Inspired by the book 'Braiding Sweetgrass’ by Robin Wall Kimmerer and the Haudenosaunee practice of the Thanksgiving Address shared in the book, Kate explores words as ceremonies and her crack at practising giving thanks.

References:

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address

Transcripts:

Word: Ep 10 Giving Thanks

PDF: Ep 10 Giving Thanks

Listen and read on Youtube

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 10 - Giving Thanks

G’dy welcome to Tide to the Moon, a podcast contemplating through story and practice, how we might live with deeper meaning, joy and reverence. My name is Kate Lawrence and I am your host, and this is episode ten.

It is the full moon in July, which my calendar tells me is a super duper full moon.

The moon will be at its closest point to the Earth in 2022.and will be shining brightly as the largest full-moon of the year, and responsible for the extremely low and high tides in the ocean in the subsequent days that follow.

And I've had a big re-think about this secular sabbath thing, this idea of setting sunday aside as a day of rest revering

A few weeks ago it all went to the moon in a hand basket.

I have totally fallen off the wagon, and for a little while I felt like a failure, and that my son was right, it is just like my commitment to walk up Mt Macedon.

In the small experiment I have been doing over the last few moons, some Sundays have felt like a weeks holiday, and been totally joyful and thrilling in their indulgence and…

And others have felt like I was slowly sinking into a quagmire, becoming heavy and slow and stupid, less and less motivated, less and less energised as tyhe day went on, and yet not enjoying the slowness but feeling fettered by it, almost sickened by it.

Then a few Sundays ago I drove to Sth Australia and given we had to turn back after an hour and return home for a crucial iem, and then race to get the boat to Kangaroo Island, its little wonder this Sunday did not feel very sacred or relaxing

Then last week, the day after we drove back from Sth Australia, all I wanted to do was clean the windows and make the mouse and dog smells go away, and generally nest, so that’s what I did!

So it is clear to me - I can’t sustain Sundays as ‘do nothing days’ and I don’t want to.

MUSIC??

In the meantime I have started listening to a beautiful book called Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, from the Potawatomi Indians and also an Associate Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology at the State University of New York

In this book Kimmerer shares the practice of the Haudenosaunee Indians from the area where she lives called the Thanksgiving Address, or Greetings to the Natural World.

It is a long practice of giving thanks for a multitude of aspects of the natural world, and inviting us to agree that we can become one in our thanks for these things, a subtle or not so subtle way of inviting us to see where our commonality lies, to notice and name what we can agree on before we focus on our disagreements.

She also talks of the practice as a way of filling us up, which runs counter to the capitalist consumerist society that thrives on our feelings of lack and need. This practice ensures we see how very enriched we already are.

It reminded me that words are ceremonies, and as my youtube yoga person Sara Beth says - my daily practice is my strongest practice.

And this in turn reminded me of words work I did years ago, when my children were small.

I spent some time creating or adopting a series of word rituals for us to say - at the start of the day, at the end, before food.

The best and most lasting was the one I’d say to children before they went to bed - I’d bet each one of them could recite these words now.

Goodnight to your waking

Hello to your sleeping

Thanks waking for wonder

Thanks sleeping for dreaming

This Earth’s very special,

This life’s love and learning

Tonight your sleep comes

In time with earth’s turning

The next one they remember would be the words for eating which I learned when one of the kids was in a steiner kindergarten:

We gather round this table

Where bodies are renewed

Where hearts appease their hunger

As we feast on more than food

Having said this now for years, I don’t like it anymore because there is no sense of gratitude or thanks giving in these words, so I have written a new one:

For the plants

I am about to eat

I give thanks

For the animals

Sacrificed for me to

Eat

I give thanks

For the love

Freely given to me

By Mother Earth

In the foods

And fluids

That sustain

my body

My heart

My mind

I receive this love

and I give thanks

And to you who join me

In body or

In spirit

I give thanks and

Eat with a joyfilled heart.

Its still a bit wobbly, fully forgotten sometimes, and unable to be fully remembered at others, as they say - it is a work in progress.

My ratbag 17 year old has joined me, bringing his own grace, which he reads off his phone, the latest one sparking an absurd banter about God and hellfire.

And I have begun a practise similar to the Haudenashaunee Thanksgiving Address.

I have tied it to my coffee drinking habit.

I take myself with my coffee outside, on the Earth and speak

not as recitation, but as imagining

so it varies, sometimes things are forgotten other times they are added in.

At the end, as a sacrifice, and it is, I pour some of my coffee on the ground.

Perhaps I will add in being barefoot, and stand on country, but its early days.

Here is the Thanksgiving Address I did this morning:

MUSIC

Last Sunday I still allowed myself to do whatever I wanted to do,

No to do lists, and definitely no computer, but didn;t restrict myself -

if it felt good to do something that would ordinarily be a ‘to do,

Why not?

A practice in allowing, emergence, dare I say presence.

And the day unfolded with loads of relaxing, and listening to a wonderful audio book by Elizabeth Gaskell while I worked on a blanket I am making for my son.

and a bit of cooking and joy of joys, some good solid gardening

And then I met up with a friend, and cooked a roast for dinner.

A kind of old fashioned sort of day.

And sacred for all that.

MUSIC

Thanks for listening to ‘Tide to the Moon’’.

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Theme music by Danya from Audio Jungle.

This podcast is a production of Story Ground, and me, Kate Lawrence and is made on the traditional lands of the Gunum Willam Balluk,

at the foot of Mt Macedon, 65 km north west of Melbourne, Australia.