All In the Giving of Thanks

And Remembering True Meanings

Nov 29, 2024

I struggled this week, of all weeks, to find inspiration to write. “Of all weeks” because this week, of all weeks, we are supposed to muster up gratitude and gratefulness for all the gifts we have…and to give thanks.

Are you like me and detest holiday’s of obligation? (Takes me back to my Catholic alter boy days when we honored the Holy Days of Obligation.) You know the ones, the one’s I also call the Hallmark Days of Obligation: Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day. And almost nowadays, Thanksgiving Day (hold your judgment for a sec!). I won’t touch how we lost Christmas years ago to the gods of capitalism.
Look, I’m a proud dad of two AMAZING individuals (and one who’s worn wings from the day of his birth), but I don’t like Father’s Day for the sense of obligation it plants into daughters and sons to make note of the day, and the man, with some kind of extra effort; but also the expectation it plants into the father himself, if the man be shallow enough, that “his day” get’s recognized with special love (of the Hallmark kind at the very least). We humans are so silly with our obligations and expectations—and how they feed off of each other. I say this with all sincerity, every day my kids (who are adults now) are alive and thriving and happy is the only Father’s Day recognition and affirmation I need—so every day is Father’s Day for me. And I mean EVERY day. I am because they are, just as much as they are because I am. It’s reciprocal, this love—and it never needs its own day because it has its every day. (You’ll see in another sec what I did just there).

Like I said, I struggled to write something that was aligned with the spirit of what yesterday, Thanksgiving Day, is supposed to be and mean. I aspire every day to live a life of gratefulness and devote daily moments in formal gratitude practice. So to “honor” the day differently, when it should be my daily practice, seems, just as Father’s Day has come to be for me, inauthentic. Aside, of course, from great vegan food, great football, and great family visits (not necessarily in that order).

Nowadays, I’m also very attuned to the fact that not every American sees this week, this one day, yesterday, as something to be proud of or to celebrate. Too many people remain in profound poverty; too many people remain unhoused; too many people will go hungry as millions of pounds of food are thrown out over the course of this four day weekend. WAY too many of them are children. And too many cultures, entire peoples, get reminded every year of how their fundamental way of living was stolen from them by the invaders known as the Pilgrims. I wrote on that last year (found here) at this Thanksgiving time and I almost reposted it this week as a means of “being done with” my weekly commitment to write and post—given my lack of motivation and all. But that didn’t feel right to me. I always want this space to be a meaningful engagement—if it’s just with me and my own thoughts rattling about in my own mind and heart with nary a reader in sight, that’s okay, I still benefit from the experience. If others are here and actually read my words, for that I am always grateful…and yes, even give thanks. Which is my way of saying I never “just want to mail it in.” If even one person is going to take the time to read, even if I’m that one person, I want the words to be fresh, newly surfaced into the world, and genuinely given from my heart.

These words are that.

But, like I said, I struggled with motivation this week…motivation to be fresh and authentic and not just because of the holiday obligation. And then I got some inspiration from this week, inspiration that came, in part, in the form of a cultural event my wife and I attended in Seattle on Sunday. I’ll write more about this in a couple weeks but the inspiration that surfaced was from a much-admired Elder of the Indigenous Potawatomi Nation: Robin Wall Kimmerer. She’s been on my mind because in a couple weeks my wife and I will have the privilege of seeing and hearing her speak live, as part of the Seattle Arts and Lectures series, upon the celebrated release of her new book: The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World.

In thinking about a brief but meaningful post for this week, the inspiration that I’m very excited to share with you comes from Dr. Kimmerer’s best selling book: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. THIS book is in the top five of my all time favorite books I’ve ever read, and it’s a book I have gifted to others (and I don’t often gift books to others).

Thanksgiving Day, Thanksgiving Week now, prompts me to seriously consider what we’ve gained from indigenous wisdom, and what we’ve lost, to our great peril, by ignoring both the wisdom and the Elders that wisdom traveled through. I grew up on the Yakama Indian Reservation in south-central Washington State. Not being a member of the tribe, I didn’t fully appreciate the history, geographical/environmental memory, or the wisdom and traditions that surrounded me by the families of the friends I had, my classmates, who were members of the tribe. But I appreciate it now. And so that was my inspiration—to include some beautiful words from a Native Elder on the mindset and heart we need to be cultivating now, and evermore, as we move forward, together, on the only life-sustaining planet known to us. So here are a few passages from Dr. Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass that seemed to speak to this moment, through me as one of the millions of her devoted readers, to recognize what should be the true meaning of Giving Thanks:

Whether we are growing wild leeks or going to the mall, how do we consume in a way that does justice to the lives that we take?
In our oldest stories, we are reminded that this was a question of profound concern for our ancestors. When we rely deeply on other lives, there is urgency to protect them. Our ancestors, who had so few material possessions, devoted a great deal of attention to this question, while we who are drowning in possessions scarcely give it a thought. The cultural landscape may have changed, but the conundrum has not—the need to resolve the inescapbable tension between honroing life around us and taking it in order to live is part of being human.
(p. 177)

