“A gift is something for nothing,” Braiding Sweetgrass teaches us, just like the sun, just like light, just like miracles, just like snow.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, from Braiding Sweetgrass

“That is the fundamental nature of gifts: they move, and their value increases with their passage. . . . The more something is shared, the greater its value becomes.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

The miracles that move from our circles should not be viewed as gifts from us but gifts from the universe poured through us, like the fruit of our hearts.

Robin Wall Kimmerer’s great teaching reminds us a gift relationship with nature is a “formal give-and-take that acknowledges our participation in, and dependence upon, natural increase.”

“We tend to respond to nature as a part of ourselves, not a stranger or alien available for exploitation. Gift exchange is the commerce of choice, for it is commerce that harmonizes with, or participates in, the process of [nature’s] increase.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass