Enummerating the gifts you've received creates a sene of abundance

I'm listening to The Serviceberry by Robin Walls Kimmerer.  Here are some notes:

1. All flourishing is mutual. 
2. Gifts of service berry. 
3. Calendar plant. (a plant that is so reliable as a predictor of human action -- when to plow when plant blossoms, for example)
4. Take what’s been given to us each in its own time. 
5. Provided by the lives by more than human beings. 
6. Not as natural resources or commodities. 
7. Culture of gratitude. 
8. If we take too much, it Dishonors the gift
9. Enumerating the gifts you’ve received. Creates a sense of abundance 
10. Recognizing enoughness, that you already have what you need is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more 
11. What if we took what was enough sufficiency. 
12. Take what’s you need 
13. Unrestrained taking. 
14. Reciprocity… how do we give back to serviceberry?  weeding or singing or habitat for bees or giving to land trust. Art. Change diet. 
15. Trading of commodities, not creating of community. Makes you happy and accountable
16. If there’s not enough of what you want, want something different.  That causes diversification. 
17. Being valued for your unique giftsThe quality of your character. What you give not what you have. 

18. 
    

In the Anishinaabe worldview, it’s not just fruits that are understood as gifts, rather all of the sustenance that the land provides, from fish to firewood. Everything that makes our lives possible—the splints for baskets, roots for medicines, the trees whose bodies make our homes, and the pages of our books—is provided by the lives of more-than-human beings. This is always true whether it’s harvested directly from the forest or whether it’s mediated by commerce and harvested from the shelves of a store—it all comes from the Earth. When we speak of these not as things or natural resources or commodities, but as gifts, our whole relationship to the natural world changes.

What if our metrics for well-being included birdsong, the crescendo of Crickets on a summer evening, and neighbors calling to each other across the road?

In a gift economy, wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away. In fact, status is determined not by how much one accumulates, but by how much one gives away. The currency in a gift economy is relationship, which is expressed as gratitude, as interdependence and the ongoing cycles of reciprocity. A gift economy nurtures the community bonds that enhance mutual well-being; the economic unit is “we” rather than “I,” as all flourishing is mutual.

The prosperity of the community grows from the flow of relationships, not the accumulation of goods. When the natural world is understood as a gift instead of private property, there are ethical constraints on the accumulation of abundance that is not yours to own. Gifts are not meant to be hoarded, and thus made scarce for others, but given away, which generates sufficiency for all.

Harvest honorably, with restraint,