107 Abundance

Episodes 105-108 Moving from Spring to Summer in these 4 episodes.    Gathering Word: The Gift of Strawberries Excerpt from “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer In a way, I was raised by strawberries, fields of them. Not to exclude the maples, hemlocks, white pines, goldenrod, asters, violets, and mosses of upstate New York, but it was the wild strawberries, beneath dewy leaves on an almost-summer morning, who gave me my sense of the world, my place in it. You could smell ripe strawberries before you saw them, the fragrance mingling with the smell of sun on clamp ground. It was the smell of June, the last clay of school, when we were set free, and the Strawberry Moon. I'd lie on my stomach in my favorite patches, watching the berries grow sweeter and bigger under the leaves. Each tiny wild berry was scarcely bigger than a raindrop, dimpled with seeds under the cap of leaves. From that vantage point I could pick only the reddest of the red, leaving the pink ones for tomorrow. Even now, after more than fifty Strawberry Moons, finding a patch of wild strawberries still touches me with a sensation of surprise, a feeling of unworthiness and gratitude for the generosity and kindness that comes with an unexpected gift all wrapped in red and green. "Really? For me? Oh, you shouldn't have." After fifty years they still raise the question of how to respond to their generosity. Sometimes it feels like a silly question with a very simple answer: eat them. Strawberries first shaped my view of a world full of gifts simply scattered at your feet. A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it. ______________ Andi Chatburn: https://www.andichatburn.net/ Audre Rickard: https://www.saturatedgrace.com Heather Fignar: http://www.heatherfignar.com Irene Dunlop: https://www.tendsoulcare.com