The web of gifting was a term I was introduced to by Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass. It is a concept from Native American traditions that the world is a great web of gift. An example: the Earth supplies the minerals that plants need to survive, they take them up through their roots, a free gift. The plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, which animals breathe (a free gift of life) and we in turn breathe out the carbon dioxide our plant neighbors rely on. An interconnected web of gifting.
It goes further of course, everything we need for life is available there in the natural world, a free gift. Not a resource to be claimed, but a gift to be accepted with gratitude and care. We would not plunder a friend’s house when they have invited us over and offered us a present and a similar concept applies to the world in which we live, rent free.
Dr. Kimmerer talks about gathering sweetgrass, an important plant for native ritual. Traditionally gatherers took always less than half of whatever was growing in a clump of sweetgrass and modern experiments show that this way of harvesting (neither too much (all) or too little (none) actually creates the best environment for sweetgrass to grow and thrive, it is healthier and spreads further when it is harvested with care and mindfulness by its human neighbors. She relates how surprised the researchers were that the plots of sweetgrass left totally alone, not touched by humans did worse than those harvested in the traditional manner, the native harvesters weren’t surprised at all, they knew that they were part of a reciprocal relationship with the plants.
This is the web of gifting. A way of existing with one another that creates a better life and world for all, not only for those creatures that find themselves at the “top” of the pyramid. (The dramatic habitat renewal that took place after wolves were restored to Yellowstone is another example of the way the web of gifting is incomplete without all its players.)
Modern Western humans, enculturated by a capitalist and colonialist society find such a concept foreign and strange. Sure it might sound nice, but it also sounds unrealistic to most of us. We might like to live that way but we can’t imagine what that looks like in a world stuffed to the gills with human beings and our unceasing demand for more.
The web of gifting gets at a number of our greatest issues right now. Our culture is structured to convince us that there is never enough, that scarcity is the name of the game. There is never enough food, water, money, power. We must therefore grasp all that we can as fast as we can before someone else can get it.
If you are familiar with the tragedy of the commons (Wikipedia) it applies here. We destroy our own best (shared) resources because we have been convinced that if we don’t grab as much as we can (more than we technically need) when we can, someone else will get it first and there won’t be enough. The end result? There isn’t enough, because we took too much. It is a self fulfilling prophecy we cannot seem to escape.
What does all this have to do with those of us seeking to live whole integrated lives, lives of rich spiritual and/or religious practice? I think it has everything to do with reclaiming the wholeness of our crazy lives. I have begun learning Gaelic (Scottish), the language of my ancestors, and reading all of the scraps of legend and myth I can come by from those long gone ancestors as well.
And it really is telling just how integrated into the land and natural world what little we have left is. Ancient peoples, (yes even in the Europe), were intimately connected to the places they lived, to the natural world, and their religion and spiritual lives made no distinction between the natural world and the life of the spirit/soul/etc. They were one and the same.
For the ancient Celts the Divine was clearly present in, and revealed by, the natural world. And right living (related to ideas of Soveingty bestowed by the Goddess of the land) were fundamental to the way they ordered their lives communally. As was the idea that those who broke with the land, who abused it or did not live in a way that honored it would be stripped of the authority granted them by the Divine.
In other words, human authority over nature was in that ancient world view a gift given by the Divine that was intimately part of the land and natural world and could be taken away if the gift was abused, if the humans didn’t in fact take part in reciprocal gifting. My ancestors would have likely understood Robin Wall Kimmerer’s web of gifting quite well, even if they would have used a different name for the concept.
As the globe warms, and the climate patterns that have made this planet such a hospitable place for us begin to collapse we have very little time left to fulfill our duties to the land and the natural world of which we are a part. What good is spirituality without green fields, and dark sheltering forests? Is not religion a mere escapist fantasy when the hillsides burn and the glaciers collapse into the sea?
Religion and spirituality seek to connect us to something greater than ourselves. Whether for you that is nature, God, the Divine, the Universe, or even some collective good among all things. The web of gifting seems to me a wise reminder in these times that we are all connected. The fate of our fellow living things is our fate as well.
