Jessica’s Reviews > Braiding Sweetgrass > Status Update

Isn't this the purpose of education, to learn the nature of your own gifts and how to use them for good in the world?

In the tedium of weaving mats and with the absence of iPods, storytellers emerge to relieve the boredom and songs arise to keep the fingers flying as if they remembered this, too.

Breathing in the scent of Mother Earth stimulates the release of the hormone oxytocin, the same chemical that promotes bonding between mother and child, between lovers. Held in loving arms, no wonder we sing in response.

What is the duty of humans? If gifts and responsibilities are one, then asking "What is our responsibility?" is the same as asking "What is our gift?"

when you don't know that a life has been given for yours, when there is no gratitude in return--that food may not satisfy. It may leave the spirit hungry while the belly is full. Something is broken when the food comes on a Styrofoam tray wrapped in slippery plastic, a carcass of a being whose only chance at life was a cramped cage. That is not a gift of life; it is a theft.

And in that transformation the relationships became as nourishing as the food I was getting.

Had all the things in the market merely been a very low price, I probably would have scooped up as much as I could. But when everything became a gift, I felt self-restraint. I didn't want to take too much. And I began thinking of what small presents I might bring to the vendors tomorrow.

i much prefer the audiobook. which is very weird.

i might be tuned into your channel