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The Importance of Silence in A Wounded World
How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here forever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
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Robin Wall Kimmerer’s extraordinary “BraidingSweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants,” is the most epic love letter to those who have given and continue to give so much, but get only destruction in return: plants. Indigenous people, those who came before us, they knew. They practiced reciprocity with the land and never took more than they needed. That, sadly, is a contrarian notion to us.
Wall Kimmerer writes, “Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”
Since reading this book, I have begun to pray with my children. I pray to the creator to strengthen our resolve to be protectors of one another, but also to be protectors of the earth; the animals and the plants. They have given us so much and are crying out for us to give a…
