Grace and Gratitude (on reading Wall-Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass)

Lately, I have been reading a book by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass. Robin speaks of having her feet in two worlds: she is a professor of botany who leads academic research in her field, but she is also an indigenous woman with strong Native American (Potowatomi) roots. Her book is about not only the traditional craft of braiding sweetgrass (Hierochloe odorata, or "wiingaashk" in Potowatomi), but also the braiding of cultural outlooks on the world.

The author appreciates the scientific method as a way of getting at certain parts of the truth, but she equally esteems the insights of her own culture and other cultures indigenous to the continent, whose outlook is informed above all by what she calls "The Honorable Harvest".

The principles of the Honorable Harvest are hinted at well by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois confederation) custom of reciting a lengthy "Pledge of Gratitude" at the beginning of all important councils and public events. This recitation consists of enumerating in great detail a seemingly endless list of things which "all present should be able to agree deserve our collective gratitude". These include forces like the sun, the rains, trees, other animals, indeed everything essential to our own continued survival. She attributes a not insignificant role to this ceremony in the famed prowess of the Haudenosaunee at negotiations and in unifying their peoples.

This Haudenosaunee ceremony illustrates one form which the Honorable Harvest takes, a set of principles nowhere spelled out in an official law book, but which she ventures to enumerate as follows:

• Take only what is given
• Never take more than half
• Acknowledge and honor the gift
• Learn to reciprocate the gift

As radically different as such an outlook on the world seems from the perspective of contemporary, mainstream Western culture, the overarching principle here is certainly not altogether foreign to wisdom traditions common to Western civilization. It comes closest, perhaps, to the Christian principle of "grace" (χάρις), a gift of God freely given but one which it is quite impossible to "earn", only to appreciate. The Greek word is obviously related to the English word, "charity" which, while utterly distinct in meaning, preserves an element of its origins, in that, by definition, no one would ever suppose charity to be obligatory or inevitable. It is rather, above all, a gift freely given. Of course the word "gratitude" itself shares the same roots. "Gratitude" may be defined precisely as the correct attitude to be adopted by the recipient of grace.

What, we may ask, does the world look like to those for whom all of its wonders, indeed practically everything in it not made directly by our own two hands, are gifts of grace (and, of course, even every single product of our labor originates with raw materials, which are in turn gifts)?

To such a community, the Honorable Harvest becomes axiomatic.

This is not to say that people never run afoul of these principles and learn hard lessons, to the contrary. Indigenous storytelling is replete with cautionary tales of what happens to those who violate these precepts. People have always learned through bitter experience.

The author's book is certainly a sorrowful lamentation at the state of our world, and the threats to all life forms we are presently witnessing, threats she attributes clearly to our overwhelming ignorance of the Honorable Harvest. At the same time, her outlook is informed by a sweeping ecological perspective that wisely does not dwell on blame. Instead, she includes numerous vignettes of people from different walks of life, both indigenous and Euro-American, seeking to restore and rehabilitate the world around them. She compares the cultures that came to these shores after 1492 CE to the "hardy pioneer" species familiar to ecologists, and ever present in disturbed places, like clearcuts and waste spaces of modern cities and towns. They spread haphazardly without a thought of the future, so long as resources are abundant. But they cannot sustain the furious pace of their early development, and must eventually be succeeded by plant communities knit together by more stable strategies for survival.