetgrass empowered me with its simplicity and wisdom of language; its spiritual nourishment. I’m glad whenever I peruse its pages.
Heart Whisperings 