What Can I Give?

 
 

The other day I made a strange, but now beloved purchase: I bought a long-handled “grabber.” I had never imagined myself needing a tool like this… and yet I’ve found myself wanting this for a few months now. It all began with a Sit Spot…

For months, I’ve been going daily to sit on a bench by the lake near my apartment. Sit Spot is a form of mindfulness meditation, a practice that invites me to open my senses to the natural world, as well as a practice that reveals to me what’s on my mind, and often results in greater clarity and calm.

I have received so much from this practice of paying attention, and even before these recent months of Sit Spot, I have received so much from this lake where I live. 

This lake offers an edge around which to walk—alone, with a friend, with my husband. The peace and beauty of this space holds my silence, holds our conversation. This lake provides water for Cypresses, Pines, Willows, and Eucalyptus that grow around it, and the trees offer a stable, comforting energy. Blackberries grow at one end, and some of these berries have made their way into my baking.

Birds, birds and more birds are drawn to this space—even though it is bounded by busy streets, Great Blue Herons, Black-Crowned Night Herons, Mallards, Ruddy Ducks, Bluebirds, Red-Shouldered Hawks, and so many more beautiful solitary and social creatures make their lives on this lake. I feel lucky to walk among them. I feel humbled by the grace with which they live their wild lives amidst the ruckus of traffic, paddle-boaters, skateboarders, and children at play.

I receive from all of these beings much more than I can say: my curiosity is stimulated, my heart is eased, my screen-tired eyes and mind are refreshed again and again. As poet Mary Oliver wrote in When I am Among the Trees, “I would almost say that they save me, and daily.”

Realizing what I have received leads straight to sincere gratitude. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “The next step in our cultural evolution, if we are to persist as a species on this beautiful planet, is to expand our protocols for gratitude to the living Earth. Gratitude is most powerful as a response to the Earth because it provides an opening to reciprocity, to the act of giving back.”

What it has taken me years to understand (and what I am still learning to understand) is that I am not just enjoying the lake (and the trees, and the birds, etc), I am in relationship with the lake (and the trees, and the birds, etc). And healthy relationships are reciprocal: each party in the relationship offers their gifts to the other, each party wants the other to flourish, and is willing to offer their support to the other.

Kimmerer expands beautifully on reciprocity: ”The premise of Earth asking something of me—of me!—makes my heart swell. I celebrate the implicit recognition of the Earth’s animacy, that the living planet has the capacity to ask something of us and that we have the capacity to respond. We are not passive recipients of her gifts, but active participants in her well-being. We are honored by the request. It lets us know that we belong.”

What can I give to the one who has everything? What can I give to the one who has supported me like a parent, like a therapist, like a friend? 

I can start by giving what I can give, using what I have. I have eyes and hands… which leads me back, finally, to the “grabber” tool. 

I have often seen community groups doing beach clean-ups on the mostly-clean beach nearby, but I have never seen a lake clean-up, and it is sorely needed. Cigarette butts are scattered in front of the benches, along with an empty can here, a bottle there. Paper plates from picnics drift to become wedged among the reeds. Face masks catch in the grasses at the edge. Fishing line and lure remnants festoon some of the trees. 

Here is what I can do! Little by little, with my grabber to save my back and knees, I can remove the leavings of my fellow humans from this beautiful space. I can’t do it all at once, and it won’t be a task that ends, since more will always be added… but it is something I can do, offering my hands and eyes in service of all of us in this community of beings.

What else can we do? This is what David Whyte might call, “a beautiful question” – a question that we can live into, that will take us places, if we let it. 

What gifts do you have that you would offer to the earth or the beings of the earth? Perhaps, like Robin Wall Kimmerer, you might write or teach about the wonders of the earth. Perhaps your gift is art, to paint, to sing a song to the land, to make a nature mandala by the path. Perhaps you are drawn to ceremony, creating meaningful rituals of connection and care. 

There are other things that only we humans can do, like use our brains and voices to speak for the earth, or use our votes or our money in support of the earth. We can be of service by volunteering, we can identify and remove invasive plants… even simple, seemingly whimsical acts like putting out the hair from your hairbrush for birds to use in their nests, are ways to be in relationship.

And let us not discount wonder. Micah Mortali wrote, “You have a capacity for beholding the wonder of life on earth, and when you do that, you allow the universe to contemplate itself through you.” Could the very wonder and awe that you receive as a gift from the natural world be a gift that you offer back? (This spins my head… in a good way!

What about you? How do you cultivate your relationship with the natural world? How might you deepen or expand the relationship? How might you offer your gifts back?

May you give and receive with joy,

Katie

🌼 Learn from the Natural World:

OutdoorsKatie Dutcher