The Graze V.189: Abundant Generosity

Dear Friends,

Two feet above me, perched atop a spruce branch, squats a chipmunk. She embraces a pinecone. With nimble twists and turns and nibbles, she strips the scales, storing in her cheeks the seeds hidden within.

The tree is massive. And yet this tiny rodent chews speedily through these offerings given so freely from this forest giant.

And yet, there is enough - enough for saplings to arise, enough for hosts of rodents and birds to consume and be nourished and plenty more for me to step on bare-footed on the forest floor.

There is a generosity built into nature. Creation isn’t stingy. There aren’t just a few stars in the sky. There are countless stars and galaxies flung across the universe.

This is a model for how to live. Farmers cultivate well by knowing the land - its contours, its flora, its fauna, its weather. Artists share truth and goodness and beauty through song and sculpture, painting and pottery. Bakers form loaves from the wheat grown in the soil and share generously. Love freely given and freely received.

The symbiosis is stunning. We each give and we each receive and all are the better for it.

Sufi mystic Hafiz in the fourteenth century caught this rhythm and cycle of reciprocity when he wrote:

Even after all this time

The sun never says to the earth,

“You owe me.”

Look what happens

With a love like that,

It lights up the whole sky.

Our humanity requires nothing less than reinventing the way we do work and energy, education and religion, politics, media and economics on this earth. Let the incarnation that shines through the natural world be a model for us.

Advent Blessings of light and love,

🌱 Lisa