Collectively, the indigenous canon of principles and practices that govern the exchange of life for life is known as the Honorable Harvest. They are rules of sorts that govern our taking, shape our relationships with the natural world, and rein in our tendency to consume—that the world might be as rich for the seventh generation as it is for our own. The details are highly specific to different cultures and ecosystems, but the fundamental principles are nearly universal among peoples who live close to the land.
(p. 180)

The guidelines for the Honorable Harvest are not written down, or even consistently spoken of as a whole—they are reinforced in small acts of daily life. But if you were to list them, they might look something like this:
- Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
- Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.
- Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
- Never take the first. Never take the last.
- Take only what you need.
- Take only that which is given.
- Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
- Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
- Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
- Give thanks for what you have been given.
- Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
- Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.
(p. 183)

The Honorable Harvest is not just about the taking of food from the land, although it is very much about that too. The Honorable Harvest is about a kind of gratitude that affirms and sustains life—the Honorable Harvest is a Giving of Thanks. And it’s a way of life, a way of Being in this world.

The Haudenosaunee Peoples have also captured in words that extend from, and are given back to, all the beings and things, all the members of the natural world, from which they have benefitted. It is called the Thanksgiving Address. As an example:

To the waters they say:
We give thanks to all the Waters of the world. We are grateful that the waters are still here doing their duty of sustaining life on Mother Earth. Water is life, quenching our thirst and providing us with strength, making the plants grow and sustaining us all. Let us gather our minds together and with one mind, we send greetings and thanks to the Waters.
These words reflect the sacred purpose of the people.
(p. 311)

No culture or peoples are perfect though. Even the Indigenous peoples of this land when it comes to the care taking of this land. We all can succumb to the destruction that is ungratefulness. Kimmerer warns us from the experience of the Haudenosaunee:

Stories are told of long ago times when the Haudenosaunee people did forget to live in gratitude. They became greedy and jealous and began fighting among themselves. Conflict brought only more conflict, until war between the nations became continuous. Soon grief was known in every longhouse and yet the violence went on. All were suffering.
(p. 311)

Sound familiar? Perhaps we know why now. Gratitude seems to be in too short of supply.

Robin Wall Kimmerer ends Braiding Sweetgrass with these words:

The moral covenant of reciprocity calls us to honor our responsibilities for all we have been given, for all that we have taken. It’s our turn now, long overdue. Let us hold a giveaway for Mother Earth, spread our blankest out for her and pile them high with gifts of our own making. Imagine the books, the paintings, the poems, the clever machines, the compassionate acts, the transcendent ideas, the perfect tools. The fierce defense of all that has been given. Gifts of mind, hands, heart, voice, and vision all offered up on behalf of earth. Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and to dance for the renewal of the world.
In return for the privilege of breath.
(p. 384)

This week, right now, I am giving thanks for the privilege of breath. And it is not lost on me from whence it comes.

**Robin Wall Kimmerer** (born September 13, 1953) is a Potawatomi botanist, author, and the 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). As a scientist and a Native American, Kimmerer is informed in her work by both Western science and indigenous environmental knowledge.

Remembering True Meanings: The Moral Covenant of Reciprocity

(or why Thanksgiving = Ubuntu = Reciprocity)

The reason for my lack of motivation this week was perhaps due to me needing a new inspiration on the meaning of Thanksgiving; or rather, a remembering. Seems I had more to learn even as I had read these words before. We humans are like that, aren’t we. Always needing to be retaught on the same lessons—usually the most important ones too. Rereading the passages from Braiding Sweetgrass, coupled with Ubuntu, has shown me I was rarely taught, from family or culture, the meaning of Thanksgiving in its truest form—the form of reciprocity.

In its truest meaning, to give Thanks transcends mere words and (sorry about this) Hallmark cards. Reciprocity, like the Honorable Harvest as a profound example, is the act of returning a benefit in kind to some thing, some being, because that thing, that being, has added meaning or benefit to us. We do this not out of obligation—gratefulness is never authentic when done by expectation or obligation. We extend reciprocity, reciprocal action, because of Ubuntu—we are because other beings are (we are because pure water is; we are because clean air is; we are because the food plants are; we are because the animals who eat the food plants are; we are because Mother Earth is. And so the same for every other thing in which we have a connection—and what thing in the world aren’t we connected to?)

At one time, and even still (though likely not us anymore), among some cultures not caught up in the race and trap of possessions, we humans, as a people, knew the true meaning of Thanksgiving. It wasn’t reserved for one day; it was simply the sacred way of Being upon this land in relationship with all other Beings—of recognizing all things are Beings in their own right and have the same life force inherently in them as we do, and that when we take that life force from them for our own sustenance, we do so with a profound sense of knowing and gratitude; reciprocity is the act of approaching with reverence every moment, and all things in that moment, on a planet some know as “the pale blue dot” in a not-so-distinct section of the vast infinity currently known as our Universe—the only planet, out of perhaps a billion billion others, of which we know gives life to life. The only one.

We should always be thankful for that.

🤘🏼

Make this day meaningful.

BE well. Breathe.

~ kert

🙏🏼

I offer these words up on behalf of Mother Earth, in humble reciprocity.