Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world

As a child I recited the Christmas story of the baby born in a manger, but the story comes to life in deeper ways when you read it in light of Mary's Song, a freedom song that she sang while pregnant with her son. She celebrated the upending of the social order, when the hungry are filled and the rich sent away empty. In her birth story, poor people get the positions of honor: the poor young single mother, the lowly animals, the rough shepherds. Together, they show that this birth is about divine justice, where human inequalities are overturned and peace is defined by sharing and equity. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

Have you ever been grabbed by a poem so hard it wouldn’t let go? I recently found “Closing Time; Iskandariya,” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly and couldn’t put it down. Living with it over days revealed layer after layer of wonder and meaning—a thrill for someone trained in close reading of texts. At least one of those layers outlines a pathway for making peace with Earth. Cello music with the poem today is by The Wong Janice. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

A path of listening, learned first in the yoga class of a beloved teacher in Boulder. For five years I attended her class, five years of book writing and coming to terms with my older brother's death. Wendy taught us how to move by listening—listening first to the body and breath, which is listening to the Earth. Here is a story of listening in Wendy's class. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

On rivers, the secret river, and what one very early project from 1400 BCE to drain a lake can tell us about both. Plus, what losing spiritual connection to the irrepressible flow of life looks like: reaching for power and control over ourselves and others. How can we stay open to the life-giving currents, even those we don't understand? Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

In a recent university talk Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, reflected on how Indigenous understandings of what she called our “shared responsibility for Mother Earth” can help us heal our relationship with the land. “What does the Earth ask of us?” she asked. She suggested that Indigenous principles for relating with land might help guide Western science so that all can thrive. We reflect on three of these principles—responsibility, respect, and reciprocity—and we ask what might be possible if they informed Western knowing. And we end with Robin’s ideas about how to give back to the Earth. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

Here on Maui we’re in crisis since the fire that destroyed Lahaina two weeks ago. But some of the same patterns of using and abusing water that contributed to this crisis are all too familiar from a history of colonizing people and land—including the land where I grew up in Ohio—that extends all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia. Today we look at a few of those historical connections and ask: When is diverting water harmful? What does it look like to care for land, or as we say here, mālama ʻāina? Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

Opening the gift of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s question: Why is the world so beautiful? How awe and wonder make us better people, as shown by the findings of psychology researchers into the science of happiness. But how can we feel awe at a time like this, when the Earth is wounded and so much life is endangered? An example from Maui’s degraded dryland forests, and how people are coming together to help the forests flourish again. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe