Today we finished listening to part three of Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer for our friend AdventuRyn’s Botany Book Club. (Join the fun live on Twitch at 4:00 PM Pacific every Monday!) We were really struck by the last essay in this section, “The Honorable Harvest”. In this essay Kimmerer explores what it means to harvest honorably, from ancient indigenous traditions to the aisles of today’s supermarkets. The keys are respect and reciprocity. At the end of the essay she talks about going shopping for pens and how she is unable to honorably harvest them because “everything [in the store] is dead.”
This immediately made us think about books because while many consider them to be dead objects, we firmly believe that each book has a soul. Many Native American peoples believe that stories are alive because they come to life as they are told by the storyteller. We don’t know if they would also regard books as alive, but we do. Stories come to life through their pages or via the audiobook narrator.
If books are alive, then they also deserve to be treated with respect and reciprocity. How can we practice honorable harvesting when we read?
Our answer is by taking our time. We show respect by paying careful attention. We do not rush. We do not cram tales in our mouth like Cookie Monster with a plate of cookies. We take time to savor them. To let each one into our heart and mind. To reciprocate by thinking about and discussing them. And finally, we pay the gift forward by recommending them to others who will cherish them.
Honeycomb's Hive 