GRATITUDE, HUMILITY AND THE MORE THAN HUMAN WORLD

I offered some thoughts on stewarding land from a somewhat economic perspective about a month ago @ https://animistearthbasedjudaism.substack.com/p/interacting-with-the-more-than-human. I say somewhat economic because they involved working with the earth and things we might take into our bodies produced in partnership with the earth community.

Here I want to extend my thinking to the more explicitly spiritual aspects of this interaction. I want to emphasize that I completely believe that stewarding land can absolutely be a spiritual practice. Every time I harvest a vegetable, I am participating in the earth community and offering my prayers and gratitude for being a member.

I begin with two foundational beliefs. The first is the Animist insight that we aren’t better or worse than any other species, we are just different. We can’t grow as tall as a tree, run as fast as a cheetah, dig like a gopher, be as patient as a rock, flow like a river. On the other hand, other beings can’t make tools like we can, aren’t as widely adaptable to different ecosystems, can’t think to the same degree of abstraction as we humans can. So no better or no worse, just different.

The second foundational belief is that we are inherently members of a broader earth community, but our society promotes our alienation from this community. This alienation has enormous ramifications in every aspect of our lives.

Neither of these foundational beliefs are anything unique to me, that’s for sure.

These foundational beliefs lead to two core elements of my spiritual practice. They are the cultivation and expression of gratitude for the blessings bestowed by the more than human world and the cultivation of humility.

I offer gratitude to the more than human world every day. I express how grateful I am to the billions of beings who die every day that I may live the life I live. The web of life is infinitely complex and it functions brilliantly enough to allow me to live. Never take that for granted. Every day I praise the weather of the day, whether it is hot, cold or just right, whether it is sunny, cloudy or raining or snowing, whether the wind is calm or blowing. I am grateful.

We are, like all other beings, limited. So give up the illusion of total power and cultivate humility as part of our belonging to the broader earth community. We are finite beings, just as all other beings are. I acknowledge the greatness of the more than human world as a totality every day. I assert that I as an individual and a human am but a part of this larger whole.

Gratitude and humility seem to me to be two core values. I am curious about your experience with them.