Forest: Fields of generosity
Some podcast themes
Interconnectedness: Recognizing that all life depends on relationships
Generosity just is: Learning from the forest about the nature of wealth and our relationship to it
Restoring the village: Removing barriers and extending invitations, so people can more easily do what they naturally do
Providing reasons to connect: Focusing on a topic or task even when the real outcomes are relationships, reconciliation and trust
Using spaces we already have: Making room for gatherings in our homes, communities and organizations
Related resources
Suzanne Simard
TED Talk (2016). "‘A forest is much more than what you see,’ says ecologist Suzanne Simard. Her 30 years of research in Canadian forests have led to an astounding discovery — trees talk, often and over vast distances. Learn more about the harmonious yet complicated social lives of trees and prepare to see the natural world with new eyes.”
More from Suzanne Simard
Book: Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (2021)
Video presentation hosted by the Long Now Foundation: Mother Trees and the Social Forest (2021)
“Simard's extraordinary research and tenacious efforts to raise awareness on the interconnectedness of forest systems, both above and below ground, has revolutionized our understanding of forest ecology. Dr. Suzanne Simard is a Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia.”
Tara Brach
Article: Waking from the Trance of Unworthiness by Tara Brach (2001)
Our most fundamental sense of well-being is derived from the conscious experience of belonging. Relatedness is essential to survival. When we feel part of the whole, connected to our bodies, each other, and the living Earth, there is a sense of inherent rightness, of being wakeful and in love. The experience of universal belonging is at the heart of all mystical traditions. In realizing non-separation, we come home to our primordial and true nature….
Never in the history of the world has the belief in a separate self been so exaggerated and prevalent as it is now in the twenty-first century in the West….Our desperate efforts to enhance and protect this fragile self have caused an unprecedented degree of severed belonging at all levels in our society. In our attempts to dominate the natural world, we have separated ourselves from the Earth. In our efforts to prove and defend ourselves, we have separated ourselves from each other. Managing life from our mental control towers, we have separated ourselves from our bodies and hearts.
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Quote: “People have grown weary of the sour taste in their mouths. A great longing is upon us, to live again in a world made of gifts.” —Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
Excerpt: “What Does the Earth Ask of Us?” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, presented at the Halifax Nocturne 2020: Echolocation, curated by Lindsay Dobbin
As human people, one of our first responsibilities, we're told, is for gratitude. And I want to just remember and have perhaps us all collectively think about the moment when we first put our feet on Mother Earth this morning, that indeed we had everything that we need. We had that drink of water, we had that sweet air to breathe, we had food to eat, we had the companionship of clouds, and birds and spruces. We had the privilege of our shared work, gratitude for each other as people, and for the human beings and the more than human beings with whom we share the earth.
When we are grounded in that gratitude, we know that we live in a world made of gifts. None of these—the bloodroot, the robin and the strawberries—do we deserve or have we earned. They are all gifts. And even though we live in this shower of gifts, we find ourselves harnessed, many of us, to institutions and to an economy that relentlessly asks us, what more can we take? What more can we take from the earth? And to my mind, this worldview of unbridled exploitation is the greatest threat to that life, which abounds around us. Isn't the question we need, not what can we take, but what does the earth ask of us?
Chené Swart
Hosting practice: The giving and receiving of gifts, by Chené Swart. From “Re-authoring the World: Unfolding Ideas and Practices” (pdf)
The giving and receiving of gifts, is a very important re-dignifying practice because it enables connectedness where we are seen and see others. This practice also creates the possibility to experience our connectedness with one another in the web of stories. As we listen to the storyteller or organisation/community, we are touched, moved or struck by what we hear. We therefore share the offerings of our moved hearts with one another.
What were the gifts you received form each person in the group?
What were the gifts you received from the conversation?
These gifts (Block 2008) are contextual, specific, timely and created in the conversation; they can never be reproduced in the same way. As they are given, I believe these gifts are folded into the rich fabric of our “human becoming” (Winslade 2009).
We share gifts by saying: “The gift I received from you in this conversation is …”
When we receive a gift, we are invited to accept the gift with a “thank you” and not to diminish the gift by saying things like: “I was born like this”, “It is nothing special”, or “There are other people who are better at this than I am”. When human beings share gifts with one another, they open richer descriptions of one another’s identities that also help participants to understand which gifts they are already bringing to their communities or the organisation and which gifts they want to bring even more fully.
Reflection: From “The Abundance Challenge” by Chene Swart and Olivia Saunders. This excerpt is by Olivia.
The underlying assumption of the scarcity of goods, services and resources of the economics profession haunted me for a long while without even realising why it was such an enigma. After all, it was the mantra I recited from my high school years. I repeatedly instruct my students – “Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources”.
But, the tomatoes on the tomato plant that arose from ‘nowhere’ in my yard shattered the myth of scarcity for me and, at the same time, the religious fervour I held for economics.
One little wild cherry tomato, no more than 3cm in diameter, held 65 seeds! Yes, the counting of the seeds was tedious, but at the same time, astounding. 65 possibilities in one tomato for future plants. Each of those plants an opportunity for many more tomatoes, which have further potentials for future plants! In that instant, the mystery was solved. The myth of scarcity was exposed. How I looked at every plant, every fruit, every animal was now different. Each, in their own way, represents potentials and possibilities; each a revelation of abundance, a revelation that there is, in fact, enough. None of them is lesser, and therefore none is more than another in their capacity for expressing abundance.
Because abundance is the natural order of things, so is generosity, so is neighbourliness. So are so many other qualities that were once stultified by an acceptance of scarcity.
Personal and group practice
Video: with Chris Corrigan, Toke Moeller, Jerry Nagel & others