Blessings from Being Open to the Unfamiliar

I have a dedicated healing room in my home. I like to do my “PMIs” there - prayers, meditation and intentions. I have a favorite picture of Christ that I like to look at while talking to God. Up until today, I used to face His picture straight on, because I want to look directly at Him. Doing that causes a lot of glare from outside light, so I’m not able to see Him clearly. So for the first time, I tried moving my chair a little to the right to look at Him at an angle. All the glare disappeared, I still felt like I was looking directly at Him and was surprised at what a simple solution that was and wondered why I hadn’t tried that sooner. I was so set on looking straight at Him, that other options didn’t occur to me.

That made me wonder, where else in my life am I making things difficult? Where else can I change something just a little bit to make a world of difference? To put it another way, where else am I being rigid, thinking it has to be done a certain way, no matter what?

We humans tend to think that our way is the best way, and if we see something done differently, our usual reaction is to judge it as wrong or see it as an inferior way. What a waste! There are so many ideas that can make our world and our daily life better, we just have to be open to it.

I am reading “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer on ethnobotany. I had to look that word up. Here is Wikipedia's definition: Ethnobotany is an interdisciplinary field at the interface of natural and social sciences that studies the relationships between humans and plants. It focuses on traditional knowledge of how plants are used, managed, and perceived in human societies. Ethnobotany integrates knowledge from botany, anthropology, ecology, and chemistry to study plant-related customs across cultures.

It is a great book! She talks about “three sisters” , the genius indigenous method of planting corn, beans, and squash together. They grow better together in a synergistic relationship. She talks about how when foreigners saw that they were not planted in straight rows, they judged it as uneducated and primitive, when in fact, Indigenous ways were superior. They are all planted at the same time very close together. The corn grows first, allowing the beans to grow up on its stalk. The squash grows out, preventing weeds from coming up, providing protection for all of them. Because the foreigners thought their way was best, they missed out on a beautiful and abundant way of growing vegetables.

Robin is an indigenous woman, as am I. I was delighted, but not surprised, to read we shared the same beliefs when it comes to plants and mother earth. They are alive! As a Professor, Robin has found that the students who love plants, could not answer the question if they thought the plants loved them back, or if the earth loved them back.

Oh! What a different world this would be if we saw everything as a pronoun/person! If we expressed gratitude to a tree for giving up it’s life to become paper, or a basket. If we respected the life and energy that is in ALL things - even things deemed inanimate, like rocks.