This Fall every couple of weeks, green team members and supporters will be sharing some personal stories and insights on what embracing values of sustainability means to them in their own lives and as members of the Hamline Church community. We invite you to learn and become inspired to take further action in your own life or as a member of our community.

Diane Krueger and her husband Kent.

by Diane Krueger

Become indigenous. Behave like a native plant and not an invasive species. This is a message I took from my reading of Braiding Sweetgrass, a book by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Robin, a Native American botanist and teacher, beautifully weaves her scientific knowledge with her indigenous wisdom to offer a “hymn of love” to the earth. She reminds us that the earth, the more-than-human-world, is a shared home and that we, as humans, have a relationship with and a responsibility to all of creation. She describes the ways in which indigenous cultures have built the knowledge of a shared home into their daily practices and spiritual traditions. They have crafted rules of living to reflect this knowledge: Take only what you need. Be grateful. Act with reciprocity for the gifts you receive from the earth. Use your unique human gifts to support and protect the more-than-human world.

Although descended from Swedish immigrant farmers who clearly valued the land, I did not grow up with a “shared home” view of the world. Instead I recall a childhood filled with the celebration of human engineering – our ability to conquer and control the natural world. Life-giving water conveniently flowed from taps – hot and cold. An ever expanding assortment of fruits and vegetables, wrapped in cellophane, was available year round in the local grocery store. Hamburger – bearing little or no resemblance to the cow it had once been – was cheap and abundant. While intellectually I knew the origin of these life sustainers, I seldom experienced any sense of relationship with those origins. Looking back, I recognize that I have behaved as an invasive species, taking more than I need and leaving spoils behind. I have ignored the wisdom of native cultures, failing to build a relationship of gratitude and reciprocity with the land, with the water, with all the non-human life forms that provide us daily with life sustaining gifts.

This is a season of harvest and thanksgiving – an ideal time to begin a practice of daily gratitude. I pledge to be more mindful of the non-human parts of my world – the plants, animals, fish and birds with whom I share a home. I will try to live each day in gratitude – taking only what I need. I will look for ways to reciprocate and care for the earth. I will try to become indigenous.